Singapore 2024, November 29

 The standard extra long trip from home to boarding a plane:

• 6:20am train
• 7:00am bus
• 7:45am check-in
• 8:15am waiting for 9:15am boarding
• 9:30am boarding

On my way through the airport I picked up some Singapore money from an ATM for emergency, otherwise to convert to Vietnam money later. Once business class had boarded the premium economy line was full of idiots with standard economy class tickets, they were even trying to get their boarding passes scanned.

We left about on time, this being my third experience with premium economy after Emirates to Europe and Qantas to Hawaii. This was definitely the smallest section of the three, with only four rows and the primary difference being the seat size, the toilets were down in economy too.

The first couple of hours went along fast, then the first meal service came. Often lately I've risked not choosing the vegetarian option because:

• You get served early so get stuck with a tray table forever
• You often get a stupid vegan meal instead which is worse than the regular options

I think with Singapore Airlines there is more customisation available, so I should have looked into that. Being left with the default options it was a choice between meat and other meat, but the chicken came with a large side of rice so that was quite good.

For a change since it was a day time flight I started watching a bit of the Boston Strangler movie but was still a bit tired and fell asleep for a while towards the end, since I'd been up from 6am. Once the movie was over about four hours had elapsed, so I listened to a couple of podcasts and slept a bit more to use up the rest of the time of the eight hour flight.

We had to do the customary circle around the airport a few times before being allowed to land, but still arrived slightly early. I got through immigration quickly since I filled in the entry form online as required, but lots of other people had forgotten or didn't know and had to leave the line to go back and do it. The bags took a little while to come through but nothing too bad, then it was straight through the "nothing to declare" line.

I had to walk forever to get to the underground train station that was underground between terminals two and three. That train only went for one stop before having to change to another line, then it was a slow trip with many stops for about 30 minutes to arrive at Fort Canning. The walk was a bit less than one kilometre to the hotel, but I didn't go the quickest way I found out later. The ground was still wet but luckily the rain had cleared.

Soon I was able to check-in at the same Holiday Inn Express as the last visit several years ago. I usually choose the Holiday Inn for reliability, the only downside of this one was being just a bit too far from the closest trains and shops. After dropping off all my stuff I took a quick walk down towards Chinatown for some food, I guess it was overdue dinner time by now.

A compact room but enough space to move around

Luggage compartments survived the trip

I got some donuts from Bread Talk (not Bread Top) and a Singapore version of a burrito that was more like a toasted wrap, but still good. I was disappointed to find there wasn't many good drink choices in the convenience stores.

Back to the hotel it was 6pm local time but 9pm Australian time already. My old power adapter still worked to charge my phone, the same plug as for the UK. Had a quick check through the TV channels but it had no guide. There was lots of news channels and a few sports channels with one even showing the A League.

I still had to get a quick plan together to make it to parkrun and back in the morning, and decide what to do about the marathon expo afterwards. I decided for now to come back to the hotel first and get changed, then have breakfast before going out again to the marathon expo.

The hotel room was quite cold with the cooling system running, like usual I couldn't made much sense of the operations panel with vague icons and no words.

Steps = 8,632