2. Oct 29th Getting to Singapore

On the Friday morning before I headed off to Vancouver to catch my flight to Singapore, I was able to field a catch up/good bye call from my friend Jessie, one of the many people I feel guilty of not connecting with this past summer.  I have a long list of these people who live close to me and I just didn’t find the time to connect.  It didn’t help that I spent over 50 days this summer out of town mostly attending music festivals in my RV or hanging at a cabin with friends and family.  

Since I was already packed and was going to be picked up at noon, I decided to go meet up with my 905 Walking Group friend and fit in one last walk.  I joined this group about a year before Covid (that’s become the new defining moment in time for many of us…) and it’s been great incentive to get up and out of the house and get some exercise.  We always stop for coffee for me, the social aspect has become a bigger bonus than the walk itself.  But this time I skipped the coffee break to leave early so I could drop by my mom’s house to say goodbye.  She’s doing pretty good for 91, still living in her own home and putting in a garden each year.  I have benefitted from fresh tomatoes, spinach, Chinese eggplant, beans and bok choy and some other Chinese greens which I don’t know their names.

My sister Sylvia’s partner, Russ, dropped me off at the ferry.  I decided to use the Ferry’s baggage service—at the Swartz Bay terminal it’s a self serve drop off station on the upper level and when you see your baggage plummet down the slide at breakneck speed, it’s too late to change your mind.  But it turns out that the ultimate mishandling was on the Tsawwassen Terminal side where one of the staff was pitching each bag into the air to land with a thud onto the platform.  This was in full view of everyone standing waiting for their bags.  Despite the audible gasps of surprise, his actions continued until all the bags were unloaded.  Fortunately my bag was handled by the other staff who placed it on the platform in a more reasonable manner.  The ferry ride itself was so uneventful I failed to take any pictures.  I had my carryon with me and that limited my desire to walk about to check out the outside and the gift shop.

As planned, my sister Patsy picked me up from the ferry.  The ferry arrivals parking lot was was in full zoo mode with drivers behaving badly.  The lot seems too small for the number of people who need to use it.  Ferry passengers were racing to find their ride and drivers racing to find their passenger so they could be out of there as soon as possible.   Patsy and I managed to find each other (what did we ever do before cell phones) and got out.

We stopped into Bass Pro Shop at Tsawwassen shopping centre because I wanted to buy a Tilley hat (I couldn’t find mine when I was packing) and sunglasses (I forgot them).  I ended up with a Tilley knock off because they didn’t have a Tilleys in my size and plus it was 1/4 the Tilley price.  After shopping we headed into Vancouver for a planned dinner.  On the drive, it reminded me that I don’t miss living in Vancouver.  The Knight Street Bridge was backed up several kilometres and it was bumper to bumper the whole way.  The street lanes are much narrower than Victoria, so nerves of steel are important.    

Dinner was with Judith and our mutual friend Susan, Patsy and my daughter Jennifer at the Poor Italian Restaurant.  Tony Parsons, a local news anchor was an original owner but Patsy let me know that it’s now owned by someone who is friends with our cousin Yvonne.  It was a great meal, very tasty; we were there over 2 hours with about 30 minutes of that just waiting for the bill to show up —turns out we needed to be blunt about asking for it.  Just sitting around and talking after finishing our meal wasn’t sufficient.  

We headed back to Patsy’s place were I stayed overnight and had an early 4:30 am rise to get ready to leave for the airport.  There was none of the traffic I saw yesterday afternoon, so we made great time.  Judith arrived a few minutes later and we snaked out way to the check in counter.  Our airline counter clerk checked our bags straight through to Vientiane, Laos, which I thought was odd since we were staying a couple of nights in Singapore, but we went with it until she explained that we would not get our baggage for stay in Singapore.  While Judith had one extra change of clothes, I only had an extra shirt and it would clearly be better for us to have our checked in bags with us during our stay in Singapore.  So after some discussion with her supervisor, our bags were only checked through to Singapore and we would have to check them in again on the Vientiane flight.  It’s really what I would have expected.  It seems strange to me that the airlines would hold onto my bag for three days, waiting for me to catch up.  

Going through security, Judith got pulled out for a random swab check for drugs.  The swab was of course negative and the security officer opened a special gate into the security area, allowing us to bypass the security queue.  At security my carryon was singled out for further inspection because the scanner didn’t like my freezer pack for my meds and my electric toothbrush.  

For the last few trips, we’ve been flying premium economy on long flights.  Vancouver to Singapore is listed as 16:05 hours long.  Despite having upgraded seating, extra space, a foot rest and other benefits, it’s still long flight to endure.  Judith slept through much of the flight and so it didn’t bother her much.  I wasn’t very tired so I didn’t feel a need to sleep much.  And my flight screen didn’t work for at least 90% of the content so I watched things I wasn’t particularly interested in.  The flight really dragged on because of a baby in the row in front of us who literally cried at least 8 hours.  And when the baby wasn’t crying the older sister would periodically fill that silence.    Good thing those children were cute.  Otherwise I think the parents might have been tempted to leave them behind.  

We left Vancouver at around 8:50 am and by the time we landed in Singapore it was about 12:40 am Vancouver time.  But in Singapore time it was about 3:40 pm in the afternoon, requiring us to drag ourselves around until we can match the local bedtime.  We travelled 13,000 km.  Whew.  

There is a immigration form that visitors need to fill out so we stopped at a kiosk to complete that paperwork.  There’s a lot of information on that form — it turns out we could have completed it beforehand and brought the form with us.  That would have saved us about 10 minutes or so.  We went through immigration, collected our luggage and exited the secure area to find our driver.  Abraham was there to greet us.  We loaded into a small van and headed off to our hotel.  He drops us off showing us nearby places to visit and that he will be back tomorrow at 10:00 with the guide, Andrew, to show us around.  

We checked into the Scarlet Hotel and discovered they provided us with a king bed.  We sat in the room until they could figure out if they had a room with twin beds for us.  They were able to accommodate us so we swapped.  The room ended up not anywhere as large as the room we had before but we’re only here for a couple of nights.  The safe in the new room had to be fixed, but housekeeping managed to come right away and fix it in a few minutes.

We went for a walk in the nearby Chinese Street Market to find a SIM card but was unable to find a vendor.  Telus charges $15 a day to roam, I’m hoping that I can use my dual SIM phone to add the second line that will be much cheaper than $400.  There were lots of vendors at the Chinese Street market:  clothing, tea, trinkets, jewelry, a whole store selling nothing but tassels, Chinese barbecue pork jerky, durian, mangosteens and other exotic fruits.  

We see a group of people dancing in a market square.  It was like the Macarena only Chinese style.  My video wouldn’t upload properly and unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures.  It was cool to watch.  

We had a small bite at the Market and then headed home for sleep.  We did stop on our way back to get some Mango Sorbet.  Yum.  Judith went to bed early having run out of steam.  It was dry when we went on our quick Market Tour, but now its raining hard and I can hear thunder in the distance.  

It’s now about 7 am Victoria time—I’ve been up for over 26 hours. But when I wake up I’ll be on local time.  It’s the best way I know to avoid jet lag..  It’s now 10 pm Oct 30.  Singapore is ahead by 15 hours, so I’ve lost a day somewhere.