July 16-18, 2025: Travel to and Arrival in Singapore (Author: J)
The pre-trip logistics for this trip were somewhat more complicated than usual. In addition to our flights on Singapore Airlines, we had two flights on budget airlines. Those airlines, JetStar and Scoot, both have combined weight limits for your carryon bag and personal item. As long-time carryon only travelers, we are used to packing light. But a 10kg per person limit for a trip that includes both tropical and cooler destinations posed a challenge we had not faced before.
Our usual method of fitting everything in a carryon is to pack for a 1-week trip and do sink laundry as we go. For this trip, D and P packed 4 short sleeve shirts, a long sleeve shirt, a flannel for layering, 2 pairs of shorts, and 2 pairs of pants. I packed 5 short sleeve shirts, a button down and a cardigan for layering, and a sundress. We each packed 7 days’ worth of socks and undies, a warm jacket, a sun hat, a winter hat, a dressy outfit, sandals, and lightweight dress shoes. We also cut back on the toiletries we packed, bringing only 1 tube of items like sunscreen and bugspray that I usually pack 2 of.
Even with all that cutting back, we each had about 12 kg of total luggage. (My last pre-trip errand was purchasing a real luggage scale to confirm our status as light packing failures). Although my pre-trip YouTube viewing had been replete with videos suggesting ways to avoid overweight fees by cleverly secreting items upon your person, we decided a more reasonable option was to just hope that no one weighed our bags. If they did, we would have to pay to check one of them. Not as much fun as fastening a neck pillow out of undershorts, I know. But we were happy with our plan.
By mid-morning, we had said goodbye to our cat and started the drive to New Jersey. We arrived at my parents’ house in time for a late lunch and an uneventful afternoon of sitting around their house. The following morning, my dad drove us to Newark Airport. Because we had checked-in online and had no bags to check, we were able to proceed directly to security.
We were at the gate about 2 hours before our flight. The terminal that Singapore Airlines uses in Newark is, unfortunately, boring as can be. There are a handful of restaurants, a few airport newsstands, and that’s about it. There are only so many times that you can do a loop of the airport to admire the newsstand mint selection, so we wound up spending most of the time leading up to our 18-hour flight sitting near the gate.
Singapore Airlines flights SQ 21 and 22 use specially designed Airbus A350-900 ultralong-haul planes that have about 1/3 fewer seats than their regular long-haul planes. This apparently makes the A350-900ULR light enough to fly halfway around the world without a refueling stop. To make the flight economically feasible to operate, the plane only has business and premium economy classes. The upshot of all of this is that boarding goes quickly.
The premium economy cabin has a 2-4-2 seat configuration except for the last few rows. Those have a 1-4-1 seat configuration. The single seats have a little storage bin next to them, which adds a bit more legroom because you don’t need to store your personal item under the seat in front of you. When we flew SQ 21 and 22 in 2022, we chose to sit next to each other, with 2 of us near the window and 1 on the aisle in the middle of the plane. P and I found the arrangement comfortable enough, but D struggled to sleep with an aisle on one side and a stranger on the other. For this trip, I decided on a small splurge and paid $100 extra for D to sit in one of the single seats in the back of the plane. By the time I decided to pay for this upgrade, the 2 seats in front of D were booked, so P and I sat several rows in front of him.
In 2022, Covid rules and low demand meant that service was a little different than “normal,” so I was excited to get the full longest flight in the world experience. It began before our flight when we were able to select our meals using the “book the cook” feature. If you have special dietary needs like we do, you can set special dietary meals as your default and then modify individual meals to select book the cook. However, the side dishes for book the cook meals will not necessarily meet your dietary needs. On our flights, the sides included shellfish, gluten, and dairy, so anyone with food allergies should probably avoid book the cook. P and I are vegetarians for ethical reasons, so we were willing to risk booking one book the cook meal each.
Also back were hot towels upon boarding, and a post-takeoff drink service with wine, champagne, beer, cocktails, and soft drinks. (All of these drinks were available in 2022, but the crew minimized contact with passengers by limiting in-aisle service. That meant that there was bottled water waiting in each seat at boarding and drinks weren’t served until the first meal service). During this initial drink service, the crew also came around the cabin to check in with folks who had ordered special meals to confirm our dietary needs.
As we flew north towards the Canadian Maritimes, I reclined my seat, extended my leg rest, and started my first movie with a glass of champagne in hand. Things were off to a comfortable start. Before long, our first meal of the flight was delivered. I had a vegetarian eggplant meatball option through book the cook. It was served with a shrimp salad, a roll, cheese and crackers, and a dessert. P had the lacto-ovo vegetarian meal, which had a mozzarella, tomato, and greens salad, a roll, cheese and crackers, a vegetable and grain dish, and a dessert. D had ordered the Indian vegetarian meal, which he ate without providing any details for this trip report. This would have been a decent meal on land; by airline standards it was excellent. One of the cabin crew even came by to offer P an alternative meal option after noticing untouched items on his tray.
After dinner, I watched another movie. Then, I washed up for bed, taking advantage of the toothbrush kits in the bathroom. Even in my aisle seat, I was able to get about 7 hours of fitful sleep thanks to the generous recline and leg rest. 9 hours down, 9 to go. I passed the rest of the flight watching movies, reading, eating 2 more meals (a snack of pizza and a lacto-ovo veg meal very similar to the one that P had received as his first meal), and walking back and forth to the bathroom – because where else is there to go on a plane.
