Day1: Penang - Singapore - Narita

Date : 11th May 2006
Location : Penang, Malaysia
Weather : Fair, 30°C

Penang, Malaysia - Changi, Singapore
Did last minute packing. Since I decided to travel light, I took only about 3 change of clothes, a thick jacket, and essential toiletries. Of course, I never leave on a long journey without my mp3 player >_<

We then called a taxi to picked us up to the airport for our 1805 SIA flight to Singapore for transit to Narita. The carrier was a large one ( I lurrrve large carriers XD) but in no time, we're already landing in Changi International Airport T_T.

Changi, Singapore - Narita, Tokyo
Since it was a rather long wait for the next connecting flight, we ate our dinner at a Chinese noodle stall at the transit lounge. The food looked delicious on the menu, but it was far from desirable when my bowl of Mince Mushroom noodle was served.

I love transiting at Changi Airport. The transit lounge is so incredibly comfortable and the facilities are superb. We proceeded to use the free Internet service to kill some time before taking a sky train to Terminal 1. Our connecting flight, All Nippon Airways (ANA) NH902 to Narita Airport, Tokyo depart only at 2335; thus the rest of the time was like spent preparing to go to bed :P Yes, preparing for bed means brushing my teeth, cleansing my face, dabbing on the facial essence and emptying my bladder. I was very sleepy by boarding time because I stayed up till 6am in the morning planning the Hokkaido itinerary (the transportation in Kushiro can be quite infrequent so we have to catch the right train if we do not wish to be stranded).

In the boarding hall, most of the passengers were (naturally) Japanese. Initially, I was pretty hardworking: practising my Japanese listening skills and trying to mentally hone my Japanese conversation skills. After like 15 mins, I'm all drowsy and grouchy with sleep. There had been some delay in boarding due to dunno-what aircraft problems. I was pretty relieved when we finally got to board and was looking forward to sleep in the plane. As Mum had warned, we would be doing some serious travelling for the next 24 hours so we'd better get some good sleep on the plane if not we'd be grumpy zombies upon landing in Narita.

When I got to my seat in the plane, I was in a little state of disbelief and elation. The seat is huge with incredible leg room (for an economy flight okay). I was like "Is this really my seat? Not business class seat?" It's a Boeing 777-300. Kyaaa, who cares? I've got a roomy economy seat! Yea, bed time!.... or not. The interior of the aircraft was so clean and bright, it is tad too glaring to get a good shut-eye. What was worse, the inflight entertainment had some really good movies. I wanted to watch NANA:the movie because they have English subtitles (I watched a chinese-subtitled version before, thus did not really follow the entire conversation).

However, I was determined to get some sleep and tried hard to. Some 15 mins later, the ANA oneesan-tachi (my reference to the air stewardesses :P) started giving out the hot towels as a prelude to serving midnight snack. I preferred sleep over snack, but couldn't really catch a wink with all the oneesan walking up and down under the glaring lights and the seat cannot be lowered as the passenger behind me was snacking; thus, I too snacked on the egg bun and hot ocha (or was it orange juice?).

It was a great relief when oneesan-tachi finally finished serving and switched off the cabin lights. Finally, I can stretch out and catch a good nap. Though cranky with lack of sleep, I can't wait to touch down in the Land of Rising Sun!!!