Jetstar

Qantas is regarded as the world’s safest airline. If you’re flying in a Qantas jet, you’re pretty darn safe. They’ve never had even one fatality with a jet in over 2.5 million flights. Apart from overshooting the runway at Bangkok in 1999 while landing in a storm, they’ve never had anything resembling a crash with a jet. In fact, even then, they did it in style, leaving the jet standing on a golf course.

In addition, it’s attracted many a passenger for it’s great Aussie service and is admired the world over. They’ve finished in the top five airlines for service awards in each of the last five years. Truly a flag-carrying airline to be proud of.

You may wonder then why an airline with such an exemplary record should get its hands dirty in the underworld of budget airlines. We’re right there with you and if you want answers, this is not the place to find them. We have no idea.

The great thing about blogging, as opposed to simple letters, is that you can insert images which sometimes communicate more than you could achieve with words. Today, I’m telling you about Jetstar, Qantas’ subsidiary budget airline, and here’s the image that’s speaking for me:

We arrived at Changi Airport in Singapore for our flight to Perth and were confronted with a check-in queue that had a layer of dust settling on it. Bemused by the “System Down” message on the screens, I squeezed my way forward. A fellow passenger helped me out. The check-in staff were otherwise occupied.

“The computer system has crashed,” he explained “and that means they have no record of any of our bookings or seat reservations.”

“Oh.”

“So, they have to write every boarding card out by hand.”

“Ohhh.”

“But before they do that, they have to check against a chart over there,” he indicated a remote corner of the check-in counter somewhere in the distant haze. “They need to make sure what seats other check-in clerks have already assigned before they can assign your seats.”

“Ah.”

“And then they have to write out all the luggage tags by hand too and that’s why everything’s taking so long.”

“Ahhh.”

It took us nearly 2 hours to reach the front of the queue and when the patient and hard-working check-in clerk had done all our paperwork, she told us that we would be boarding at 5:15. It was 5:25.

A quick glance at our boarding passes showed that we had seats 1A and 1B. On a 747 or Airbus A380, I’d be beside myself with excitement. On Jetstar it meant we got to sit face to face with the flight attendants on take off and landing and count the number of hairs that made up their razor thin eyebrows.

The departures board said final call which was a bummer as Changi is a great airport to explore before you fly. When we got to the gate, everyone was sitting around listlessly. The pilot was in the departure lounge trying to sort out when we were going to fly. Never seen that before. Eventually, we took off an hour late which, considering, wasn’t too bad.

And so, when it came to checking-in for our flight from Perth to Cairns, experience had taught me a valuable lesson: check in online. Ha! I’m ahead of the game now, I thought as I finished off ten minutes of Internet toil.

Or so I thought.

There are approximately ten check-in desks at Perth airport’s domestic terminal. Nine of them are operated by Qantas whose passengers breeze through without even the suggestion of a queue.

Over in the left corner is the one desk that Jetstar operate. You can tell it’s Jetstar because there’s a queue that almost reaches the doors to the terminal.

But I’ve checked in online, so all I need to do is find my online check-in counter.Poor fool that I am, I clung to hope.

40 minutes later, I asked our check in clerk why they send us an email encouraging us to check in online when it seems to be of no benefit. “Oh,” she explained, “there’s no point doing it at Perth. We only have one desk.”

Brilliant.

We were late off the tarmac again as the plane taking us had arrived late anyway. In this situation with budget airlines, it always makes me wonder whether the plane is now doomed to a life of perpetually late departures. They have such short turnarounds and tight schedules, that there doesn’t seem any way possible that a plane could ever catch up lost time.

Sitting next to us this time was a man carved directly from Australian soil. Introducing himself, he crushed my knuckles and warned us that we still weren’t in Queensland and therefore hadn’t really been to Australia yet no matter how wonderful we thought Perth was. When he found out we were from the UK, he came over a bit misty eyed. “I was there once.” He pondered the overhead baggage compartments. “78 to 79. I went over to play football for St Helens.”

It wasn’t until later that I realised he was talking about rugby. And it wasn’t until much later that I realised he’d played for one of the greatest Rugby League teams in the history of the game.

Jetstar is the only airline I’ve ever flown (and I’ve flown more than the average I can tell you) that has receptacles for used syringes in each toilet. Before your mind spirals out of control as mine did on first seeing them, they’re probably for diabetics… surely?

