Everyone knows that a straight line is the shortest route between two points. But it isn’t always the cheapest. Sometimes when you’re flying from Point A to Point B, it makes more sense, at least as far as your pocketbook is concerned, to do a stopover in Point A and a half — and sometimes even to do a detour to Point Q. As a bonus, if you have the time available, you can spend a few days in the intermediate city, and get in some extra sightseeing and life-living in a place you otherwise might not have visited in the foreseeable future. This is what happened when we flew from San Francisco back to Phnom Penh; we learned that we could get a better deal by routing through Singapore — and we really wanted to visit Singapore’s legendary Changi Airport anyway. So it was a win-win.

After spending a couple of days with some friends in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek, one of them insisted on driving us all the way to the airport, even though we could have taken a BART train (which would have required getting an early start, and perhaps rubbing quite a few elbows with morning commuters). We were a bit nervous about getting jammed up in rush hour on the freeway, especially after an experience we’d had a few years earlier.

While touring the East Coast in our RV, we’d been hired to perform at an event (a homeschool conference) in Sacramento, so we’d flown out and had quite a successful gig there. Afterward, we were driving from Sacramento to the San Francisco airport in a rental car, and there was a 3-hour (yes THREE HOUR) tie-up on the Bay Bridge because a truck had overturned earlier in the day. As a result, we missed our flight back to Boston, but the airline, having already heard the story, and having no doubt had many passengers already inconvenienced, reshuffled us to a later flight. The problem with that was that we’d have a long layover in Chicago — not long enough to get out and explore or find a place to stay, but just long enough to have to spend the night trying to sleep on a bench at O’Hare Airport. This was definitely not one of our more pleasant Point Q detours.

San Francisco

On the present occasion, things went much more smoothly. While we were delayed about 15 minutes in the traffic, we still had plenty of time — in part because the flight was delayed for an hour. Finally it was all aboard, and we lifted off, getting an aerial view of our old hometown, one of the most beautiful cities on the planet.

Before long, we were served dinner, and it was not bad. In fact, it was actually quite good, especially for air fare. Some of these airlines are actually beginning to understand that vegetarians do in fact exist.

Singapore Changi Airport

When we landed in Singapore, we’d crossed several time lines and even gone across the twilight zone demarcation that causes your calendar to skip or replay a date, depending on direction of travel, and we hardly knew which end was up. We did know that it was evening, and we couldn’t check our bags and slide through immigration until 3:00 a.m. Which meant that we were essentially stuck in the terminal where we’d landed (one of four), and couldn’t access the parts of the airport that featured the most interesting attractions.

Yes, attractions. Singapore Changi Airport actually has attractions, including museums, playgrounds, art exhibits, a climbing wall, a bouncing net, a rain forest, and all manner of other unexpected marvels. It might be considered worth taking a trip to Singapore just to see the airport. Which was essentially what we were doing.

But for the moment, here we were stuck in the entry foyer with all the marvelous marvels on the other side. And until the wee hours of the morning, we essentially were replaying our miserable night at O’Hare, trying to catch some shuteye on a bench.

Finally, we got through, and free of the bulk of our baggage, made it to the hub of the airport known as Jewel, which is where most of the really cool stuff is located. Many things were closed during that time, but we found a considerably more comfortable — i.e. padded — bench/ sofa thingamajig where we could lie down and catch a couple of hours of snoozes.

When we awoke, Jewel was beginning to dazzle. The Rain Vortex, a periodic waterworks display in the rain forest, would have one of its performances soon, and a crowd was gathering to watch. So we joined them.

Then we wandered around the airport, and found that it contained an actual mall — not merely the usual row of overpriced boutiques you find at an airport. The mall included an extensive supermarket, where we found, among other things, some excellent tea.

Singapore, in addition to being a city, is an independent nation; and we’d pondered taking a tour of the city-state on our visit. Such a tour is available from the airport, picking up tourists and taking them on a 2-hour whirl about town, then bringing them back — apparently with no need even to be fed through the immigration machine. But we just didn’t feel that we quite had enough time to squeeze it in on this occasion.

Singapore sounds like a fascinating destination, though it’s not a place we’d want to spend a great deal of time in. It has notoriously strict laws — it has banned chewing gum, and you can be fined 500 dollars for bringing it into the country. A few years back, there was a headline-grabbing case about an American teenager living in Singapore who was given 4 lashes with a cane (a standard penalty for certain crimes committed by males between the ages of 18 and 55) for several acts of vandalism. Committing vandalism and chewing gum are not on our own schedules, but a nation that has such medieval laws doesn’t sound terribly inviting. Still, we’d certainly be interested in taking a closer peek sometime in the future.

Phnom Penh, Cambodia

From Singapore, we flew to Phnom Penh, and although it was quick and smooth getting through the checkpoints, the flight itself was not so smooth, but rather turbulent. At one point, the plane seemed to jump about three feet to the side. It was a relief when we touched down at our destination.

After a brief wait at the airport, we were picked up by Kompeak, the trusty wearer of many hats from the school where we’d be teaching. He drove us to the same apartment building where we’d stayed the previous year while volunteering. We didn’t get our old apartment back, but we did get the one just above it, so we again had a street view. Not wanting to take the time to shop and cook dinner so late in the day, we ate out at the Sacred Lotus, a neighborhood vegan restaurant that we’d discovered previously — about three dollars per person. And thus began our unusually lengthy stay in Phnom Penh.

8/22-24/2023