Ho John Lee’s Weblog

Singapore’s Changi Airport is one of my favorites for long haul travel, as they have everything you need within the security perimeter, including the equivalent of a shopping mall, two gyms, two hotels, assorted restaurants, and excellent, inexpensive internet and telephone service. I wrote about it a while back in Camping out at Singapore Airport, and it looks like there are a couple who have more or less taken up residence there, according to AsiaOne Travel.

SINGAPORE may have its own version of Tom Hanks in the 2004 Steven Spielberg-directed comedydrama, The Terminal. This time though, it’s an Asian-looking pair apparently living and camping out at Changi Airport Terminal 2.

Assorted comments in the AsiaOne forum.

My passport expires in a couple of weeks, so I’m about to send it off to get a new one. This one has been well used, I had an extra set of pages inserted a few years ago. This time I’m going to request a 48-page passport to start with, instead of the standard 24-page version.

The photo in my current passport is ten years old. Since then I’ve gotten rid of my eyeglasses and lost around 30 pounds. Between not looking exactly like my passport photo, and an ever-accumulating set of entry and exit stamps, it can sometimes take a while to clear passport control. I usually explain that I’ve taken up marathon running.

I’ll use this week’s no-GYM theme to go with something completely different:

I’ve travelled between the US and India something like 20 times in the past few years. From the Bay Area, it’s roughly equidistant to go via Europe or via Asia. I often have other stops to make elsewhere in Asia, but one reason I like to go westbound is because of the facilities at the Singapore Changi Airport. (Another reason is that I find the Frankfurt airport vaguely creepy, but that’s another story.)

I typically fly on United from San Francisco, connecting in either Tokyo or Hong Kong, and arriving in Singapore at midnight. There’s a connecting flight to Bangalore at around 7:30am, which leaves just enough time for a few hours sleep, a workout in the gym, breakfast and e-mail at the business lounge, and picking up any last minute items at one of the many stores.