1. VANCOUVER TO SINGAPORE

GETTING HERE....Jan. 31 (at home) to Feb 2 (Singapore)

I know we all think that flying to Sydney is long and awful, and it is, but try flying to Singapore.  The first leg was 13 1/2 hours.  Then in Hong Kong, the change plane city we landed in we were to  have two hours to find our next gate.  Then from Hong Kong to Singapore is 4 hours.  A total of 17 1/2 hours in the air.  We left Vancouver a half hour late and by the time we landed there was NO time to dawdle.  A Cathay Pacific rep met us at the plane door and hustled us, and I mean hustle, across the airport, through security and straight onto the commuter jet, which was even bigger than the one we flew from Vancouver on.  By the time our butts hit the seats I thought we were both going to have heart attacks!!

Gross Alert:  On the first long leg of the journey, we were in row 52.  A nice looking gentleman was already in the window seat.  Before we even left the tarmac I knew this trip was going to be loooooong.  He was a very polite smiley man of about fifty.  And he didn’t do anything “wrong”, what came into play here was cultural differences, and as soon as we hit that plane we were on their turf, culturally, not ours.

The first hint of what was to come was a very long and pronounced clearing of phlegm from his nethers and spitting it into his napkin...over and over, very very loudly.  I almost gagged.  As the trip proceeded, so did other body functions.  The seats we were on, three in a row, were not bolted securely to the floor.  Every 15 minutes or so he would heave himself up into the air, causing the seats to jolt hugely, dislodging things from our laps even.  And every time he did this a very strong unpleasant gaseous odour would assault us.  Every now and then he would let out a very smelly, oh god...really bad burp.  And all through the trip he would stamp his foot on the floor.  He sat with his legs completely splayed, right over into my part of the seating area.  The whole trip, other than when he was launching himself into the air, his leg was right over on mine and his elbow dug into my side, and I kept a good few inches between me and the arm rest.  When he chewed his food he would smack with his open mouth, loud.  But the very worst of all, out of the corner of my eye, I could see he was picking his nose.  And...(Cookie stop reading here) he would reach out, roll it and let it go, and twice I felt it roll down my leg (I had shorts on).  I felt it.  Roll down my leg.  I wanted to cry.

But all is well that ends well.  Our lovely hotel gave us an upgrade to a fantastic room with the most amazing view ever.  I am watching the sunrise over the best part of the Singapore skyline.  And when we got in here a few hours ago, the moon was hanging right over the Singapore flyer.  I will attempt to put some pics on here later.  It is now 7 am here, and even though I am wide awake, I am going to try to go back to sleep, like Billy is.  TTYL