Category: Misc. Singapore Stuff

Singapore Changi’s Terminal 3 will be going online during the first week of January. Most of SQ’s long haul flights as well as the 380 will fly out of here.

Yes, it’s really that tall. Note the people for scale….
One complaint I have about Changi is addressed in T3. Unlike T1 and T2, T3 has high ceilings and a very airy feel. To address the greenhouse effect that high ceilings have, it will have computerized shutters that will close off the windows from the sun during peak hours.

Immigration for arrivals

Immigration for departures
This pic is what you will see as you clear immigration departing Singapore. The fountain looks like an onsen!

I wound up transiting through SIN overnight to get to HKG today. Normally it works like this:
Fly SQ1 from SFO-HKG-SIN, stopping over in HKG and continuing on to SIN a few days later.
However, SQ1 was sold out so I wound up on SQ15 which leaves SFO at 1245 and arrives at SIN two days later at 0100! Technically it’s “two” days later since we arrived after midnight…
Anyway, my original plan was to stay overnight at Changi Airport’s Transit Hotel then head into town via MRT in the morning. I really had a craving for kaya toast and sock coffee. Still do.
Sounds easy and stress free, right? This is me, remember?? Don’t count on it.
First off, the Transit Hotel was sold out. Period. Second, there’s not a lot of moderate (>US$100) lodging in Singapore. Basically, Singapore lodging works like this: There’s a lot of hostels then boutique hotels and then the big ass fancy awesome get laid hotels that costs as much as your air ticket.
For that bracket inbetween the hostels and boutique hotels are a couple of local no-frills hotel chains: Fragrance and Hotel 81. They’re spread all about the island but their critical mass is in Geylang where you can check in at 0200 and get a single room to crash in.
Besides the odd traveler, these Geylang hotels also attract working girls and their johns for *ahem* business. Not necessarily the *business traveler* type! If you tell your Singapore frens that you stayed in Geylang, be prepared for lots of jokes about “cleaning up”. AHEM…
Anyway when I took the taxi last night to get to the hotel, I inadvertently left my handphone in the cab. I realized this after I checked into the hotel and promptly went into panic mode.
I panic VERY WELL. I asked the hotel clerk to ring my phone for an hour straight.
Anyway, there’s a happy ending to the story when my phone was recovered by the cab driver and turned in to his office. Apparently, when my phone started to ring on the back seat, the cab driver heard it and kept it with him. If he picked up another passenger and the phone was just sitting there the chances that my phone would have walked off were high. Really high. How high? Well, answer this question: Do I like EQMs? Yes? Well that’s how certain my phone would have walked away but for the driver rescuing my phone. I collected it on my way out to Changi Airport for my flight to HKG.
So I just emptied my karma pot for this trip. Best try to refill it on this trip…

Singapore is calling!
Hawker centres are there!
Low fare airlines are there!
People I wanna see are there!

Bizzare architecture is there!
Singapore is calling…

So I was reading the news when I read that Newton Centre is gonna be closed for NINE MONTHS for a retrofit starting in October??
Naturally, the timing of this is bad bad bad, since my “Fall Asia Trip” is around November…
No more Newton Centre for 9 months? You can have a baby in that same time frame! Some people could say that in 9 months, a new Newton Centre will be “born” and there IS going to be temporary location for all the hawker stands that are in the Centre…
And that’s good, I suppose. Any other late night options (besides Mustafa)?

I read about the merger of JetStar Asia and Valuair over the weekend.
Corporate types are excited about it. But when that happens, passengers usually lose. Less flights and more expensive tickets.
Look at UAL for example. Each time their union bosses announce a “good thing” (such as being able to purchase “good food” on flights or having “special service” between SFO-JFK), it raises prices on travellers. The end result of this is that now if you fly on a connecting flight from SFO to the East Coast, you don’t get food unless you buy it. I’ll accept that if the fares come down to compensate, but they’ve gone up, especially to JFK. This is because the SFO-JFK run are now served by PS flights. Great for bigshot flyers who don’t have to pay for their own travel, bad for everyone else.
But back to the topic at hand. Does that mean that the brief sunshine of cheap travel in SE Asia is at an end? I rather liked my experience on JetStar Asia on my recent trip to BKK…

Gettin’ ready for a trip to the land of horrid weather, fun people and great great food! I found what seems to be a locals’ guide to Singaporean food.
Check it out!

Bemoaning the fact that I’ve not been to SIN since November of last year, here’s a handy page with a glossary to that hybrid language called “Singilish”.
U wont’ be as blur since u read lah?
OK, I’ll stop now.

Hmmm. So Singapore is beginning to relax a little.

That’s nice. But don’t go too far, lest ye become like “San Francisco, cesspool of the nation”, complete with the filth and lack of mores that makes liberalism what it is…