Singapore
Trip Start
Oct 18, 2007
1
13
25
Trip End
Jun 2007
Singapore,
Singapore
Monday, December 17, 2007
of hours, after a stressful couple of days here ! Gary checked the
website to remind himself of our flight time to Australia yesterday,
only to find out that the flight had dissappeared from our itenary !
After many phonecalls it emerged that someone at Lufthanser had entered
the wrong flight codes, so Singapore airlines had cancelled our
flight. We only had 1 day to spend in Singapore and ended up spending
it sorting out the flights. We were told by Singapore airlines that
they would book us onto a flight to Sydney (which we had been told by
Lufhanser we couldn't do!) and to go to the airport and confirm the
flight with Lufthanser. We decided to go in the morning, and on arrival
found out that the Lufthanser office was shut until 2.30pm. We hung
around the airport until 2.30pm and eventually spoke to Lufhanser, who
confirmed the flights. We asked for compensation as we'd missed our
only day in Singapore, and were told that as compensation we would be
offered an earlier flight ! We decided to take a flight at 12 midnight
tonight, as it saves a nights hotel bill. We were told that we could
check in straight away, so we decided to. The woman swiped through my
passport and then told me that I didn't have a visa for Australia
! They said that Garys visa was fine, but mine didn't show up in the
system and I would have to prove that I had a visa. We'd left our
luggage in town, where I had a copy of an email with my
visa confirmation, so we had to get the train back into town and then
back to9 the airport. When we got back to the airport, we were told to
wait while they sent a telegraph to the embassy to check if I was
allowed into Australia. While we waited, we decided to go to customer
services to complain aboiut the carry on and find out our rights. The
man at the customer service desk misunderstood us and realised that
I was having problems with my visa on the system, and told me
that after looking on the system I definetly didn't have a visa for
Australia. I was getting really worried by this point, and we started
to think about what to do if I had to stay behind in Singapore !
Eventually the embassy telegraphed the airport back to say that I could
enter Australia. I asked the aiport staff what the problem was and was
told that there was no problem !!
We finally checked in at about 6pm. We asked what we could do to see
Singapore in 3 hours?? We were told about a good place to go near the
sea, which has seafood resteraunts. We decided to get a taxi there. It
was really nice. Singapore is very clean, and has very strict laws.
You get fined if you do anything like leave chewing gum or ciggarette
stumps. The food at the resteraunt was really good. They have a
famous dish called dancing prawns, where they pour alcohol over live
prawns and they dance, before being boiled ! I didn't go for this dish
! I got chilli prawns and Gary had beef strips, which he said was
really good. After dinner we had a short walk around and found an
outdoor bar next to a pool. The pool was being used for water bording
and had a big rope that was attatched to people and dragged them round
the water as if it were a speedboat. It was really good to watch them
doing tricks.
We're now at Singapore airport. Its by far the best airport in the
world. It has a cinema, a gym, free internet points everywhere, loads
of resteraunts, a sports bar, x-box stations, etc etc
I can't believe we're leaving SE Asia. Theres so much more to do
here. We want to come back to SIngapore to see it properly. WE want
to go back to Borneo to spend a few days in the jungle, and Indonesa,
Brunei, Bali and the Philipines are meant to be really good. Oh and we
have to come back to Sipidan - the best dive site in the world !
