7NNT25: Day 37 – Singapore & home

Soundtrack: anything and everything by Lady Gaga; “Without a Trace”, Soul Asylum

“Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.” — Dylan Thomas

Figured I’d mix up the quote, as I know I tend to use the opening from Sylvia Plath’s “Two Lovers and a Beachcomber by the Real Sea” at the end of trips a fair bit. I’m writing this from the relative comfort of my home, over a day after arriving back in Noongar Boodjar, a contented dog snoring softly beside me. I say “relative comfort” as, after 5 weeks of constant sweat and heat, Perth with its sub 20 degree minimum temperatures feels pretty cold.

So of course I was up before the alarms, finished the packing, did all the checks to make sure I left nothing behind (I’m pretty sure I left my travel soap behind in Thailand on this trip), triple checked I had my passports, and checked out. Checks across the board.

I’m a little saddened that these days for check-in at Singapore Airlines at Changi they’ve gone mostly self service, I miss just going to a counter and handing my passport to a smiling person, rather than having to try and be the one putting the luggage labels on myself. I was also hoping to talk to someone as I had a krisshop voucher from a previous flight that I needed to use, and I’ll say trying to order stuff from the website is not a great experience, I’m not sure what I was doing that it didn’t like, but I couldn’t get to a stage where I could use the voucher. So after dropping my bags I got bounced around a few counters until I was basically told that krisshop is a different entity to Singapore Airlines and they couldn’t really help.

For my last meal in Changi I figured on having a throwback to my last trip, so went with the congee. It was okay, though definitely improved by the youtiao, as most things are. I’m still not the greatest fan of congee, I’m yet to have a Gaga-conversion moment, but I can see how folks raised on this would find it comforting.

I kind of feel sorry for the folks at the duty free alcohol outlets at Changi, as I’ve pretty much been buying there longer than they’ve legally been able to drink, and I’m an informed traveller who knows the rules: 1) for Australia, duty free purchases need to be completed 90 minutes before departure time; 2) the limit for spirits is 2.25L. So it’s a dance, they come up and ask where I’m headed, and I tell them Australia, and I have 2 hours until my flight departure time. Then they’ll try to direct me to the most reasonably expensive whiskies (so the $300-500 SGD ones, not the $20,000 SGD ones) while I’ve already pretty much decided on what I want and eventually get there, except in the rare occasion they manage to point me at something I missed (and is less than $200 SGD). Today’s purchase was a Balvenie, 12 year old, finished in rum, and I’m curious as to how it rates against the 14 year old generally available rum finish. I was also around $100 SGD, a good amount as I’m at the end of my trip and the end of my budget.

Got to finish watching The Prosecutor on the flight, a Chinese/Hong Kong movie that was pretty good. Tried another Chinese movie, can’t remember the name, but it involved illegal arms trading and Hong Kong customs, and I lost interest when it turned out that pretty much every character was an arsehole. Also watched one that involved a border policeman in a jungle area, drug smugglers, local tribal people, and it wasn’t bad other than it was a little over the top with indiscriminate killing.

I also managed to use my krisshop voucher finally, and now have joined the ear bud generation (is it a generation or era, I can’t keep up with this stuff). Now I too can put little thingies in my ears and ignore people (once I work out all the things, it seems I control them with a strange language of tapping so for all I know I’ll end up randomly dialling someone and then playing “Abracadabra” at them alternating too loud and sub-sonic. For all I know they have a pre-programmed sequence of taps that does just that. The super attack combos in Street Fighter II are easier I swear. At least they have noise reduction, so next night flight I’ll see how well I can doze with them in.

I tend to avoid seafood/fish on flights, I like my seafood freshly prepared rather than reheated, but as it was a fish with noodles I felt it was the best way to finish the trip. And as airplane fish goes, it was okay, the noodles were solid, and the battered fish was okay. For an economy class meal, I’ve certainly had worse, and while the noodles weren’t shivit oshi in Khiva, khao soi in Chiang Mai, pho bo in Ho Chi Minh City, pancit in Angeles City, jook-sing in Hong Kong or Macau, or katong laksa in Singapore, vermicelli at 10,000 metres above the Indian Ocean is okay too.

