Today Julie and I set off on a 17 day trip to Singapore and Bali, Indonesia. We booked Premium Economy seats through Air Canada for just under $1200 return. Some of the cost was covered by Air Canada Aeroplan points.

We had to take a bit of a milk run approach to get to Singapore, travelling from Calgary to Vancouver on an Air Canada Boeing 737-8 MAX, then from Vancouver to Tokyo on an Air Canada Boeing 787-9. We were upgraded to Business Class (Air Canada Signature Class) for only $200/pp on the Vancouver to Tokyo portion of the trip because of my Aeroplan status. We had a six hour layover in Tokyo and used it as an opportunity to take a shower ($10), and relax in the lounge. COVID is currently having a major impact on Japan at the moment, and foreigners are not allowed to visit, unless it’s for business purposes, therefore the airport was ominously quiet. In fact, our flight was the only one that evening, as you can see by the flight billboard. Originally we were only supposed to have a four hour layover, but our next flight was delayed due to a late arriving inbound flight.

The next leg of our journey was on a Singapore Airlines Boeing 777-300ER to Singapore in Premium Economy. The seats were fairly comfortable, however the food wasn’t as good as on Air Canada.

We finally arrived at 3:45am and checked into our hotel; Yotel Singapore Changi, a pod style hotel which is located inside The Jewel at the airport. I have previously stayed at a Yotel hotel in Amsterdam in 2018 when I went to Kenya. You can checkout my blog on that adventure here. The Jewel is a nature-themed entertainment and retail complex inside of Changi Airport. The Jewel, which cost $1.7 billion to build, was opened in mid-2019. It features the world’s tallest indoor waterfall, the Rain Vortex, and is surrounded by a luscious terraced forest setting. I’ll check it out more tomorrow morning.

The Rain Vortex was designed by WET Design, which has created some of the world’s most famous fountains including The Dubai Fountain, Fountains of Bellagio in Las Vegas, 1988 Lisbon Expo Fountains, Fountain of Nations at EPCOT in Florida, etc. I’ve seen all the above forementioned fountains, with the exception to the Dubai Fountain, as I’ve yet to visit Dubai. WET (Water Entertainment Technologies) was founded by Mark Fuller, Melanie Simon and Alan Robinson in 1983. All three worked as Imagineers at Disney. Their original creation was the Leapfrog foundation at EPCOT.

Having been awake for over 30 hours it was time to get some sleep. We opted to not set an alarm, as we wanted to catch up on some much-needed sleep. It was about 4am by the time we went to sleep.