Return to Australia

We got back to Australia on Wednesday 28th January after an overnight flight from Singapore. Our last day in Singapore was a lazy one. We decided to hang around in our hotel room and chill out rather than go out to see anything. Even Paul, who usually has to be on the go constantly, agreed to this. I've been to Singapore a number of times now and didn't really feel the need to take a tour of the city and the kids are just happy going to the pool, watching TV and playing on the computer and DS. The cable TV we had in our rooms was outstanding in its selection. This was the first time I've watched Discovery channel and there were any number of fascinating programs--one about a guy who explores various dirty jobs like scraping barnacles off of floating buoys, another featuring a British adventurer who gets dropped into wildernesses and demonstrates survival techniques and another one about a dog-sled race in Alaska. Maybe after a while these programs get repetitious but to me they were so new and fresh that I kept watching. I know it probably sounds bad going on an overseas trip and then staying in the hotel room and watching TV but I think we were really all 'toured out'. Singapore was our 8th city on the trip and it gets harder to keep pushing yourself to go out and explore a new place each time. Paul was coughing a lot so I think that is why he agreed to a rest day.

We had a late check-out from the hotel at 6 and had a van booked to take us to the airport for our 11:30 flight. We didn't have anything else to do other than go to the airport and hang around for 4 or 5 hours. The van we had was very new and nice and the driver immediately popped a screen down from the ceiling and put on a Mr. Bean video for us to watch. As he drove he pointed out the Singapore Flyer observation wheel and asked us if we'd been on it. We were surprised to find out that it had started operating that morning. If only we'd known we would definitely have gone on it because it's the largest observation wheel in the world. I went on the London Eye in 2004 on my way to Ireland but I'm the only one in the family who has ever been on an observation wheel. Oh, well. We weren't to know.

At the airport we were fortunately able to check in early and we then went to get something to eat. We had about $S30 or so to get rid of. It gets hard to get rid of all the coins. There was a convenience store at the airport which had some lollies for less than $S1 so we were left with only 5 cents in the end. We didn't manage to get rid of all of our Chinese Yuan either when we left China and found even when we went to convert our notes in Singapore that they wouldn't take the 1Y note. The smallest note they would convert was 10Y. So we have about 4.5Y left over from China. We also have quite a few Hong Kong coins too.

Changi Airport was well air conditioned and I found I had to put a fleece jumper on to stay warm. It was then that I discovered that Jade didn't have anything to put on over her t-shirt. All of her clothes had been packed in her suitcase. She was quite cold and went to sleep all curled up on a seat in the airport. Paul gave her his winter coat but she didn't want to use it because it was so big.

Our gate didn't open until 10: 30 and the security clearance procedure took place at the gate. By then I was so over the emptying out the water bottle thing that I went through with a full water bottle which was then intercepted after my bag went through the scanner. There was nowhere to empty the water out so I told them to throw out the bottle. I refused to feel guilty about carrying water with me when the security person pointed out that I had a water bottle on my backpack. This whole water thing is such a pain when you're travelling constantly and not knowing when you have to be ready to empty the bottle and when it's OK to keep it filled.

Our flight home was an uneventful one and when we landed we were just about the only incoming international flight so our passage through customs was fairly quick. We declared our food (we had teabags, breakfast cereal from Harbin and a few other things) without saying exactly what it was but after our bags went through the scanner nobody even asked to see what we had. We then caught a van taxi home.

In my next post I'm going to discuss some of my impressions of the trip so stay tuned!