If this blog was some sort of travel show or travel guide, right now would be the big self reflection bit asking all the questions like is travel worth it? What have I gained? What have I learned? Is there hope for the world? What is the best noodle? Then followed by some sanctimonious pronunciations about things and stuff. With maybe a product placement or two just for good measure (Russell wears only the finest capybara fur underwear, and make-up by Anastasia Yekaterinburg).

Maybe the subtitle of this blog should be “There are no answers here”. It’s great to travel, it’s great to be home. What was my favourite place? I didn’t have one, each was amazing in its own way (though, I doubt I’ll head back to Macau or Angeles City in a hurry unless there is an awesome reason). I’m comfortable thinking that I’ll return to Hong Kong, as that was the place that I had the least expectations for and then surprised me the most (it seems to be that folks who were there before 1997 generally feel differently, but as a first time visitor in 2025 I had nothing to compare it to). Uzbekistan was amazing, though that country needs a souvenir snow globe (as does Macau). The Philippines are full of the craziest friendliest people. While I didn’t enjoy Singapore as much as last time overall, a bunch of that is my fault.

The noodle in the bowl in front of you, that has been prepared by someone who knows what they are doing and enjoys doing it, is the best noodle.

I certainly tried to travel sustainably, and where possible tried to use less plastic. A couple of my hotels had green initiatives where they didn’t provide bottled water, instead each room had it’s own automated water filter. This sounds like a good idea, but the unit would only dispense 200 mL at a time, could only be filled a cup at a time from the bathroom tap, and wasn’t large enough to fit my water bottle underneath so there was an ongoing juggling of other receptacles. Another hotel had a large dispenser on each floor, which worked a little easier. It’s good that hotels are starting to look more closely at this.

Or maybe a subtitle of “There are no lessons learned”: five weeks is almost definitely too long (for me) to be living out of a suitcase, jumping from country to country, but would I do it again? Probably if that’s how I can make all the pieces fit together. I also know I need to build rest days into my schedule, and no, walking 22,000 steps is not rest day behaviour. Will I in future? I’ll try. I’m beginning to feel that three nights in any place should be the minimum, allowing two full days to explore and experience without having to run around madly.

There’s no use planning a trip in hindsight, so while I could have done some things better with what I know now, and I probably could have researched a few things better, for me there has to be a balance of organisation and improvisation, and an allowance for chaos or a change of plans.

But I definitely should have bought a ticket for the Singapore drag nights.

Snippets I forgot to write about at the time:

Hong Kong: walking around, at various times something would drip on me. I didn’t look up to see exactly what, but as nothing stained my shirts, I’m going to guess that it’s water from all of the laundry that gets hung outside.

Hong Kong: I finally got to use my type G power adapter! You know, the biggest plug with the three huge prongs, having carried this all around Asia, and this is the plug that takes up about twice the space as any other plug, it felt good to finally use it, justifying me packing it just in case.

Singapore: chatting with the manager at the Auld Alliance, we were able to jointly commiserate at how challenging Macau is to get around, there being no ride share, no taxi app, no planners.

Manila: the random guy who approached me on the street and offered to sell me a stun-gun, even waving it around and giving the air a test zap; tempting but pretty sure I’d now be sitting in a Hong Kong or Singapore prison had I bought it.

Macau: despite everything, off the shelf whisky prices there are cheaper than Australia, probably by 10-20%.

That’s the end of the show, consider the whole blog to be the blooper real, there’s nothing special at the end of the credits. Next trips on the radar are a weekend in Melbourne that probably won’t get a mention, then Ireland and other places sometime in November. If I get motivated in between I might do a bit of work on this blog site, we’ll see. Thanks for reading.