Transit to the other side

We made it. The plane didn’t crash, no body broke anything, and all the luggage made it through to the other side. The Singapore Airlines experience was excellent. It made an otherwise intolerable journey tolerable. They use metal cutlery and proper glass glasses. Not only nicer to use but reusable. Note out to other airlines that we could have used for the same trip. These are the small things that make the biggest difference!

We had fun in Changi airport – never thought I would use the words fun and airport in a sentence together – ever – giggling like demented children playing with the foot massager. Egging each other on to see who could take Mach 3 for the longest. Jack didn’t have a go. When you are 15 and wearing your carefully scuffed red converse all stars that take like forever to lace up there is no way you are going to reduce yourself to taking them off to stick your feet in a large plastic vice with barely concealed nobbly bits and laugh like a hyena till you cry for mercy. I guess that’s a special skill that comes with age.

Another Changi hi light was the butterfly garden and the carp pond. At 9am and 4pm the Carp feeding specialist ( I kid you not) comes along with his box of special carp feed and you can have a go. Jenn and Barney had a go. It was like being snogged on the hand by a soft vacuum cleaner with accompanying slurpy sucky noises. Jenn screamed like a girl, dropped the pellets and pulled her hand with an impressive reflex and at a speed never before seen.

And don’t expect to sleep. Sean didn’t. Not once. Not in 30 hours of travelling. He arrived looking like a muttony middle aged party fiend after a week end Red Bull and speed fuelled bender.

Arriving more tired than can be thought possible we were welcomed by passport control and got our passports stamped which makes us bonifide for the next two years. Was it us or were the border control people actually smiling. Wow, so not Heathrow. We all got our contraband given the go ahead by Biosecurity – Jack had to have his boots cleaned by the nice man – and passed through xray with no additional bother. Unlike most of the Chinese. Border control seemed to be having a field day with them.

Fell out into arrivals into the arms of Jenns family. Got to hold baby Daniel for the first time. A blurr of the girls, and hugs and smiles. And sleep. Lots and lots and lots of sleep.