There were no excuses for being unprepared to get off the ship since we were at sea all day yesterday. Just like during the entire trip the seas were calm, lucky us, as we ventured through the Andaman Sea and later the Malacca Straight with Malaysia on our port/left side and Sumatra on our starboard/right side. Once in the Straight we noticed a lot (!!) of traffic, more than I’ve ever seen. Everything from small family-sized fishing boats to cargo ships plied the water. We napped, did online entry paperwork for Singapore, packed, and ate our way through the day before enjoying the last evening’s entertainment.

Walter and Cleone are staying on in Singapore. We have been before, so we’re heading straight home. Straight might be an exaggeration since our flight will not leave until 10:30 tonight and we lined up to leave the ship at 8:30 this morning. To help kill some of that time we booked a city tour with an airport drop-off. Getting off the ship and through immigration took way longer than anticipated which was no issue for us since we have such a late flight. By the time our group got to our designated bus it and the guide had left with less than 10% of the tour group on board. That left the rest of us flummoxed on what to do. Celebrity was a bit confused also and decided to refund our money and drop us at the airport which was really a disappointing solution.

Singapore’s Changi Airport is a stunner! I dare say there is no other airport like it anywhere. Four terminals plus the five-story Jewel offer an array of unexpected things to see and do. Some complimentary and some for a fee. For those who come prepared there is a rooftop pool where you can float and watch planes take off. A butterfly garden offers 1,000 tropical butterflies of 40 species. Not into butterflies? How about an indoor rainforest, a slide that’s four-stories tall, a digital waterfall, cooking school, floor to ceiling rain vortex, art installations, indoor rain forest, or a canopy park? This does not count the duty frees, restaurants, and shops.

We were free to roam freely between the Jewel and terminals one, two, and three. Our issue was our luggage which could not be checked until 6:30. We had to push it around (on an airport-provided cart) for five hours which made exploring more of a challenge than had we been hands-free. We had lunch, enjoyed as much as we could, and then settled in near the United counter to be among the first to dump our luggage and get through the all-automated security checkpoint. I had a fun chat with two of my fellow cruisers, both strangers killing time waiting with us for United to open. One was a Guatemalan Celebrity employee going home for his three-month break. I told him I had been to his country and loved to say Chichicastenango (a small Maya town known for its craft market). Just rolls off the tongue. The other person was a lady who will soon be on dialysis while she awaits a kidney transplant. She is cramming in as much of the world as she can before then. Once through security I met an American French horn player who has lived in Singapore for 27 years! He got a job with the symphony right out of college and has never left. He was heading home to visit family.

If all goes well we’ll have an uneventful 14.5 hour nonstop flight to San Francisco followed by a 2.5 hour layover followed by a 4.5 hour nonstop to Virginia, and finally a 45 minute cab ride home. From wake-up to our front door should be around 38 hours. Fingers crossed. With the International Date Line working in our favor we’ll be home around 9:00 AM tomorrow.

… Curious? …

Singapore is a city, a nation and a state. I am not sure how that works.

It is smaller than Rhode Island and has a population of five million people
from four major communities: Chinese, Malay, Indian, and Eurasian.

Singapore comprises a main island, three large and 58 small islands.

The Singapore dollar (SGD) is the currency.
$1.00 = 1.33 SGD