En Route to Singapore

Our flight to Singapore was long & tiring but luckily uneventful.

We left LAX at 3pm, & armed with 2 bottles of breast milk, 3 changes of clothing, and 16 diapers, we boarded Singapore Airlines flight SQ 11 to Singapore with an hours layover in Tokyo at Narita Airport. We were fortunate to book early enough to reserve bulkhead seats, & the flight attendants set up a small bassinet against the wall under the projector screen. There were 9 other babies on board with bassinet, & not everyone with babies were able to receive one. Most of the families were either Japanese, Chinese, or Indian. We got some shifty looks from the older Indian couples & some polite little nods from the Japanese couples. The flight attendants were very helpful with warming up bottles & serving meals at our convenience. The female flight attendants were especially friendly with Atticus.

Baby Boy was extremely well-behaved on the entire flight. The most difficult moment was the descent into Narita Airport, when he was crying for milk & his ears were probably plugged like mine. I had never felt so much pain from plugged ears before - it was pretty annoying, especially since the descent lasted so long.

The flight from LAX to Narita Airport was 10 hours, then another 6 hours to Singapore. Total travel time was 23 hours. We emerged from the plane & arrived to Singapore exhausted & disheveled but excited. We checked into the Pan-Pacific Hotel at 1am.

The Pan-Pacific is the most luxurious hotel we've ever stayed...bell hops, elevators lined with white lights, modern-looking furniture in the enormous lobby, king-sized bed...wow! & we're very close to Robby's conference at the Sun-Tec Convention Centre. We were even provided a little wooden crib for Atticus to sleep in. & we have a balcony with a chaise lounge chair & a view of the Esplanade & Marina Casino.


This is the interior of our hotel.

Breakfast the same morning was a gigantic buffet filled with different kinds of foods - Shanghainese dimsum (lobster dumplings), Singaporean noodles, fresh fruit juices, freshly made noodle soup, brioche & green tea donuts, rice porridge (they call it "congee" here), & the regular American stuff, like pancakes, waffles, & bagels. It's quite a spread. I paced myself & felt sufficiently full after trying a few things, but Robby ate himself silly & felt sick afterwards.

We're living large in Singapore. We figured we should not skimp on our lodgings with a baby on our hands.