18 Hours In Flight, 15 Hours in Singapore

We're on another adventure.  Earlier this year I received notification that two proposals I submitted to the International Consortium for Social Development Biennial Conference had been accepted.  Two years ago I attended this conference in Croatia.  This year, the conference is being held in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.  I told Landry if any of my proposals were accepted that we were going together.  Indonesia is a bucket list location for me and I'm so excited that we're on our way.

As you may note looking at a map, Indonesia is basically on the opposite side of the world.  After searching long and hard we made the decision we'd rather have one really long flight than series of three or four flights with multi-hour layovers each.  We settled on a flight with Singapore Airlines from Newark to Singapore and then discovered that we'd be lucky enough (or not) to experience the single-longest nonstop flight in the world...18.5 hours in flight!  The bonus for this long flight?  A fifteen hour layover in Singapore that would allow us to explore the city before boarding our next (MUCH shorter flight) to our destination, Yogyakarta.

We left on Saturday morning and I had thought long and hard about how I would spend 18.5 hours in flight.  I had a whole work to-do list and figured I would split that by watching movies in between.  I planned to try to sleep for the final 5 hours of the flight to get some rest for our Singapore adventure.  Shockingly, the flight really wasn't so bad.  We sprung for extra legroom seats.  Landry and his long legs in a regular seat for 18.5 hours just wasn't an option.  We had an enormous amount of space and the plane was very modern, which made for comfortable travel.  As an aside, if you haven't watched Isn't It Romantic, The Upside, or CoCo yet, I recommend all three.

Fresh faced, pre-18 hour flight photo

Holy extra legroom!

The flight itself was really cool.  We flew over the North Pole (waved to Santa and his reindeer of course!) and for the entire duration of the flight were in daylight because of the flight path.  We landed about an hour early in Singapore (about 4pm on Sunday), which was a nice bonus and checked into the Ambassador Transit Hotel for a 12 hour block.  After a quick shower we were off to the city of Singapore.

The North Pole...you see Santa, don't you??

Thanks to friends who are from Singapore or have visited and the Netflix series Street Food, I had a plan of what we would do already mapped out.  First we went to the Marina Bay Sands Casino to catch views from their SkyPark Observation Deck.  We were lucky enough to catch it right at sunset, so we got beautiful daytime views and a peak of what the city looks like as all the lights come on in the evening.

A not so great shot of the infinity pool at the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.  They keep it pretty well cordoned off from the regular folk who just pay to get to the observation deck.

From there we headed over to the Haig Road Food Center.  This was featured in the Singapore episode of Street Food.  Watch this series if you haven't!  It's great and will give you a cool perspective on reading about this and the food I will definitely be posting about in Yogyakarta, featured on another episode of the series.  As you can see, we had noodles, rice, omelettes, mango drink, and the piece de resistance, putu piring.  OMG...I cannot describe the deliciousness of caramelized palm sugar.  Singapore made a decision to remove all street food vendors from the streets a while back, I think a combination of wanting to clear up congested traffic and feeling like the vendors were an eyesore in the city, despite their deep cultural tradition and long-standing informal ownership of their carts.  They moved them into permanent open-air structures that resemble what we would call food courts.

Far away view of the Haig Road Food Centre

Putu piring, up close

The putu piring stand featured in Netflix's Street Food series

After our street food feast, we headed to our final stop, the Raffles Hotel for a round of Singapore Slings.  This is the hotel where the drink was created in 1915.  Apparently, at that time it was improper for women to partake in alcoholic beverages, so a sharp bartender at the Raffles Hotel mixed a concoction of clear liquor and fruit juices to look like fruit punch and started serving in to all the ladies.  Thank you bartender for giving us an equal opportunity to get our drink on!

A small view of this enormous, colonial era hotel.

This guy!

Is it the gin or the jet lag?  Probably a bit of both!

Though we didn't spend a ton of time in the airport itself, stay tuned for our return trip where I'll cover more of what's offered in Changi, ranked the #1 airport in the world.  There's literally everything you could ever wish for here and more.  Our hotel was well appointed and super comfortable.  We were given a full breakfast with our room and usage of the lounge area before we headed over to the gate for our next flight.  There's another transit hotel here with a rooftop pool!  Everywhere you look there's beautiful landscaping and greenery and entertainment that could keep you busy for weeks.

Just a tiny example of the beautiful landscaping throughout.

24 hour FREE movie theater!  Tom Wysor would never leave the airport!

I'm standing at our gate right now feverishly typing this as they're calling rows ahead of us for boarding.  Looking forward to seeing what this conference holds and the adventures we'll have in Yogyakarta.  When the conference is over we're on yet another flight to Bali for four days before we head home.  HUGE shout out to Nana and Granddad for holding down the fort, keeping our kids AND the dog and making all of this possible for us.  We love you!