Matt Down Under

When I returned from my visit to Germany on Christmas I didn’t fly back to Australia immediately, instead I had another stop-over for a couple of days, this time in Singapore. I had been in Singapore before, when I first traveled to Australia in 2008, but I didn’t leave the airport then. This time I brought enough time to check out the city.

I was flying Lufthansa again and after my bad experience on the flight from Bangkok to Frankfurt I was hoping for improvement. Unfortunately it was the same old airplane type again, and if that wasn’t bad enough the flight started with two hours delay due to technical issues with the emergency light system… Yes, that certainly makes you feel that you’re in good hands. While I was waiting at the gate another flight to Sao Paolo was even cancelled due to technical problems that had to get fixed overnight, all passengers got hotel vouchers. Awesome, Lufthansa. Never again.

So with two hours delay we finally left Germany but almost had to return because some German idiots used the two hour delay to get really drunk at the gate bistro and caused a lot of trouble after takeoff, including smoking on the toilet.

Can’t remember how I survived the 14h flight but ultimately I arrived safely at Changi Airport in Singapore. Again, a whole different world compared to Frankfurt Airport where it took me about half an hour to walk from the car park to the gate. Like Bangkok, Changi Airport is well organised.

I passed the customs in record time, grabbed a tourist map and headed to the taxi area. No hotel pickup this time - I had printed out Google transit instructions for the public transport, but it was already late at night and I was tired so I opted for a taxi, it’s not expensive anyway.

It felt great to be in a warm country again. The taxi driver was very friendly and since English is an official language in Sinapore, communication was not a problem.

Something I noticed immediately, was, how green Singapore looked. There are plants, lawn and trees everywhere along the streets, it almost felt like driving through a botanic garden. And everything was well trimmed, the streets were incredibly clean, no waste, no traffic jams, was this really Asia? After Bangkok with all its pollution and traffic this was an impressive change.

After hardly 20 minutes I was at the hotel but somehow they didn’t have my booking. Since I had booking documents, they accepted it and blamed the travel agency. I got the keycard and got changed in my room, I was quite hungry so I decided to dress up nicely and check out one of the fine restaurants within the hotel building.

I opted for the Indian restaurant, even though I didn’t know much about Indian cuisine. It was almost empty and the chef took the time to explain everything to me. I ordered a little bit of everything, with bread and wine and it tasted fantastic.