I remember looking glumly at my itinerary. I had a seven-hour layover ahead. Too long for a novel. Too short for a hotel bed. But when I told my children about the stop at Changi Airport in Singapore, they got excited.
"Can I go with you?" said Gavin, 11. "Singapore airport is the best in the world, isn't it?"
I had told stories to my three children about passing through there before -- the glitzy candy shops, free Internet, free movies and a deck-top swimming pool. So maybe he had a point; maybe I should look forward to a seven-hour layover. Or was I losing my mind?
Singapore Air Flight 421, originating from Mumbai, India, arrived 10 minutes early on a Wednesday night last month. My bags were checked to my final destination, so I was completely free to roam the airport's two transit terminals. I figured the first thing to do was to indulge. I got a massage.
A female friend had urged me to do the works: back, feet, pedicure, manicure. I wasn't so daring. I wanted just to relax and I didn't have to wait long. Just a four-minute walk from my gate was a corner called The Oasis, which included a massage parlor, My Foot Reflexology.
For the next 45 minutes, Jenny massaged my feet, head, shoulders, and back. I gladly paid US$21 and left feeling like I could float.
I thought about pulling over for a nap, but I had so much to do: e-mails to check, shopping to do, and the chance for discoveries -- my children would surely want to hear new stories about this airport that had taken on legendary status in their eyes. After 15 minutes of free Internet at one of several clusters of computers (friends from Egypt, Indonesia, India, and the US had sent New Year's greetings), I decided I needed a plan.
Just a few meters away was an information desk. I had already picked up Changi Airport maps, brochures, and a 16-page tabloid called the Changi Express, but it felt like too much information overload.
And so I proceeded to ask a bewildering number of questions of poor Farhana Shaheed, the information officer on duty. Where was the pool? A sporting goods store? Flower gardens? Movie theater? Skytrain that linked Terminals 1 and 2?
"Oh," Shaheed said worriedly, as my questions ended. "You are acting just like an auditor. Sometimes they send people like you around to check on me."
I said not to worry, that I just had time to kill.
"No, I think you are an auditor."
"Well," I said, trying to put her at ease, "if I was, I would give you high marks."
She looked at me uncertainly. Singapore has the reputation of being one of the world's strictest environments in terms of cleanliness and orderliness, where you can be fined for spitting on the sidewalk or for not flushing a public toilet (although infrared sensors in the airport and elsewhere in the tiny country are good backup). I wondered, as she scurried away from her station, whether the airport penalized its information officers for giving wrong answers to tourists.
But Shaheed had directed me well. Within minutes, I was checking out one of the airport's two transit hotels. There I learned I could have a single room with a shower for six hours for US$34.75, or reserve a room with access to a communal shower for US$24.40. The hotel also greeted guests with complimentary tea, soft drinks, or water. I mulled my choices, but the receptionist told me not to bother. "We are booked usually three weeks in advance," she said. "Sorry."
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