You know, I thought it would be a good idea to hop on a plane and visit my friend Starlene.
She lives in Singapore, as in Asia. You can click on over and read about her in an old post *here. Anyways, I had this idea, so I acted upon it in Jenny fashion- asked Sky, and booked my flight a few months ago. A funny thing called swine flu pandemic happened right before I left. (or not so funny, really...) I think I live and move in a Murphy's Law zone...
My connecting flight was in Japan. A few people on board were coughing. Sooo, what fun, Murphy's-Law-type-thing happened to me?
My entire planed was quarantined
Thank goodness only for 3 hours! But I missed my connecting flight to Singapore. Funny me, I thought a 2 hour window between flights would be a good enough cushion for delays...I forgot about the world pandemic possibility. We sat on the plane for 2hrs until they finally got a health worker on board to screen us. Then they made us all put on face masks (a snapshot which made a great profile pic on fb, by the way!) and then they let us go. A group of us were booked on the next available flights, the next day! - And told, basically, "too bad, so sad, see you tomorrow, and by the way, you can't even sleep here because the airport closes at ten." Sky was in quite the tizzy, because I was alone in a foreign country without him.
I really lucked out though, in our group were two little ladies from Singapore- and 'tenacious' is the best word I can come up with to describe them. Once they were done with their uh, bull-dogging negotiations, we had free shuttle service and paid- for hotel rooms, and free meals.
The photo above is of our little 3-hour tour stranded group. Three of us were Americans, three from Singapore, and one from China. We had a nice time, it was really good to not feel so alone in this little ordeal.
I made it safe and sound a day later, we went to Morton's Steakhouse for dinner, and then the next day I went to church with the family.
Here is a photo of the street where we had breakfast. We went to a Bread shop, there were several on this street. It's a carbohydrate addicts dream, really. I had french toast squares with kaya sauce for dipping. Starlene doesn't know what kaya actually is, but it looked like green jelly or applesauce, and was kind of sweet. No maple syrup. Starlene had a toast sandwich with kaya in the middle.
After Church, we headed to the Shangri-la hotel. This was really, SOME hotel! Beautiful, lush, expensive...I had a 15$ singapore, gingerale.... We had brunch there, and it was by far, the biggest, most lavish buffet I have ever been to. More pics later....