Well, as everyone knows, Singapore is one of my favourite places. You will rarely ever hear me say a bad word about the city state or indeed that most fabulous airport at Changi – and no, they are not paying me!
But, and yes, there is always a but… I have the melancholy duty of telling you that Changi Airport let me down on this occasion. As I said earlier, we arrived 20 minutes early and I was thinking that I could get to my hotel, dump my bag, and be out on the streets exploring a bit sooner.
It was not to be. I was off the plane fairly quickly, my wheelchair assistance was waiting and I was on my way. That was until we reached immigration. Now those of you who have experienced Changi will know that service runs almost impeccably. I say almost, as nothing in this world can ever be perfect, but Changi does try hard to reach that Nirvana. Usually Immigration is a doddle, there are lines, but they move quickly. Just not today.
It seems we had two problems, firstly, non-eligible people using the “Special Assistance” line and not being challenged by officials, and secondly, we appear to have had a “trainee” immigration officer. I am all for learning on the job, but not at peak hour when the airport is running at full capacity with flights coming in from all over the world. Once I got to the Officer, he had several goes at trying to record my thumbprints, and gave up. His minder did nothing to help. So we got shunted off to another desk to be dealt with. Their machine worked flawlessly. All this malarkey took almost two hours! So my early arrival was squandered. Finally found my bag and the wheelchair guy got a taxi sorted for me and I was finally away.
Fortunately, it doesn’t take too long to get from the airport into the city and I was soon at my hotel, checked in and ready for a short walk after eight hours of sitting on the plane.