And as we sped across dark Australia and over the mystery of Uluru, the child in front of us called out in his sleep, “He’s the chicken. He’s the chicken.”

Chinatown

Singapore Railway Station is an anomaly. If you’re a tourist arriving by air into Singapore, you’re immediately wowed by Changi Airport, renowned the world over for its cleanliness, efficiency and facilities including a free cinema, areas where sleep is actually encouraged and all-night shopping where you could possibly even be arrested for so much as asking for chewing gum.

It’s one of the few airports on earth where I’d actually rather be delayed than on time and, typically, never am.  I’d also go so far as to say it’s one of the safest too. When I was in transit many years ago, I treated myself to a shower. I entered the marble shower cubicle with its glass door and looked up to the concrete roof to see a sprinkler. Every shower had one. I checked.

It’s hard to believe that there are people in the world that consider showering in a cubicle made of incombustible materials to be an activity that puts you at so much risk from fire that you need your very own sprinkler. It’s even harder to believe that someone exists on the planet that thinks that an inflammable shower cubicle is the kind of place where a fire might actually start.

But I digress.

Basically, you arrive in Changi and you are welcomed into the tourist haven of Singapore. You arrive at Singapore Railway Station and you can be forgiven for thinking that they’d rather not have you here at all.

There’s no tourist information whatsoever. There isn’t a single map of the city within four hundred metres of the building that isn’t sealed in plastic in some bookshop and costs more than breakfast. They haven’t bothered to connect it to the subway system. There isn’t anywhere to leave luggage. In fact, pretty much anywhere you ask in Singapore about storing a couple of backpacks for a few hours and you get the answer “Oh, you should go to the airport. I think they do it there.”

So, we were staring the possibility of looking around steamy Singapore for the day with our baggage on our backs. Not fun. That is until Sheena spotted (as only Sheena can) a coffee shop she recognised: Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. Memories of Korea (thankfully, the good ones) came flooding back. Coffee Bean is, outside the US, only available in a few select countries. Sheena spent more time in them in Seoul than she did at home (not really, but it seemed that way sometimes )

I left her happily sitting there while I went in search of a place to leave our bags and a hotel that would possibly let us use their pool for a price. After two hours, Sheena had achieved more by sitting on her bum in Coffee Bean than I had hot-footing it all over the city. She also had less blisters. The woman serving her had chatted and, hearing our story, had offered to put our bags behind the counter while we headed off to explore. Ah well, at least I got to see the inside of some nice hotels.

We decided that we’d head off to Chinatown as it was nearby and was one part that Sheena hadn’t seen before. I was also interested in seeing how it had changed since I’d visited it when I was a teenager back in the mid-1980s. It has changed remarkably in fact and much much more for the better I thought.

Singapore has worked hard, it seems, to actually preserve a lot of the buildings that give Chinatown its charm. There are still streets of shops selling absolutely nothing anyone in the world needs. They are still densely packed with people with surplus income. But the architecture has been lovingly and tastefully restored. Buildings have been painted in vivid shades of colour which, in the strong tropical sunlight, really stand out and this has been complemented by pedestrianisation and the installation of modern architecture which tastefully integrates the whole.

Some of the charm of Chinatown has disappeared in this redevelopment it has to be said. Gone are the streets of rubbish-strewn gutters. The pavements show a marked absence of phlegm and you can actually hear your companions speech while sitting on the pavement terrace of a restaurant without it being interrupted by horns, shouting street-sellers or the general cacophony of Chinese conversation. But progress has its price I suppose.

We visited the Lucky Lucky Restaurant for lunch. It’s always a good rule of thumb that any restaurant abroad, no matter how bad it looks, is usually worth visiting if it’s packed out with locals. This was what led us to the place and proved absolutely true. We had some prawns in ginger and frogs legs with garlic and lemon all washed down with a Tiger Beer and a ginger tea to finish. Fantastic!

We also took the opportunity to visit a couple of temples that I hadn’t seen before. I always have mixed feelings visiting religious buildings of any sort. Cathedrals, shrines, temples, football grounds: they all fill me with sadness at the efforts to pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. They spur me on to tell the world that Jesus did it so we don’t have to.

If you’re into Buddha in any way, then the temple in Chinatown is for you. I’ve never seen so many before.

