I managed to get a few hours of sleep between work and our 4am wake up call. Our flight was at 10:20am from Toronto’s Billy Bishop airport. We both had never flown from this airport before. My mom was to pick us up at 4:30am to take us to the Burlington GO station, but at 4:45 we hadn’t heard from her. I texted her and then called her.. She thought our flight was at 4:00pm and would be there in 15 minutes! I felt so bad waking her up, and promised to make her tea. Only a few minutes later she arrived at our house. Aren’t moms the best!? I offered to drive her car to the GO station, as I had been awake longer, and I drive there almost every single day for work. We drove to the Burlington GO (no traffic at 5am) and it took about 30 minutes to get there. We had planned to take the 5:28 GO train to Exhibition station, but just missed the train. It was honestly ok, as I am an overplanning borderline obsessive (well not too borderline) and we had loads of time to spare. We took the 5:58am train to Exhibition station. It cost about $10 on our Presto cards for the trip (it’s a few bucks more if you pay without the Presto). As we waited on the platform to board the train, we saw a little fluffy brown bunny in the grass just beside the tracks, right beside us! I named the cutie Waffles. The train took about 50 minutes and we arrived in Toronto just before 7:00am just as the sun was rising right behind the CN tower. Really beautiful. We could have taken the street car to the airport in 15 minutes, but we decided to walk and watch the sun rise, plus we would have had to wait almost 15 minutes until the next street car arrived. The walk was lovely and a bit brisk, maybe 13 celsius or so. There was a tunnel to Billy Bishop and a ferry. The tunnel obviously is more regular than the ferry. The tunnel was uneventful and took maybe 10 minutes. We arrived at the airport, one of the smallest I have ever been to. We used a kiosk to print boarding passes and proceeded to the security line. Security was easy, as the airport is tiny….it took maybe 15 minutes. The security lady put another man’s smokes in my bin, and he pointed this out to me, but I told him the smokes were mine now (a joke)… he didn’t seem to understand. I figured a bearded 30 year old white man might find me funny, nope. We then proceeded to the boarding lounge, it was tiny. We ordered coffee and an egg and cheese ciabatta. We sat and waited almost two hours to board, overplanning for the win! Our flight boarded in like 10 minutes flat, as it was a super tiny plane. Overall Billy Bishop was nice, but lacks the big airport feel. I understand that a small airport is probably most people’s jam, but I love Toronto Pearson (despite all the flaws), driving to it just gets me so excited to travel. I love the international feel, the flights leaving for places all over the world, the nostalgia….am I weird? The flight was a little over an hour (the lovely flight attendant gave Jives and I the only two little Bailey’s bottles for our coffees). It  took off and we had a perfect view of the CN tower and the entire skyline of Toronto. It was a perfect cloudless day. 

We arrived in Montreal and had a bit under two hours layover. We found a place selling Jives’ favourite “lady beers” and we decided to have a pint before our flight. Jives ordered an IPA with a brunette goggle wearing lady on it and I got a stout with a straight haired brunette. Both were very nice beers. We made our way to our boarding gate, sending Gaby a selfie along the way (for Montreal-Narita nostalgia reasons).

We boarded a little late…(I boarded behind a Japanese lady with toilet paper stuck in her pants..I felt horrible, but decided to point it out to her). As we boarded the flight to Narita a white lady with a HUGE backpack was fighting with the boarding gate staff about her bag size. Anyway… We got the super awesome special two seats together at the back of the plane. The flight to Narita was just over 12 hours. I watched Pachinko (based on one of my favourite books). 12 hour flights (or more) sure are uncomfortable! We arrived in Tokyo around 4pm local time (3am at home) meaning we had been travelling 24 hours already.

We found a place in the airport to eat (after going through security). We had vegan ramen with delicious imitation pork slices, mushrooms, beansprouts etc. It cost about $22 CAD total for two large bowls. Japan is so reasonable for food, especially given that this was in an airport! We then found our boarding gate. I used my Suica card (Japan transit card) to buy a Pocari sweat from the vending machine. A sweet man helped me with the last step as my Japanese is not great. We boarded the flight at 5:45pm and had the entire back row to ourselves, ANA is an excellent airline. The food was so much better than the usual aeroplane bullshit. Also, the plane was so clean!!! It was a 6.5 hour flight to Singapore. I watched a cute movie about Slughorn walking across the UK (the actor that plays Slughorn in Harry Potter) to cure a lady’s cancer. 

We arrived at Changi airport at 12:16 on the 19th of October, we left home at 4am on the 17th. 

Oct 19th

We walked through arrivals and then filled out a digital immigration card on my phone. Canada is one of the countries that can self scan through customs, so we did that and went through all the immigration stuff in minutes. We then had to find terminal  one before finding the Jewel. There were very few people around as it was 1am and a lot of the hallways were dark. We found the dark jewel with the waterfalls turned off and the staff cleaning the pool. It was still so beautiful, but a bit eerie in the dark.

We then took the lift to our hotel “Yotel”. The cost for one night’s stay was just over $300 Singapore dollars, but I figured it was worth it as a cab ride at this time of night in this expensive city would be more than a stay (if you factor in a hotel stay either way). We walked the maze like hallways to our room and turned the key on our little space pod, home for the night. The room was just big enough for a double bed. The bed reclined down to sleep, but was set up to sit and watch television. The bathroom was standard, small and sufficient and looked through a glass wall into the bedroom.

The whole room was lit up in magenta light. We each had a quick shower and set our alarms for 9am, sleeping very soundly. We woke up at 9am, dressed quickly and went down to free “breakfast” in the little seating area overlooking the Jewel (the waterfall wasn’t on yet). We had coffee and some croissants looking over the lush jungle setting of the jewel. We then packed up our little backpacks and set off to see the Jewel more thoroughly. We wandered the little jungle pathways on the Jewel, seeing so many types of tropical plant life.

The central falls didn’t turn on until 11am, so we decided to go and find a “Cheers” location to get our EX passes for the metro. You can use a credit card to tap onto the metro, but our credit card charges for each tap… so we got the EZ card. They cost $10 to get the card plus $5 credit to use, so $30 for both of us. The cards said “BE Happy” on them. We then made it back to the Jewel to see the falls turn on. It was magical to finally see the thing that I had seen in so many photos and videos for years!

We then went to the top level of the Jewel for a birdseye view of the jungley Jewel from above. Then we followed the signs for the MRT to the city centre. We tapped on to the MRT with our new EZ cards and rode about 30 minutes to Aljunied station (you have to transfer trains once just outside the airport limits). From here we walked 20 minutes or less to our hotel, “Ibis Budget”. This stay cost us $0 as we used our booking.com credit, but it would have cost $300 + for 3 nights (including an amazing breakfast). Check in was at 3pm and it was barely 1pm, so we asked to drop our bags off, but instead we were allowed to check in early! Our room was simple, yet perfect. A lot of hotels in Singapore are either very expensive or very small. We rested for a bit before setting out on a walking adventure…