Thirdly, well, I just couldn't really be bothered.
I should mention that picture is not the hot, wet Singapore tarmac, that's still in Melbourne before the camera went to some deep place in my bag not to return until Wednesday!
The plane flight over was magnificent. Singapore airlines were great, we arrived plenty early at the terminal in Melbourne (thanks Dad!) and with charm and schmoozing and plenty of good humour we managed to get premium economy (which I now know just means the exit row) with nice legroom.
Didn't do too much on the flight, read a couple of hundred Tom Clancy pages (tried really hard to distinguish them from every other Tom Clancy book - but as yet am failing on that front). Watched Underdog just to prove my maturity. Had plenty of lines reminiscent of the original cartoon, which poor Tari had been deprived of in her childhood. I tried to remedy the situation, but she must have been wallowing in pity because she didn't seem to fully appreciate it.
Food was great, the mashed potato actually tasted like mashed potato this time, and less like clag (although I still think it would have worked as glue).
Don't remember stacks because I was well dosed up on Sudafed to reduce the sinus pain that makes flying less than fun for me.
What I do remember was being astonished at the red sand-dunes as we crossed over central Australia. I mean, really red. I haven't been up that way, and although I'd seen pics before I didn't really appreciate the redness. Did I mention it was red?
Lots of cloud the rest of the way, makes you really wonder how many pictures the folks at Google Earth had to go through until they found relatively cloud free ones.
The geek in me pretty much left the in-flight details on when Underdog had saved the day. Keeping track of the speed, altitude etc. One annoyance was that at one stage we would have just had to turn left to go to Jakarta, which would have saved us almost a day of further travel. I was almost willing to buzz the Captain to call in a favour, but decided just to eat my food. How unlike me.
As we descended into Singapore it was pretty cool that there was just water, water, more water then suddenly big city! Also big airport! Looked just like the Google Earth pic as we swung around to land. Glad I did my research so that I knew that we were landing at the right place. It would have been embarassing to tell the pilot that he'd been on the wrong track (he probably wouldn't have done any future favours for me after that).
At Singapore the super strict customs surprised us. I had packed (as you've read already) junk food and Tari suggested that I just ditch what I hadn't eaten yet because of quarantine etc. I chose to keep my food. I'd rather try to convince some guy that the white powdery stuff is a peppermint in a country that has big read signs saying "Importing drugs to Singapore carries the DEATH penalty." The customs went a little like this: there were two lanes, one for people with stuff to declare (green arrow) and a big red one for the rest of us miscreants.
I went towards the red sign. The uniformed guy with gun looked at me. I looked at him. He waved me back to the green line. We walked right through. My junk food remained in my possession (just as well - I'm chewing on a snake right now).
To save you the stress of further customs details, the other customs checks so far have been just as arduous.
Jackie (Tari's colleague from Sydney) arrived about 20 mins after us. We politely decided to wait for her. I hadn't met her before, so we thought it would be nice to meet her as she got off the plane. You know, a friendly face in a foreign country. Plus, she's the one with the company credit card. (I'm still pretty sure we did it for the niceness.)
Everything in Singapore went super smooth, there were orderly queues for the Taxis that drove in, were waved to a spot and could drive straight back out, no reversing, no fuss. I'd love to tell you about the hotel but my recollection goes like this:
Out of Taxi, Jackie pays for room, up a lift, out of lift to room, fall on bed. Bed is ROCK hard. Take off clothes, fall asleep. I think Tari tried to talk to me. I think I actually said something along the lines of the bed being so hard it would be hard to sleep. This was about midnight(ish) Singapore time (3am ish our time I think) and the alarm went off at a bit before 6am next morning.
All I remember of the trip back to the airport was that there was some big complex on one side of the road we were on. There were two layers of tall fences topped with barbed wire, with cameras on posts regularly spaced. Just in case you were in any doubt as to whether you should pop in for a visit or not there were two warning signs. I wished we hadn't been moving, no photos of these sorry.
