Saturday 30^th July

I hate night flights! I took a sleeping pill but all it did was make me too groggy to watch a movie and not tired enough to overcome the crying child, cramped legroom and narrow seats. I think in future, I’ll opt for the seats near the emergency exits where you have more legroom and your TV screen is at a lower level more suited to bifocals. Still, I think, probably in my state, the time flew by more quickly than a daytime flight. However, I do wish they could somehow manage separate toilets for males on these flights. Everyone is in stocking feet and you get to the toilets and the males have missed their target! This is not pleasant. Another time, I groggily waited my turn for about 10 minutes only to find the hostess had been inside grooming herself. No one could see her in the darkness anyway!

Landing at Changi Airport was not a pleasant experience. In fact, it was the second worst landing I have ever had in a plane. The pilot came in too fast and had to slam on the brakes. So we crashed into the tarmac several times and began to swerve off the runway. Luckily, he managed to correct our path with another swerve – not good. I hope someone on the crew or in the control tower speaks to the pilot.

By the time we were ready to leave the airport the queue for the taxis was long and no taxis seemed to be about. It turned out that today was practice day for the national day celebrations. It is nearly 46 years since Singapore became an independent country. The traffic was heavy near the city centre. So we decided to get the shuttle. We only had a 10-minute wait and the shuttle arrived but as we were leaving, we noticed the taxi queue had vanished! The taxis had obviously all arrived at once. Naturally, we were the last of the 4 couples aboard the shuttle to be delivered to our hotel. Still, this time we knew where we were going and the gardens along the route are attractive.

The Concorde Hotel in Singapore is, quite simply put, weird. After being driven to the impressive front doors of 2 other hotels (Forget the Ibis.), we were delivered to the back door of ours via the underground car park! You only get a front door treatment if you are wealthy enough to arrive in a taxi! In fact, even pedestrians can’t get access straight off the street into the foyer. First, you have to go down a few steps into a narrow alley in front of some small, unimpressive shops. Then you go up a flight of steps to a desk and are directed to the right passed more small, unattractive shops, into a corridor that houses the lifts. You go up one more level and get out of those lifts and you are to the side of reception. To get to your room, you have to go back to the lift lobby and go up in a different set of lifts, glass lifts. It is a mess.

From this, you are thinking that this hotel must be appalling! In fact, it is very swish and expensive. The rooms start at nearly $S500 a night although, because we booked a long time in advance and over the Internet, we are paying less than $S300 a night. Naturally, they tried to get us to upgrade by telling us we would get free Internet etc etc but we did not bother. Having come in via the underground car park, carrying our own luggage in what appeared to be a service lift without any porter to assist, we were not convinced we would even like the place enough to stay 3 nights. We did receive a complementary fruit juice while we registered but nothing is cheap about this place. Breakfast is $S26 a head plus GST plus a 10% service charge. (Consequently, we don’t tip anyone!)

We rather miss our Frankfurt hotel. There breakfast was only 8.50E and you got more to eat. Here we have two rooms not 3. There is no lounge here so there is only I chair and an armchair to fight over. The a/c is noisy and if you turn it off, you cannot open a window. I guess, with all this heat and humidity, you need it on anyway but it makes it hard to sleep at night. In Frankfurt we could open 2 windows and a door onto a little balcony. However, the room is larger than at the Royal Queen here where we stayed on our flight in from Australian in April and the view is better. We can see trees and have a pleasant outlook.

It was dinnertime by the time we got settled into our room and we went searching for dinner; we needed the walk. We did not want to spend a lot at the hotel restaurant. So we found a street stall area and picked a small meal of rice and meat (duck & pork) each and got Taiwanese black tea from a stand across the side street. Never again! The picture displaying the food is not what you get. What we got tasted okay but it was dumped on the plate and much less meat was covered with a little brown sauce. By this time, after weeks in Germany and Austria, we are rather sick of seeing unappetising food lacking vegetables. And Taiwanese black tea is not for us.

We wandered about the hotel familiarising ourselves with its features but still at a loss about the poolside restaurant that supposedly has a lunchtime buffet. All we could find was a small bar area and the pool closed at 8pm, which is ridiculously early given this heat.

And so to bed.