I thought there was a bright full moon illuminating the clouds outside the plane windows when I woke up, but Michael later explained to me that the windows now have some sort of electronic screen that reduces the light. When I thought about it, I realised that the crescent moon from a few nights ago could not have suddenly become a full moon!

I dozed fitfully for 5 or 6 hours, and then sat up to watch some movies. I was offered my dinner, but as it was just over half an hour until breakfast was to be served, I just had the dessert (fresh fruit) with a cup of tea. Michael was woken up by the flight attendant for breakfast. Breakfast was noteworthy for being particularly bad, in my opinion — the cereal was some flavourless flakes and the croissant and rolls were very dry. I guess we can’t really complain — the flights from Istanbul to Singapore cost us $800 each — worth it to have the extra room and a flat bed. The fact that they didn’t serve alcohol didn’t affect me (I don’t drink on overnight flights any more, as it makes sleeping really difficult.  

We touched down in Kuala Lumpur for a service stop not long after breakfast. Some people disembarked here, but most of us stayed on board whilst they did what they had to do — refuelled? They sprayed the plane with ‘harmless insecticide’, according to one of the announcements.

Once we’d taken off again, I resumed watching my movie. I only had half an hour to go of the movie — and the last leg to Singapore was 38 minutes — perfect! Except for the fact that every minute or so the screen would freeze and a message would appear announcing that we either now had mobile phone cover or please could we turn off our mobile phones! The alternating messages continued right through to the end of the movie (right through the suspenseful part)! I did let one of the attendants know, but she obviously didn’t know how to fix the system. At least the delays didn’t prevent me from getting right through the movie.

Once we’d landed, we proceeded quickly through immigration (there was no one else there when we arrived), and then collected our bags — mine was the first to arrive on the conveyor belt. (Here in Singapore, obviously a ‘priority’ tag means something (it certainly didn’t in Turkey!). The subway was easy enough to find, but in our haste we ended up taking a line that took a lot longer than the one we should have taken. In the end, we disembarked at an earlier stop before the train continued on to do a long loop that would eventually have brought us close to our hotel. We figured that the 10 to 15-minute walk from this station would be less than the time it would take for the train to finish its loop. Having since seen the times between stations displayed, I think it would probably have taken the same length of time! Still, by now it was good to be above ground, familiarising ourselves with our surroundings.

After checking in to the hotel, we showered and changed into presentable clothing to go down to the hotel club room. Here we spent about 90 minutes eating, drinking and blogging. The food was sufficient to count as dinner. By 8:30pm, I was struggling to stay awake — jet lag was clearly taking its toll. I left Michael in the club room and headed off to bed. I fell fast asleep shortly after Michael came back to the room at about 9pm.