The Joys of Airline Travel -NOT

The Joys of Airline Travel – NOT

Fellow passengers can be friendly, pesky or just downright awful, annoying and a menace.

A recent flight delivered one of the latter into the middle seat in the row in front of us. As usual, the plane was very near full, and it was a Friday evening after an especially stressful week for airlines with volcanic ash disrupting flight schedules, and the subsequent delays often annoying to passengers.

BUT........you can do little to solve the issue, and safety does come first.

However, the male [ cannot describe him as a gentleman] seemed to be a little more than well charged as he got on the flight, which had been delayed well over two hours – time seemingly spent imbibing at the bar.

He was raucous, calling to a fellow passenger who was known to him a few rows in front and generally a bit disruptive to those around him. He was a large framed guy, and with waving his arms around and bopping to music it seemed a bit chaotic in the row in front of us.

But wait.......there is more!

Soon we were airborne, and out came a pizza along with about a dozen oysters. The latter were consumed promptly in conjunction with a citrus liqueur as oyster shooters, and the pizza also promptly was eaten. Then the airline meal, all the while hopping and bopping in the seat with the headphones on and loud.

We then had some clear air turbulence for a while and I wondered if his bopping in the seat was causing some of it......he was that vigorous. That incident slowed the meal service for a little while but as soon as service resumed, he was after more beers.

About three hours into the nearly five hour flight........he promptly passed out, rather than went to sleep. Peace ensured.

Prior to landing it was a major effort to wake him to raise the seat back for landing. Very bleary eyed it seems. But awake enough to call for the steward and hand her the bag of oyster shells – she looked absolutely stunned. That was priceless and almost worth the previous annoyances!!

As the guy next to him in the window seat said..........lucky it was only five hours and not a sixteen hour flight to north or south America.

There have been quieter evening airline flights.

Changi Airport Singapore - Food - Try Saboten

Changi Airport Singapore – Food

It is somewhat of a conundrum – you need food while travelling, but both airport and airline food notoriously has a reputation that is often well deserved for ordinary food - at best.

Unless you happen to be at the pointy end where food and service reaches silver service standards! That does not happen for most people!

Normally poor to ordinary food at both airports and airlines is a well deserved award – lack of choice, not to your personal taste and sometimes quite pricey [ even on some airlines these days] and catering to a market that is a captive one – you can rarely go elsewhere.

Recently had a meal with friends at Changi Airport in Terminal 1. Outside - that is on the Singapore side before entering the immigration and customs hall and transfer areas inside. This is a location you might consider to not be inspiring, catering as it does to departing travellers and friends, soon to move air side to a better range of options.

Quite a few choices now, mostly asian food with the local Singaporean and Chinese cuisines popular, and with a long line to enter the restaurants. We selected the Japanese Saboten chain – almost by default as it had the shortest – ie no wait time to sit down. That sometimes might have you wonder.........is it ok?

Food was really quite good, with the shredded cabbage [superfine shreds] and tonkatsu sauce salad excellent as an entree. All four of us thought the food very well presented, and tasty, with good service – and prompt, a bonus when you are needing to move off for catching the plane. We all chose one of the variations of the salmon fish dishes deep fried in fine bread crumbs, so cannot comment on the meat options, which were mostly based around pork. The salmon was excellent – tasty and flavoursome.

All dishes around S$ 20 -24, and service seemed to be prompt, even based on other tables. A real bonus for an airport meal choice. And it included ice cream for dessert too!

Would definitely recommend the Saboten as a good food option. A quick google search has also turned up some very positive reviews of the same place by local Singaporeans - try a search if you want.......but try the restaurant too.

Seems the renovation of Terminal 1 at Changi Airport, due for completion in 2012 has already delivered some good food eateries.

In reality, it was just as well we ate there – meals on our flight [ both dinner and breakfast] were both terrible, and many people [ including Asians] did not eat them- at all or many just partially. After all not everyone – not even many Asians - tolerates very spicy food and hot chillies in Asian food, and that was what the dinner meal was. And no choice. One of the worst ever airline meals – and that was on a Qantas flight – just awful food. It was just poorly presented and looked awful too. Breakfast was not much better.

On the road again … oops, that’s in the air again, first.

We are on our way to Asia; first stop Singapore, and lucky for us, or our bank balance anyway; we will be there just over a week before the vroom, vroom of very expensive, very loud and very fast machinery hits the city streets of Singapore for the first ever night Grand Prix. Who would have thought that Singapore would close down its streets for a loud crowd of expensive, fast, Formula 1 racing cars. This is the city that had “encouraged” travel by (admittedly a very good) public transport system, by making ownership of cars out of the financial limits of most of the population, by its pricing of the cars themselves and the “on road costs”, plus city road congestion charges. I guess money talks as loudly there as it does anywhere else. If pricing of hotel rooms during the event is anything to go by, the hoteliers are definitely not missing out on the starting gun. $160 per night to $900 per night in just one day; and that’s not even at a front row seat establishment – you will need a lot more shekels for that type of genteel place to rest your head before and after the roar of the Ferrari’s and McLarens flexing their muscles. With three day passes ranging in price from $168 to $1388 there will be plenty of cash changing hands as there are expected to be 90 000 spectators attending. At least some would appear to be going Aussie way as Melbourne architect/engineer firm Kellogg, Brown & Root have been involved with construction.

So we plan to have a look at the Vietnam! From Myth to Modernity exhibition at the Ancient Civilizations Museum, do some street wandering with camera’s again and enjoy the beautiful street food of the place. And, I guess we will wander through Sim Lim Square and the Funan Centre, just to see what the latest and greatest electronic must haves are for the whiz kids.

Then we might go for a boat ride, not a slow one; but rather, a fairly fast one to Bintan.

But more about that later.

One of things that rather annoys me about travelling is the excessive cost which hotels charge for internet connection. One day charge can be as much as a two to three month charge for the average provider. Is it that they don’t want too many people using it – must be I think. Oh one of the joys – take up thy laptop and walk … to the nearest reasonable priced internet cafe or wifi powered venue, have a couple of coffees and upload and download. Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit at the desk in your room, which one has paid a reasonable amount for, and do it from there. But I refuse to “waste” that amount of money, so it won’t happen. I will just have to look a bit harder and move a bit further out of my comfort zone … again … and find a place which has the lot.