This is our first long haul non stop-over flight through to Europe. Followers of our blogs will know we usually stop off half way and do a bit of exploring on route. Because of time constraints this time we thought we would try a direct flight and upgrade to Premium Economy to facilitate a better arrival.

Our flight was scheduled to depart Auckland at 2pm for the 10 hour trip to Singapore, then a nearly 4 hour stopover at the fabulous Changi Airport, and then another 10 hours to Moscow arriving 6am local time.

Sleep was pretty good last night and we enjoyed a leisurely healthy breakfast at the Novotel which was included in our package for $1.00. Yep – full cooked all the way. It was surprisingly good and I was delighted to see they even had Manawa Tawhari honey (Tuhoe from Te Urewera).

Check in was easy and express because of the Premium tickets. Whilst we were going through duty free we heard “is that my uncle”? There was Becs (my niece), her husband John and children Jessica and James on route to Bob’s farewell. We spent a short but lovely and rapid exchange before their boarding call summonsed them, with ours following not long after.

Our flight got us to Singapore midnight NZ time. I had hoped to have a quick nap on the plane, but it didn’t happen and consequently we were a little weary on landing. Instead of rest, we took the opportunity to get as much exercise as possible to get the circulation going before the next 10hr+ leg of the journey.

Changi is so huge that despite the 4hr stopover we really didn’t have time to explore too much as we didn’t want to get lost and miss our connection. The distance walking between where we arrived and our next departure gate (in the same terminal) would have taken about 40 minutes according to the guide. So we decided to take the sky train and found that you have to hop off at each stop (transfer station) to carry on – even if it looks like a straight line on the map. The way we found this out was it turned around and went back to the start, after the first stop at the transfer station. You would think all the other passengers hopping off would have been a clue. Darn driverless carriages LOL.

There are a number of attractions at Changi like gardens, mazes, pools, entertainment – some you have to pay for, others not. It is a destination in itself and would take more than a day to get around and do a range of interesting activities, let alone shop.  We went into the butterfly house which is free but it was pretty dark and most of the butterflies were asleep. We didn’t stay too long as the ‘house’ took in the outside temperature of 33 degrees as well as the humidity – couple that with a menopause power surge and you have a sauna experience!

We both love Singapore, and will be stopping over on the way back.  It will be our third stay in the city, and probably not our last.  We departed Singapore at 12:20am local time in the morning after walking around for 3.5 hours. Our travel continued in premium economy with our plane on this leg a nice modern A350-900. It was very quiet and larger than the 777-300ER, however, the seats on the ER were actually wider and the toilets more spacious and better spec’d. We were pretty tired by now and just wanted our dinner and then to try and sleep. By this time we had been up 20 hours and it would have been about NZ time 4am. Dinner was swiftly eaten, our ear plugs fitted, turtl neck supports wrapped in position and reclined position assumed. I don’t remember much after that – I woke about 2 hours later to see my tray had been cleared and replaced with a bottle of water LOL. Vern was out to the count too.

I drunk some water, went for a quick walk and then fell back to sleep again. Repeated this twice till we were woken for our hot breakfast meals of Nasi-lemak and pancakes at 8 hours into the 10 hour flight. So I am delighted to say we got about 6 hours sleep. This was a real blessing as we felt we could cope with the first days activities just that bit better. I am hoping we don’t have jet lag – so far so good on that front. I actually feel pretty good for someone who has done 22 hours plane trip across the world into a different time zone.

On that note, neither Vern or I have any real swelling to speak of either – which is pretty amazing. So, what are our tips? A good night sleep before hand, lots and lots of water – and we bought the special 1-Above- flight water and effervescent tabs and drunk about 3L of that, plus about 2L of water each. We kept tea and coffee to minimum and I had 3 small glasses of champagne total – Vern had no alcohol. We wore compression socks up to the knee, and took Kathmandu jet lag pills (herbal) every three hours. Of course with that amount of liquid consumption, we got plenty of walking in on the plane too 🙂