October 11 - Wednesday
Hong Kong International Airport
Bangkok's new International Airport
Singapore
Our flight out of Hong Kong left around 0900. We were up and heading for our gate around 0700. I hurt everywhere and from the looks of Jon's face - he didn't sleep so good either. On the hand, I'd never slept in an airport before - now I can say I have.
Now I can say that I will, if at all possible, avoid the experience in the future. Jon keeps bringing up the idea of flying home from NZ either first or business class and let me tell you right now it would be worth every penny. It's like a 12-14 flight home. If ever there was a flight to upgrade on - it would be that one. This thought was confirmed while we were killing time in Bangkok's new airport waiting to clean, have new passengers board and then leave for Singapore. They didn't want us to leave as the layover was only for about an hour. Jon went and looked at business and first class.
"Go check it out." - J
I really didn't want to as I think it would make me depressed as I sat back with the rest of the sardines in economy class but we had time so I went up and looked.
We passed by business class as we boarded and those seats looked really roomy with an armrest you wouldn't have to elbow wrestle your husband for but first class was pretty amazing. I still don't think I would pay to fly first but Jon is going to see how many frequent flyer miles he has left to see if it's enough for an upgrade. I'm praying.
The flight from Bangkok to Singapore was just a few hours and we arrived in Singapore in the early/mid afternoon. We had found a place to stay and reserved a room so that was all squared away.
"I could so go for a piece of gum right now." - S
"No." - J
"Fine." - S
We wanted to hightail it to the hotel so Jon could contact the bike guy for delivery. We were feeling pretty rough around the edges and I didn't argue about the cost.
Holy freak it was like we never left Thailand! Hot and humid - how did we live in this for three weeks? Singapore has beautiful trees, the vegetation is lush and tropical - very very pretty and every bit as clean as they're reputed to be. It was hazy from the fires from India so we didn't get the real picture of all that it could be as we headed toward the Malay village which was near our hotel. Our driver explained that there was some holiday coming up which was why the streets were decorated and they would be lit up at night - sounded interesting. As I looked out the window I could see that we were entering a muslim community, all the women had the tradition garb on that is so beautiful. Our hotel was located right at a busy intersection and we could look out our hotel window on the 4th floor and have a good look around.
Air conditioning is good. We had to go outside and cross a breezeway to another building where our room was.
"Even the tiles are sweating." - J
How can people live in this kind of weather? Why would people live in this kind of weather? No really, I want to know why?
The good news is that we were right next door to a bunch of food stalls (hawkers) and across the street from an outdoor market. The bad news was that we felt like total crap.
That shower felt so good. The shower head was only as high as the nape of my neck and I kept hitting the back of my head on it but I didn't care.
We had a couple hours to kill before meeting with the bike guy so we went looking for food.
The food stalls were amazing. I could have stood there and people watched for hours. I didn't know what (over) half of that stuff was. Some popluar items were the fruit juices, beef, chicken, lamb, fish burgers with mayo and some kind of brown sauce on a bun sometimes wrapped in a fried egg. There was some other ground meat and veggie wrapped in a crepe envelope. There were big circular flat cooking surfaces piles with cooked meats, the edges lined with hoagie or hamburger buns ready to be filled with the seasoned meat and topped with mayo and brown sauce. Full fat mayo is very popular in Asia. There were these cast iron molds that I passed by while someone was making what looked like a crepe and sprinkled sugar and nuts. There were several of these stalls and after a while I decided that is what I wanted. Turns out that it about as think as a pancake, similar texture and sprinkled with granulated sugar, some kind of ground nuts (I'm almost positive it's peanuts) and a small amount of sweet corn or maybe creamed corn. Once all that stuff is in the whole thing is folded in half awaiting purchase. Once you indicate that you want one and one is definitely a meal the thing is cut into fourths and wrapped in brown paper so when you stop later to eat it the pancake part has taken on a chewier consistency since it has kind of steamed itself in the brown paper. In any event - it's really tastey.
Back in our room we reinventoried our items and threw away more of our stuff in anticipation of the luggage weigh-in at the airport tomorrow. I think I have an idea of how wrestlers feel.
I think we were able to drop a couple kilos.
We had a few minutes be decided to go to the lobby to meet the bike dealer. Turns out that he was exiting the elevator as we were getting ready to enter it!
With the help of the luggage trolly and a hotel staff member we all headed toward our room. Knowing that there was no way we would all fit into our room with two big bike boxes we kept everything out in the hallway as Allen from Speetmatrix went over our order with us, took out one of the bikes. Everything seemed in order and we were also able to pick up a few accessories that he thought we might need too. All the while the hotel staff member silently looked on - he probably doesn't get too many transactions like this in his hotel hallways! It was a cash exchange so the whole thing may have looked a little shadey for someone just walking past but we were pretty pleased and were excited to ride our new bikes. Allen was really helpful, totally professional and had an obvious love for cycling.
Once we parted ways with Allen and got our boxes we were able to breathe a sigh of relief. One hurdle passed, now we just had to make it through check in without have to pay any overage fees. This definitely didn't effect our sleep. With the black out curtains closed we went right to sleep. Our flight didn't leave until close to 2000 the next day. Why do we keep getting these awful flight times? OK, the first was the return flight bought with Jon's frequent flyer miles so we were kind of at the mercy of black out dates but we got crappy times going to NZ because we bought our tickets so close to our departure date. The price you pay (literally) for having a 'flexible' schedule!