They were typical stick figure pics like those used for toilets etc. One of them showed a stick figure touching the fence and being electrocuted, nice little zappy bits and all. The other showed a stick figure with a rifle shooting a stick figure with its hands in the air. Maybe Tari will let me visit on the way back if I've been "extra good".
Back to the airport, quick brekky (sorry mum, breakFAST) of reasonably priced toast and ludicrously expensive tea/coffee. Always under the watchful eyes of uniformed guys with machine guns, always a pleasant start to your day. Off to Jakarta, another Singapore flight. Only an hour hop, then two hours to wait until the Yogyakarta flight. (Garuda) Turned into waiting until 1pm due to technical difficulties.
I told Jackie that I'm always happy to sit on the ground waiting for technical difficulties to be sorted out rather than, well, just about any other alternative. Jackie and Tari laughed nervously. Happily unbeknownst to me (due to my lack of ever reading the news) was that a month ago a flight had crashed at Yogyakarta airport.
Afterwards Tari and Jackie said that they had never been so nervous on a landing before, which I now understand! It was a pretty bumpy flight in. Thunderstorm was rolling in off the mountains and it's apparently a very short runway. Ignorance is really nice sometimes, I thought the flight was just fine=)
We were all pretty burnt by then, so it was straight to the hotel (literally, it's about 20 or so mins from the airport along a straight road). Lots and lots of motorbikes, but the great majority wear helmets now. Road rules like you'd expect here. At the hotel we were greeted by a lovely woman in costume bearing cool mint-scented towels and a kind of sweet iced-tea. Most civilized, I felt a fake british accent building up inside of me. I restrained it. Tari thanked me.
Dumped bags, had showers, then it was dinner at 6ish. The menu has lots of charming spelling mistakes as well as some traditional stuff - I guess I'll find out about those later. Tari's favourite is a very nice sounding banana dessert with caramelised this and yummy that which she is tempted by but for the addition of sprinkled grated cheese. I'm gonna make her try it at least once.
Browsing the menu there were spicy fish, spicy chicken, spicy beef, spicy vegetables and... wait for it...
Australian sirloin beef. At prices cheaper than we get at home. I had a mie godheng which was very nice, noodle soup with lots of vegetables and bits of chook etc. You get two sauces on the side, one hot, one sour, that you mix in to match what you feel like. After dinner it was about 8pm (midnight your time) and we all pretty much just collapsed.
Rooms are nicely air-conditioned, thank goodness. My lungs aren't cut out for the air here, but I'm on double asthma medication and I'm sure I'll adapt quickly. Especially with the help of lots of cold root beer.
Breakfast at 6:30 was a buffet that was in two sections. One: typical breakfast food, fruit, toast, cereal etc. Two: what appeared to be the dinner menu, fried rice, beef dishes, chicken dishes etc. My favorite (in an "I can't believe they did that" way) was "bacon" that was just thin strips of fried beef. Actually pretty good, especially with pickles. Did I mention that was breakfast?
Speaking of food (how unlike me), it's getting near lunch time now, so that's gonna have to be it for now. Couple of photos to finish it off, I'll try to take some more today. Maybe. If I can be bothered leaving the room. Which is, quite frankly, unlikely =)
Firstly the room: it's small, but beautifully furnished.
And the last photo (which I took while standing on a chair because there's an ivy covered fence in the way - sorry it's not very level) is the view from the room. Lots of red roofs here. You can see them in Google Earth.
Dunno what the plan is when Tari gets back from work today. It looks like she won't have a day off, but will have a couple of days where she finishes by 2ish so it'll be very busy for her.
Fill you in more later =)
Sim.
3 comments:
Wow! Great post! Glad to hear your flight(s) went well and looking forward to hearing more.
Great to read your travelogue. Room looks good - sounds like you may have to diet when you come back home. Hmm all the essentials eh, internet access, food, airconditioning.
Banana with grated cheese??? I can't wait to hear how it tastes :)
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