Day 10 – Travelling to Singapore

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We were up early this morning, as we need to leave the hotel at 6.00 am for Dubai International airport.

Check-out went very smoothly, and the changes agreed yesterday had been applied to the final invoice. When everything had been sorted the receptionist informed us that the manager had made a note on our account that next time we book with that hotel we will get complimentary upgraded to business class with access to the business lounge. Not that we need an incentive to come back to Dubai, but when we do, we will definitely be taking up their offer. We were also sent away with fresh fruit and a set of daily Dubai national newspapers. A very nice result overall. It shows what a hotel can do to avoid a nasty review on Trip Advisor. It’s all about delivering the complaint correctly.

Outside was waiting Radisson chauffeur driven swanky limousine to take us to the airport. We could get used to travelling like this. The vehicle even had an on board bar.

Once we had dropped of the bags and made it into the airport, with Entertainer vouchers in hands, we went looking for somewhere to eat. Maybe we should not have been so keen to use them, as we ended up in the Heineken Lounge with a pizza each. It was the strangest breakfast yet, but really nice. It was yet another half price bargain meal using an Entertainer voucher.

The flight to Singapore was great as we expected. This time we got lunch and dinner and both were really tasty. Recently, we experienced an aborted landing at Tenerife South. We were about to experience something else completely different that was just remarkable / awesome.

We were at around 33,000 feet ourselves in a Boeing 777 -300ER. About two hours into the flight, and whilst the cabin crew were serving lunch and drinks, a large plane flew a little too close to us overhead. The back draft (or white noise or similar) of the plane above caused serious turbulence for our plane. Suddenly the plane starting going crazy. One of the cabin crew that was near to us fell over and into the seat of an adjacent isle. Luckily George caught her trolley. All the bottles of wine etc. on top of it were falling to the floor. This lasted for about 5 minutes during which time everyone had to try their best to hold onto everything that they had just been served with. There were a few unhappy people as they had ended up covered in their drinks. But this was not the captain’s fault as far as we know.

After about 10 minutes, the cabin crew were advised by the Captain that it was now safe for them to move around and within a very short space of time order was restored. The Captain explained that this was a very rare incident and to correct it and to get away from the turbulence, he turned the plane sharp right.

Conducted some research with a good aviation friend asking for a further explanation of what happened. Our friend said: Wake turbulence. It's the spirally things you sometimes see coming from the tips of the wings. Air flows outwards from the wing root to the wing tip. As the air pressure is higher under the wing than above the wing, when the two airflows meet, the pressure difference causes the flows to spiral round each other. The bigger and /or slower the aircraft, the greater the wake turbulence. The vortices sink with time, so ideally you always want to stay at or just above the flight path of another aircraft. The wake turbulence of a higher aircraft can sink down to the height of a lower aircraft with this affect. The lower aircraft was us.

From here on for most of the rest of the flight, we experienced a lot of turbulence. The seat belt sign seemed to be on more than it was off.

Singapore is four hours ahead of Dubai. That made it seven hours ahead of Tenerife and UK. We are enjoying flying forward in time.

Singapore Changi Airport advertises a shuttle bus to island hotels. When we enquired about using this, we were told we could not as we had too much baggage, so a taxi to the hotel it is.

As today is the final day of the F1 in Singapore, all the hotels were really expensive, so we have ended up in the 2* Hotel called 81 Dickson. It is a basic functional hotel, but the rooms are small and there is very little storage space in them. Think we have got used to the 4* hotels now.

We did not need anything to eat further today. Think we have had enough for one day. We did have a small wander around the local area before falling into bed about midnight local time.

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