Two days ago, I loaded the backpack and suitcase I would be living out of for the next two weeks into the car, and headed off for Phil’s place.  Once I got there, I found Phil slightly agitated that the Children of the Promise CDs still hadn’t arrived.  We had planned on taking 50 with us to the Philippines, so it was a bit of a worry.

After some youtube watching and collecting of various PDFs for use in the Philippines, it was lunch time.  The CDs still hadn’t arrived, so it looked like we would be leaving without them.  But then, during lunch, they arrived! Two massive boxes.  Timon’s suitcase was frantically rearranged to accommodate the 50 CDs – quite a bulky addition.

There was quite a bit of traffic on the way to the airport, but fortunately most of it was heading the other direction. so we arrived in plenty of time.  It turned out we got out of the car at the opposite end of the airport to the Singapore Airlines check-in counters, we had a nice long walk.  There was almost no queue at check-in, so it didn’t take long to get that all sorted, fill out our departure cards (which I had to do twice, due to inadvertently declaring greater than $10k on the first one), and go through customs.

Then we had about two hours to kill, wandering around the duty free shops, looking for headphone adaptors for the aircraft plug, and at prices of various other items available for inflated prices.  Some drinks and food were also consumed while we waited to board the A380 that would take us to Singapore.

The eight hour flight to Singapore was relatively uneventful.  A meal, a snack, various beverage choices, and plenty of movies or tv shows to watch.  I elected mainly to read and sleep – I wasn’t too interested in the selection available.  But it turned out there was an interesting documentary on the Bugatti Veyron, which I watched between Singapore and Manila.

While waiting to disembark and Singapore, we wondered how many people would fit on the plane.  The economy row numbers went up to 62 (we were in row 60 and 61), and at 10 seats wide, that made for a lot of passengers.  So on the way out, Timon asked one of the cabin crew.  He told us around 400, plus first and business. Then he offered to give us a tour of the plane, which we gladly accepted.  We saw the capsule-like seating of first class, and the enormous armchairs that were the seats in business class.

Our first order of business once we got into the airport was to locate the transit hotel.  We had tried to book a room in advance, but were told that it was booked out.  Fortunately there was a cancellation when we inquired, so we booked it until 8am, and went to find something to eat.

While looking for something to eat, we noticed a giant Angry Birds stand in the airport.  It turned out that, with a receipt of greater than $120 SGD and a boarding pass, we could get a free stuffed Angry Birds toy.  Unfortunately they had no pigs left, so we got one of the red birds.

In the morning, after our wake up call, we showered and packed, then searched for a place to have breakfast.  We made enquiries about changing Australian cash into Philippine Pesos, but discovered that we would lose out on the intermediary change to SGD, so we elected not to change any cash there.