Sure enough, Beijing has the world’s biggest airport by size but Singapore (Changi) truly has an airport for the future. I landed at Terminal 3 (which opened in Jan 2008), and seemlessly grabbed my breakfast en route to immigration & customs. I had 16 hours here, so thought might take a trip to downtown. Free tours are offered by Tourism Singapore, sponsored by Civil Aviation of Singapore, Singapore Airlines, and Tourism Singapore. The free tour I took was the historial tour. It went for 2 hours, including a 20 minute boat cruise along the river in downtown. They have a very busy schedule, so timing is crucial. They get annoyed at passengers who don’t follow their “rules”. Essentially, they are baby sitting you for a few hours, and they act like mum & dad. Hey, its free so who cares right!

Terminal 3 is a sight to see! A funny thing happened though, some security guards thought I was photographing them specifically when I was in fact taking in the shots of the brilliantly designed Terminal 3. They questioned me and let me off, but then followed me until I went to the tourism centre. Trust me, 3 dudes with AK-47 or whatever following you is not a good look. Moral of the story, don’t muck with the guards. They take security very seriously.

After the city tour, we were dropped back to the airport and then I took the free shuttle bus to downtown. Again, I wish we had this in Melbourne. The shuttle bus drops you off, and picks you up from designated spots at fixed times. Again, they get annoyed at time delays so you really need to be punctual.

There are so many sites to see, but I stuck to three main areas: Little India, China Town, and Malay Town. There is plenty of shopping to be done, but Chadstone is enough for me. The airport itself has countless shops.

The airport

The airport has many comforts ranging from the premium airline lounges to movie theatres to gyms to swimming pools. They have free internet access (wireless) and free local telephone calls (even to mobiles - unlimited!). This is something Australia will never have. Watch out for the greedy passenger who will push in front you to access that computer or phone. I will write a separate article later about the paid premium lounge I used: Plaza Premium Lounge. Terminal 3 is just plain awesome, with automated sky trains connecting all terminals - you can seamlessly move between terminals with little trouble. Its amazing how they keep the whole place clean, given its massive size.

One of the things which was frustrating was that I was meeting my dad at the airport, and there was no information in the departure areas about recently arrived flights. Sure, why would you have this information in the departure area. For meeting up with people, why else.

I am thoroughly satisfied with this airport, although Terminal 2 can be a bit cluttered. Things are difficult to find, but the lovely information personnel are always able to help. The connectivity of the place is such that they can quickly search for incoming, outgoing or do map searches of pretty much anything and find things for you in a jiffy.

 I will write more about my Plaza Premium Lounge experience, and Singapore Airlines flight experience in another article. For now, I am just chilling in the lounge reading my “Fortune” magazine - dreaming about being on the cover one day! Yeah right!