24 hours in transit

The Melbourne to Singapore leg of my flight was great: before we'd even taken off we were handed a drinks menu

and as if the offer of Campari within minutes of takeoff wasn't enough, there was a guy whose sole job seemed to be to hand out Singapore Slings and make the same "this would cost $30 at Raffles, but for you, FREE!" joke every time.

After they'd handed out three rounds of drinks (so, about 35 minutes in to the flight) they fed us some bland but entirely non-awful food and I settled in to watch the guy across the aisle from me down a gin and tonic every 20 minutes. I was worried that he was going to get drunk and belligerent and we'd have to make an emergency landing in Alice Springs to offload him, but after his 10th drink he curled up and went to sleep. Sure, his feet were hanging out into the aisle, but those G&Ts must have been strong because he didn't wake up when the flight attendants smashed the drink trolley into him every time they went past.

I had the very clever idea of not sleeping in the first leg of the flight so that I'd sleep through the second leg, and arrive in Amsterdam at 7am local time, good to go. I somehow managed to keep myself awake despite having a row of three seats all to myself, and having had only about 5 hours sleep the night before, and stumbled out into Singapore airport's 30 degrees dressed in my Melbourne-in-July clothes.

My travel motto is: when in doubt, find out what weird flavour of chips the country has. I chose to eat the BBQ Curry Dude Twisties, which were quite delicious (it took me a while to place it, but they tasted like Burger Rings with more chilli) but a terrible idea for someone who doesn't handle sodium well and was in the middle of a 24-hour flight.

The other flavours available were relatively standard, but with ridiculous names. My favourite was the (regrettably out of focus. Thanks, phone camera!) "DUH! Tomato".

Singapore Airport has won lots of "best airport" awards and while I do agree that it's nice to have a butterfly house and waterfall to look at while you're dragging your sorry self between flights, they have the knives-and-liquids check at the gate, so you can't buy a bottle of water to take on the plane. Unfortunately, there was nowhere to offer feedback about this issue. There was, however, a touch screen allowing you to pass judgement on your toilet experience. 

The second leg of my flight was not ideal. I went from a new, comfy, half-empty plane to an old rickety plane packed full of Dutch (and therefore tall) people. The Singapore Sling guy had clearly called in sick that day so if you wanted one you had to actually ask for it from a regular flight attendant. Ridiculous.

Luckily, the particular Dutch people I was squashed in next to were seasoned travellers who just wedged their oversized legs into place for the duration and kept to themselves. Sleeping was difficult, but at least I wasn't seated next to the Aussie guys who, as the plane was descending into Amsterdam, loudly exclaimed "SHIT! We forgot to look up what kind of money Amsterdam has! Does anyone know?"

But I made it to Amsterdam relatively unscathed. More stories about those crazy Dutch and how wonderfully tall they all are to follow.