Getting to Singapore

Today went much smoother than I originally thought. 

Checking out of the hotel was a breeze, I got my deposit back, caught a taxi and made my way to airport. I had to wait about 2hours at Dubai airport, as I had to be checked out my room by 12 and my flight wasn’t until 4, but I managed to get a seat plus it gave me a chance to sit and read some of my book. At passport control the guy stamping my passport told me I had beautiful eyes… damn I’m going to miss getting random compliments everyday –I don’t think there’s been a single day in Dubai someone hasn’t come up and complimented me!

 (Euros, Dirhams, NZ Dollars, Pounds, Singapore Dollars and Rupees! - oh and a Dubai keyring)

I had another hour to kill in duty free so I bought myself a lipstick and a drink before catching my flight to Mumbai. . The flight was pretty standard for a budget airline, the food though… where to start with the food.  We got fed at 6 and I hadn’t eaten anything since 9 so it’d fair to say I was pretty hungry, but I only managed a mouthful or so before I gave up. It was curry, with some potato thing which was weirdly seasoned. The weirdest thing was this yellow ball! I’m going to call it a cake as that’s the only thing I can think to call it, but it had the strangest consistency, it was paper dry until you bit into it and then a watery syrup seemed to come from the cake… This was my first real experience with bad airline food as so far I’ve been pretty lucky that the meals have been quite nice

Then I arrived at Mumbai. This was the bit I was actually most worried about as there are some awful reviews for Mumbai’s Bombay airport. I was lucky though, my arrival and departure terminal were the same, most people have to swap terminals and then you have to catch a bus which doesn’t run regularly… anyway the only problem I had was none of the signs were English and the stores didn’t take card or coins or pounds or nz dollars. I ended up finding one stall that would take dirhams (Dubai’s currency) and bought myself a croissant  (which was surprisingly delicious – I’m not sure if that’s simply due to how hungry I was though)

Anyway, the flight to Singapore was pretty uncomfortable, it was only 6hrs (I love how I now consider a 6hr flight to be nothing) but the seats were just simply impossible to sleep in. They did have a huge range of films though… so I obviously chose to watch some gripping and artistic film… Rio. It’s about a cartoon bird who goes to Rio and gets kidnapped… We got fed again on this flight but to be honest it wasn’t much better… it had the same yellow ball and potato thingy but there was some sort of bread which I ate.

It was really strange heading to passport control in Singapore airport as I’ve lost count the number of times I’ve had transfers here that I’m so used to following the transfer signs. Once I got my passport stamped I exchanged my money, and I now have 5 different currencies floating around in my coin purse!

Catching a taxi was really simple, getting him to understand where I wanted to go wasn’t. He couldn’t understand me, I couldn’t understand him… luckily I had where we were going… I got here in the end though! It seems like a nice hostel so far, I haven’t done much since I got to the hostel as honestly I’m exhausted and I don’t trust myself wandering around a new city when I’m this tired! Instead I’ve just been planning what I want to do while I’m here and catching up and emails etc.

P.S I needn’t have worried about my luggage being overweight, I thought I must have read it wrong online but no, I got a 35kg allowance for checked luggage and another 10kg for carry on! A lot more than the standard 20kgs! (although my suitcase has gained an extra 3kg in Dubai which I don’t quite understand…

P.P.S it makes me stupidly happy that I haven’t needed adapter plugs for Dubai or Singapore! 3 prongs all the way!