28 Hours Later…SINGAPORE

January 9, 2019

QUICK VIEW

• Bring wired headphones for the plane trip
• Notify the airline if you have any allergies
• Download music/movies before your trip
• Print out a map of the local area of where you are staying and the path from the airport to there, in case you don’t have internet connection to view online maps.

First of all, I have never traveled out of the country, let alone fly on a plane. But of course, I had to choose one of the longest flights, as my first flight. Smart, right?

Hi! My name is Carolina and I am a Materials Science Engineering student from Drexel University in the United States. I will be spending the next four months as an exchange student at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. I will be blogging about different topics during my time here in Singapore and hopefully I share helpful information. For now, I will be speaking about the airplane flight and arrival to Singapore.

I left the John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, United States at 12:50 pm on Monday, January 7 and 14 hours later I arrived at the Haneda Airport in Tokyo, Japan. I haven’t even stepped foot into the country of Japan but the
airport is already a world of a difference. Not such a popular topic but let’s talk about the bathrooms. The bathrooms at the JFK Airport are your typical bathroom…not pretty, smelly and always out of toilet seat covers. But let me tell you about the bathrooms at Haneda Airport…so clean, spacious and so many buttons (opinions on bidets???). I am the definition of a tourist…taking pictures of the airport bathroom.

I had a 7 hour layover in Japan and then boarded on my plane to go to Singapore. The flight from Japan to Singapore was a total of 7 hours. I arrived at Changi Airport, Singapore on Wednesday, January 9. On a scale of 1 to 10 of how tired I was, I am going to say 300. I was so tired when I arrived because I did not sleep at all on that plane. I flew with Japan Airlines and the flight was great, they fed me and helped me with my wifi problems. On the plane you need to purchase wifi if you want it. Since the flight to Japan was pretty long, we were fed 3 meals and small snacks in between. IMPORTANT: If you have an allergy please state it when purchasing the plane ticket.

Arriving to Changi Airport, I went straight to baggage claim. The Changi Airport is so grand and beautifully designed, I walked around a little bit to take it all in. I grabbed food and then planned to get on a taxi that would take me to Nanyang Technological University.

I got on the taxi and told the driver the address of the school and I was on my way. In Singapore, the driver is the the right seat as opposed to the United States where we drive on the left seat. As we are cruising, we get onto Pan-Island Expressway which cuts through all of Singapore. After traveling from one side of the island to the other side, I got to my host school and the total cost of the taxi was $38 SGD which is around $28 USD for a one hour taxi trip.

While on the taxi trip, my face is pushed up against the window of the car looking outside as if I have been living inside a box my whole life. The views were incredible and there was greenery everywhere. It is so weird for me to see so many trees and greenery in such a populated city, especially on this expressway. I loved every bit of it and I wish I saw more of this in Philadelphia. When I got out of the taxi, I started sweating buckets. I had just been in Philadelphia a couple days ago where the weather was 33 degrees Fahrenheit and now I am walking around in a city with 86 degrees Fahrenheit weather in jeans…horrible mistake.