Feb 28-Mar 1: Tokyo-Singapore-Sydney

The flight from Tokyo left at 7pm, so I spent another day trying to recuperate, and arrived at the airport at 4pm. As I has spent most of my time in Japan in hotel rooms, I spent some time after clearing immigration looking for souvenirs. Once that was done, I headed off to the Red Carpet Club.

The Red Carpet Club, like the other locations around the world, was big, and rather basic. I then moved on to the ANA lounge. The ANA lounge, while slightly smaller, had a better range. (Spot a pattern?) In addition to sandwiches & sushi rolls, there was a noodle bar with udon & soba, and ice cream on request.

For the flight to Singapore, I managed to reserve the exit row on the upper deck, which is one of the best seats on the plane, as the legroom is plentiful, and the upper deck gives a more private feeling.

After takeoff, dinner was served. Being in Business class, the dinner service was less rushed and more elaborate, with a satay starter. This was followed by a choice of 4 mains:

Stewed beef cheek
Thai red curry chicken
Prawns with pasta in a spicy cod roe sauce
Japanese meal

I chose the Japanese meal, which was a seasonal meal with 9 items, cold noodles and miso soup. The meal was authentically Japanese, and was very good. The non Japanese meals had another seafood starter before their main. This was followed with apple crumble, cheese and fruit. When boarding, I noticed that they had loaded the March in-flight entertainment, which looked better than the February selections, so during dinner, I watched the latest James Bond movie (which is always worth watching).

By this time, a couple of hours had passed, so I reclined, and went to sleep. The seat reclined to almost lie flat, so I found getting to sleep to be fairly easy. I managed to wake up just before landing, and landed in Singapore shortly after 1am.

For the overnight transit, the Krisflyer Gold lounge was open, and deserted, with a total of 2 other people sleeping in the lounge. There were vegetarian noodles out at the late hour, so I grabbed a couple of bottles of water, and surfed the net for most of the night. The breakfast selection appeared at 5am, and included breakfast pastries and chicken congee.

After making last minute duty free purchases, it was time to head to the gate for the 6:30 am boarding. By the time I made it through security, it was the tail end of boarding, so I made my way to my seat. When boarding was complete, I found that I had a free middle seat, which was very welcome. The flight, for a 7am flight, was pretty full.

After takeoff, there was breakfast, with a choice of cheese omelette, or glutinous rice chicken. No surprises for my choice. After breakfast, I watched Slumdog Millionaire (which is worth watching & definitely a feel-good movie, even though there are disturbing parts), and bits of Australia (the movie, not staring outside the window. It’s also not worth watching, unless it’s 40c outside, and the air conditioning is on full blast inside the cinema). Towards the end of Australia, lunch was served. Today’s choices were Cajun chicken on spaghetti carbonara, or beef Masaman. One interesting note from the menu was that the dessert was served with English cream, which appears to be a bad transliteration of custard (crème Anglaise)...

We landed around 5:45, and as a treat, had the scenic landing over Sydney Harbour. Now, when arriving back in Sydney, I usually pick a left side window seat in hope for this particular landing and not get it, but this time I had a middle aisle seat. Maybe next time...

Immigration was a bit longer than usual, but the priority tags worked, and customs was quick (even with me declaring canned sausages), so I was out of the terminal by 6:15, which was close to a record.

Overall, despite being sick for the second half of the trip, it was fun, and really good to catch up with friends who were working overseas. As for Business class, it’s nice, but unless someone else is paying for it, you use points, or manage to be upgraded, I don’t think it’s worth paying the (significant) extra between Economy & Business.