We’re not particularly into Buddha so we didn’t stay long. On the way out, I picked up a little booklet entitled “Everyone can get to heaven, just be good!” It was packed with advice on being good… just trying hard is all we need to do. Find me a single person on the planet please who has successfully become good by trying. Bring them to me and I will buy them lunch. During lunch, I guarantee you, they will so something bad. I’ll make sure of it.

Anyway, I digress again.

We wandered back to Coffee Bean, picked up our bags and headed out to Changi Airport. We had a flight to Australia to catch and, for the first time, we were flying Qantas’ budget version, Jetstar. But that’s another story…

A night in the frozen tropics

We said goodbye to Razali at KL Sentral Station where he drove us to meet our overnight train to Singapore. As we’d saved so much money on all our budget flights, I’d gone overboard with this train journey, spending a whole £20 each for a Deluxe Sleeper Compartment. It came complete with shower, two bunks, a TV, bedding and breakfast.

Also included, importantly was a little toiletry set each. As I’d left mine in Cambridge, this meant I could stop sharing Sheena’s toothbrush.

As soon as we got into the compartment, I got in the shower and spent the next twenty minutes washing the grime of Chepor off me. By the time I emerged, we’d been given breakfast. It wasn’t great, in fact, we weren’t sure that it wasn’t meant to be dinner. It consisted of coconut rice, without any coconut, and fried chicken which tasted nothing like chicken. At least the water was genuine.

We settled in for the night cosy in our blankets as the train rattled south through the palm plantations of Malaysia.

About two hours after we’d fallen asleep, I woke up shivering. The airconditioning was pretty efficient. I put on my jeans, a long-sleeved top, my fleece and some socks and wrapped myself back into the single blanket we’d been given. It made no difference. Sheena was also freezing.

What made the cold worse was that we were travelling just north of the Equator and just the other side of the glass, people were sleeping in the warmth of a tropical night for free. We foreigners were paying to freeze to death.

As the train came to a stop somewhere in the night, I stumbled into the deliciously warm corridor and went in search of a guard. He was as sympathetic as hairdryer. “Could you turn down the air conditioning?” I asked.  “Not possible change or turn off.” (sigh) The question, “Do you have any more blankets?” resulted in a terminal “No.”

Well, something must have happened because when we got to the Malaysian side of the border and shouts went up to get our passports out, we awoke to a compartment that looked as if it had been sweating heavily. Every surface was covered in a dense layer of condensation.

Initially pleased to be somewhat warmer again, we were suddenly cursing the return of humidity as our own temperatures started to rise. We were contemplating a first in all our travel experience and it was not a happy thought. Now, in decades of travelling I have never, ever, absolutely no way come close to losing my passport. Ever.

But as I turned over bags and lifted clothing to find it, my efforts were in vain. The immigration officer entered the compartment and did Sheena’s passport. I was still frantically pulling the place apart. It didn’t help that I’d been woken up abruptly, that it was somewhere around 4am and I was probably sleep walking and this was all just a dream in seriously bad taste. The immigration officer had exhausted his patience. “You come find me with passport” he announced somberly and vanished down the train.

But it wasn’t there. My passport, my whole entire money belt with my credit cards, some pounds and dollars in cash, had completely disappeared. I remembered having it when I got on the train, putting it on my bed  when I undressed for my shower. Maybe the guy who brought our breakfast had lifted it. Maybe someone had come in while we had been sleeping; a million scenarios played themselves out in my head. I imagined us in our shame holding up the entire train as we were forcibly disembarked and then watching as the train, undoubtedly carrying my goods slipped off into Singapore without us.

And then, with me on my belly on the floor under the bed in the far corner of the compartment, I found it lying there. It was a lovely moment. Life suddenly seemed much simpler, much more enjoyable. I was suddenly a citizen of somewhere. I was now able to show an official the Queen’s request on my behalf to allow me to pass “without let or hindrance and with such assistance as may be necessary.”

We passed across the Straits of Singapore, a narrow strip of water between the two nations and bridged by The Causeway. On the Singapore side of the border, it was Sheena’s turn to feel uncomfortable.

Guards were now walking down our carriage shouting for passports and baggage. We sat there with both in order. Suddenly the door opened and a head was thrust in. “You go now station with bags.” The head gestured across to the platform where we could see the entire population of the train traipsing past with all their worldly goods.

And that’s how Sheena ended up being probably the first and quite possibly the only British woman in history to enter Singapore carrying a backpack and wearing tartan pajamas.