16 hours in Singapore
To the airport
When we booked our flight to Cambodia and it had an overnight layover in Singapore. At the time of booking Singapore was closed to tourists. So we booked a 12-hour stay in one of the hotels at the airport. Yes, they have hotels at the airport!!! You don’t even have to leave security or customs. Fast forward to when we arrive at SFO. As we were on our way to the airport Katie started googling about Singapore’s lockdown and realized they were open. She floated the idea of maybe we skip sleeping at the airport and instead go to check out the city. I was less excited about touring Singapore while jet-lagged and said “Let’s talk about it on the plane”. As we had plenty of time to make up our minds on what to do.
At SFO we got the final weights of our luggage and had a nice conversation with a man we met named Dane. He was even nice enough to send us a photo of our plane leaving!
Arrival
On the plane, we had two different strategies on how to adjust to the time zone. I planned to stay up all “night” and fall asleep at a normal sleeping time in the local time for Singapore. Katie on the other hand stayed up for a while and then went to sleep when she was tired. The flight is 16 hours long. To pass the time I watched the first two Lord of the Rings (in prep for New Zealand) and we both worked to finish up the blog posts for Tanzania.
When we arrived at Singapore Airport, I was temperately energized by how cool it was but mainly wanted to get to our room and sleep. Katie on the other hand wanted to go into Singapore at least for dinner. We ended up deciding that I would stay at our hotel and she would go into the city. As we were checking in the hotel attendant informed us about how we could get into Singapore (and how easy it was), what we could do when there, and where we should have dinner. At this point, I was exhausted but the FOMOFear Of Missing Out led me to rally. So we got our instant online visa, booked a night at a hotel and headed into the city.
Chinatown
We checked into the ST Signature Hotel. It was a completely automated check-in process where you scanned your passport via an app to get your room code. We then went for a walk to get some food. We walked through the night market in Chinatown and then ate Indian food at the Boat Quay overlooking the Singapore river. On our way, we admired the city’s architecture, cleanliness and high density of plants. Full trees were growing out of balconies that were multiple floors in the air!
Breakfast with Amy
Katherine had texted one of her friends who lived in Singapore when she realized that it was open for tourists. In 2009, she visited her good friend Daria in Italy. Daria’s cousins were also visiting so she traveled with them for a weekend. Since then, the family had moved to Singapore and they were in loose touch.
Katie hadn’t contacted them before because Singapore was closed to tourism. However, since it was open, she immediately for in town with them. Amy, the mom, was able to meet for breakfast the next day. We are so grateful for her flexibility and for making the room to get breakfast with her on such short notice. We had a wonderful conversation about our travel, her life and our experiences during COVID. It was surreal to hear her talk about reading our blog. We have been writing for ourselves and are adjusting to the idea of having a small following.
At one point, Katie got up to go to the bathroom. Having earlier learned that we both have spent time in Syracuse I asked her if she knew about salt potatoes. A dish that I am unconvinced is anything other than a boiled potato. As we chatted about upstate we quickly realized that we both went to school at Clarkson University. A Surreal experience for me as I have yet to meet someone “in the wild” that had also gone to Clarkson. Figures it takes going halfway around the world to do it.
At the end of breakfast, she asked about Dr. Speckles - our little penguin. She was like “so, where’s your penguin?” We had completely forgotten that Peggy was in our bag, and were happy to introduce them. Peggy always enjoys meeting her fans!!!
Departure
After breakfast, we got a ride to the airport. We got to talking about the cost of living in Singapore and how the government was making owning a car more and more expensive to encourage the use of public transit. As we approached the airport the driver asked us how much time we had until our flight. Since we had some time he told us we needed to check out the Jewel. So that’s what we did. It was amazing with tons of shops, immaculate bathrooms, plants lining the walls and a giant water feature in the middle. We ended up needing to force ourselves to leave so we had enough time to go through security and eat.
We got lunch at the airport version of a hawker market. Where you order at a central terminal and then pick up your food at one of the many “street vendors”. After lunch, we booked it to our gate and found a butterfly garden and spent even more of our limited time there. Thankfully we were able to peel ourselves away from the garden with just enough time to get on the plane. When we arrived at the gate we got in line with the last 10 people to board.
