Trip to Singapore - 16 Jan 2007 Tuesday

This was our first trip of the year 2007. We took an A41 to our airport at 5 p.m. We were to meet Kin Sang and Lai Han near the Singapore Airline counters at 6:15 p.m. With the on-line check-in process done at home, it was an easy thing to finish the rest by weighing the luggage and printing out the air-tickets. We had selected our seats already, so we had nothing to worry! It was a good idea to eat something light first before dinner was served on the plane. Most probably we would eat at a later hour, like nine o’clock. I chose a new MacDonald product, chicken burger with thick strips of potatoes and my brother a bowl of roasted duck noodles. The ladies had ordered some baked potatoes to eat.

We passed the Immigration and waited for a long time until the plane parked at the gateway. I quickly took some photos of the plane we would take. It was a Boeing 777. It was dark outside, so the photos of the plane did not look so good. Boarding started at 8:15 p.m. Since it was a weekday and it was a night plane, there were very few passengers. The plane thrust up the sky at 8:35 p.m. There were only 18 passengers in our compartment. An air-hostess came forward and told us that we could change our seats if we liked. Although we could not widespread ourselves to occupy three seats in a row, we liked this kind of freedom. We could sit anywhere we liked! Soon nuts and orange juice were served before us. I had taken a Hong Kong newspaper at the entrance of the plane. Well, I could sit back and read it. As predicted, dinner was served at 9 something. I chose pork with rice as main course. There were a salad, a bun and a small cup of ice-cream. This food was not as good as expected.

The plane took 3 hours 35 minutes to reach Changi Airport. Before the plane landed, I noticed that it had flown a little southward , turned round and glided down towards the airport in a north-east direction. At that height, I could see the scattered lights of the ships that anchored in the harbour. What a new sight to me! Soon the plane landed smoothly on the runway. I noticed that the ground was wet with rain water.

We walked a bit from the gangway and went down to the hall on the ground floor to meet the Immigration officers. The kind elderly male officer photocopied the information page of our passport and our declaration form and stamped it. Next we picked up our luggage and went past the Customs freely (might be they had gone home already). We took a taxi after we had got some booklets from the Visitors’ Centre. It took us about fifteen minutes to reach Telok Karau (直落古樓). The name in Chinese translation was perfect, but sounded strange to me. It was like "Kee Lee Koo Loo". In Malay, as my brother told me, the name should be pronounced like this: "Dor Lok Gar Roo". Dik’s house was located on the 3rd floor of a building off the road. It was 2 a.m. when we climbed onto our 3.5 feet-wide bed! I could not sleep well at night because of the new bed and its width.