Blog ≫ 2024 ≫ Singapore day one
Got some content that I dictated for most days of our holiday to Singapore, so let's start with that and tidy it up. Looking ahead though it looks like my content starts when I'm on the plane. Before that we had a relaxed Sunday reallly, we weren't heading to the airport until about 3pm. I covered some of that here. We were doing "park and ride" with Holiday Extras, drop the car in the short stay near the terminal and someone takes it away again. Always do this, no transfer busses for me. We went in a bar at Heathrow Terminal Three and started the spending like we would go on for the rest of the week. We had some money already changed up into cash, and some money preloaded onto our Monzo cards, and then more to transfer as we went. Mum and Dad very generously gave us some spending money to ease us along... Right, to the plane!
Flight an hour late taking off because of a forgotten bag. Baby screaming in front of us all this time. Seems to have stopped now plane is moving 1. Airbus 380 2. I'm watching I Saw The TV Glow 3, no idea what is going on. Had two wines in the airport bar though it was meant to be a non drinking day. Think that is on hold for the holiday, though actually I'm still on schedule. Takeoff smooth, I didn't notice it, thought we were still taxiing. Watched two films before trying to sleep, I Saw The TV glow and Late Night With The Devil 3, both ok, both a bit odd. Dinner was good, pasta with an unusual flavour, lovage. Vegans got served first.
Sleep fitfully. First tried noise cancelling, then just ear plugs. Much wailing from toddlers for most of the night. Some turbulence but not loads. We're not landed yet so I should shut up. It was cold, I only had a shirt, was thankful of the provided blanket. Breakfast also very good, vegan sausages, tofu scrambled, mushroom, and spinach. Plus fruit and bad coffee. Tried to watch Madame Web with breakfast, and while it is clunky dialog in the setup it didn't look as bad as everyone says. My TV here is flakey though so it kept cutting out. Last nights were fine. I have the aisle and then Clare to my right, and an empty seat to my left, so had lateral space, but I'm sat in front of Coughing Bob Fleming 4, he really sounds like he doesn't have long to live. Also the guy in front kept his seat fully reclined including through both the meals so I have still felt hemmed in on this fourteen hour flight. Although we were about forty mins late leaving they recovered twenty mins on the way. But I'm ready to get off now. Because of the time difference we more or less lost a day there. I think it's 10:15 but it's 17:15 local time. The seat belt lights came on, we are in final approach. Where we're sat we should be some of the first of the third class passengers to disembark. And out into the heat of Singapore for the first time!
Did I really dictate all of that? On the plane? Or did I type it? There are not too many weird autocorrects so maybe I was just typing it.
I chose those films because I'd heard of them before the holiday. I Saw The TV Glow is sort of about Buffy The Vampire Slayer I think, about teenage TV fandom. It is odd. Late Night With The Devil 3 is a "found film" horror, it is done as if it was a recording of a live late night American TV show that was just rediscovered. There are some clever bits in it, but overall I'm not sure.
More contemporary content:
Landed safely and smoothly. Something to do with the size of this plane. The Airbus for the AC 5. It was really good. No difficulties. No difficulties going through immigration and passport gates and so on 6 and picked up our bags without a problem too. Didn't even need to look up where they were, Clare put air tags on them. It was thirty or forty minute transfer to our hotel. Which surprised me because I thought Singapore was really small. But I think there was a reason for the traffic to be very slow 7. We couldn't see too much on the way here, but we did recognize some of the landmarks, the boys did especially from Mario Kart Singapore and Cruise N Blast.
Hotel complex looks nice around the pool right now in the dark. The pool is still very busy even though it's dark. It seems that's what people do here because there is no bar. They go and get drinks and snacks from the 7-Eleven which is within the hotel really, and then sit out by the pool. The others were sat out with me, but I've now gone back to the room because it was 10:00 p.m. local time, and we're going to be up for half eight breakfast so we can go to our first scheduled activity, which is some kind of bobsleigh thing at 11:00 a.m. The pool is really nice though. It's lots of small pools, there's a jacuzzi bit, and an infinity pool. Bit none of it's deep enough to jump into or anything 8. But one of the bits is big enough to actually swim up and down 9. There's lots of paddling and splashing. It's very family friendly here and there are free towels. The forecast is for 29° here tomorrow 3° cooler than it was today apparently
I think we went straight to the 7-Eleven shop and bought some weird snacks and drinks. I went for a Soju, which I remember Andy recommending. It was a premixed thing, it lasted me several days, but it gave me a headache. That was actually expensive, the shop mostly did imported goods for foreign visitors. They don't seem to have much local products, so this drink was aimed at homesick Koreans I think. The crisps were not for me, this is a bit of a regional phenonmenon. The boys didn't really like them though.
The towel collection place was a VW Camper van, and it was still operating past the advertised 8pm closing time.
It still seems odd that the only bar for the hotel was the swim up bar. It's very small and was closed when we get there. It closes about 6pm, and officially the pool closes at 8pm I think, but there were still people out there at 10pm, it was still hot.
Other things about the hotel (Village Hotel Sentosa, 10 Artillery Ave, #02-01 Palawan Ridge, Sentosa Island, Singapore 099951) we had two rooms with an interconnecting door, which was great. I thought it was going to be a family room, which would be cramped. The rooms weren't the biggest but the bed was huge and comfortable. There was a separate tap for drinking water in the rooms, and there were ice machines in the corridor. Our TV did not initially work but we got it fixed later. The boys one was fine. Main impression of Sentosa is that it is like Orlando, Florida.
- No, the crying babies went on pretty much all night.
- A very big plane, we flew with Quantas.
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- This is a reference to The Fast Show on TV. Man alive did this guy make a lot of noise, like he was coughing an actual lung out.
- Right this was dictated then because this is meant to be "Airbus 380", the model of the plane.
- Oh but this reminds me we did have trouble using the check-in computer right at the beginning at Heathrow, it said T1's name did not match the name on the booking. But the actual check-in desk was empty, we went there and all good.
- All the roads are messed up for the forthcoming Singapore Grand Prix, could be that, but also they were setting up for some "Waterbomb" Korean music festival.
- Max depth of about one and a half metres. Kids could jump in, I did not.
- The main infinity pool bit is maybe twenty-five metres long.