Despite the length of the flight, the only time that I felt restless was when we encountered turbulence towards the end of the flight. While the turbulence was relatively mild, it seemed to go on and on. As a nervous flyer who may or may not have extensively researched turbulence related injuries before our flight, I was impressed with the safety precautions the captain took, including briefly suspending service to ensure crew safety. While service was suspended, the captain made several announcements reminding everyone to remain seated. This frightened P, who assumed the announcements were a forecast of worse to come. From my vantage point in the aisle, I was able to see that each of the announcements was prompted by someone on the plane ignoring the seatbelt sign to go to the bathroom. (I did tell P this, of course, but aerophobia doesn’t always respond to logic).
18 and ½ hours after taking off in Newark, we landed at Singapore’s Changi Airport. With the time difference, it was now approximately 5pm on Friday, July 18. Disembarkation was efficient, and we were soon thanking the cabin crew and walking down the jetway.
Immigration in Singapore is now even more efficient than it was in 2022. If you have already submitted your arrival card, you can proceed to gates where you scan your own passport. I arrived at the gates with P and D behind me and quickly proceeded through. It was at this point that I realized that D had also cleared the gates, leaving P struggling to figure out how to properly scan his passport. The immigration officials would not let me move back towards P to help him, so I was left ineffectually shouting instructions from 6 feet away. (Incidentally, the immigration officials would prefer you don’t do this). P eventually figured out that reading the instructions on the gate was a good idea, scanned his passport, and reunited with us.
It’s about a 20-minute taxi ride from Changi to the Pan Pacific Marina Square, our hotel for this trip. We chose it because, unlike some other 5-star hotels near Marina Bay, the Pan Pacific considers a 12-year-old to be a child. We therefore saved a “3rd adult fee” of approximately $100 per night by staying there. We hit a bit of a snag at check-in because the hotel did not have a record of the room request I had made; however, they quickly fixed the issue and moved us to a room with two beds.
Our room category was a deluxe twin, which – much to our relief — had two beds that would be considered double beds here in the US, and not twins. Overall, the room was a bit tired, but it was well-designed with everything we needed for our stay. Indeed, there were so many hidden cubbies that I didn’t find the one with extra pillows until I was checking for stray items as we packed up to check out. My favorite feature of the room was the mango scented shampoo and conditioner provided in the rain-style shower. It has my pick for best shampoo of the trip.
After getting cleaned up, we headed out for our dinner reservation at Clover in Kampong Glam. I pulled Google Maps up on my phone and entered the restaurant’s address. Then we started walking. I quickly realized that Google Maps assumed that we knew where the metro station was. The first part of the directions simply said, “go to Promenade Metro Station.” I set our new destination as Promenade Metro Station, and we were back in business. The only problem was that a multi-lane street with no crosswalk lay between us and the station. After multiple ineffectual efforts to find a way up to the 2nd story pedestrian bridge over the intersection, we made a mad dash across the street and took the escalator down to the metro.
We had an easier time finding our way from the metro to the restaurant, largely because Kampong Glam is much more walkable than Marina Square. Kampong Glam, Singapore’s old Muslim-Malay quarter, is one of the neighborhoods we didn’t visit on our last trip. Folks on the Tripadvisor Singapore forums recommended it as a nice neighborhood to walk around in the evening, and I was delighted to find a vegetarian restaurant serving local Singapore specialties in the neighborhood.
What I did not realize was that Clover was in the process of closing. And they were winding down their business by slowly selling off the food in their fridges without replenishing anything. We arrived at Clover to find a few tables in an unairconditioned foyer, a menu of the restaurant’s 4 or 5 worst selling items (with other items crossed out), and a drink menu that consisted of tap water (number of glasses – your choice!). It was a bit of a disappointment, but our jetlagged brains didn’t have the ability to formulate a new plan. We ate what they had and hit the streets to explore.
Kampong Glam is a lovely neighborhood of historic shophouses that would be fun to explore at any time. On a Friday night, it was buzzing with people out enjoying the evening and restaurant-workers touting their establishments. Though the many no-touting signs in the neighborhood suggest to me that touting may be illegal, I quite enjoyed our interactions. It felt more like a warm, friendly welcome than hard-selling tactics. While we weren’t in the market for a second dinner, we did have some teh tarik and Turkish ice cream as we wandered. “I think it was worth coming here even though dinner wasn’t great,” I said hopefully.
Soon enough, we were exhausted and ready to head back to our hotel. We easily found the metro and made the short trip back to Promenade. At this point, the night took another turn. The Promenade stop has multiple exits and we weren’t sure which one to choose. Google maps was no help, so I suggested that we exit towards Suntec City Mall, which is connected to the Pan Pacific. What followed was a 1-hour slog through one of Singapore’s largest malls. At one point, we did succeed in following a shop keeper’s directions to the bridge that connects Suntec to the Pan Pacific – but we took a wrong turn somewhere and wound up at a different hotel.
Faced with the prospect of beginning a new life as itinerant mall-dwellers, we decided to go back outside where we found ourselves once again separated from the Pan Pacific by multiple lanes of traffic.
“We’re going to have to make a run for it,” D said.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” P asked.
“It’s definitely not safe,” I said. “We could be hit by a car, or, worse, banned from Singapore for jaywalking.”
“I’m not going back into that mall,” D said.
“We can’t go back. We’ll never escape,” P agreed. So, please forgive us people of Singapore, but we made a run for it.
We were sweaty and barely standing by the time we made it back inside the Pan Pacific. I headed straight for the Concierge and explained our plight. He pulled out a tourist map and patiently drew a route to the metro station. Had we simply made a left out of the Pan Pacific driveway instead of a right, we would have found a metro entrance a half-block away – no street crossing or malls required. Just for fun, he also drew me a route to Suntec via a 2nd story pedestrian bridge.
As we were getting ready for bed that night P asked, “Do you think tomorrow will be better?”
“Yes,” I said without a moment’s hesitation.
Travel Monkeys 