Getting There-Part One: Singapore
By
Leonard Zwelling
Given that Singapore is 14 time zones ahead of Houston, I suspect you could travel there from Texas going east or west. We chose east so that we could once again take advantage of Turkish Air Business Class, my vote for the best deal in the sky for long international flights. The planes are new. The crews are courteous and attentive. The seats lie flat for reasonable sleeping. The food is acceptable and, most importantly, Turkish Air is part of the Star Alliance so you can get those frequent flyer miles on United. Their prices are also far below those of the competition, we surmise because the company is 49% owned by the Turkish government through the Turkish Wealth Fund.
Over the years we have taken Turkish Air to Israel, South Africa, and, of course, to Turkey. There is only one downside to Turkish Air. All voyages pass through Istanbul and layovers can be several hours in length. We once waited eight hours coming back from South Africa. On the plus side, the Turkish Air Business Class lounge has got to be the best lounge I have ever been in with more different kinds of food than many food courts and all of it quite good and prepared freshly by attentive staff.
Departing Houston for Istanbul means Terminal D which can be quite busy at times. Sunday afternoon must be off hours because we flew through the screening process. The Polaris lounge at IAH does not hold a candle to the Turkish Air lounge in Istanbul. Since we had a five plus hour layover in Istanbul, the fact that our plane was an hour late out of Houston was of no significance.
The movie choices on the flight were lame unless you wanted to watch golden oldies, so instead I watched the first ten episodes of the first season of The Pitt again. It was better the second time. But mostly I tried to sleep as soon as the crew cleared dinner and I was mildly successful. At least I was functional in Istanbul which is fortunate because this is a very large airport (it’s really a shopping mall where airplanes tend to land and take-off) and the walk from our arrival gate to the lounge was lengthy and the directions to get to the lounge were meager. But, so what. We had four hours to kill and we had just had two meals that day or whatever day it was.
On leg one, we flew into Monday from Sunday. Leg two had us flying into Tuesday from Monday. We crossed the fourteen time zones in about 27 hours. The second leg was pretty much identical to the first, and almost as long. Leg one was over 11 hours. Leg two was almost ten.
We finally did make it to Singapore which is another in a series of beautiful airports we have encountered that make those in the United States pale by comparison. Getting through passport control took less than a minute as long as you filled out the entry card just before leaving Houston.
The trip into the city with our guide Linda was smooth and efficient and the architecture along the way very inventive and modern. It’s a sparkling clean city that has its own money (Singapore dollars) and utilizes British driving rules, but, because of the origins of those driving rules, everyone speaks English—sort of. Singapore is a city of constant immigration and emigration (many can get in. It’s harder to be allowed to stay.) The quality of the spoken English is highly variable.
The official tour starts tomorrow. It’s going to take a day to catch up with our inner clocks which have been thoroughly overwound.
How far away is Singapore? The Texans were taking the field in Pittsburgh on Monday night Pittsburgh time as we picked up our bags from the carousel on Tuesday morning in Singapore. This has got to be the farthest away place on the BW’s bucket list. Stay tuned to this space for further details.
