Singapore Day 1--The Flight, Changi Airport, Meritus Mandarin (2008-11-27)
First of all, the flight to Singapore was very enjoyable.
At the JAL check-in counter, we were given two seats different than
the ones we picked online from their website. This was puzzling
cause
this kind of inconsistency just does NOT happen in Japan (experience
from dealing with Japanese people for 10 years). We didn't
question
the staff about it, we just shrugged and proceeded to the gate.
When
we got on the plane, we realized we had been SECRETLY upgraded to their
Premium Economy seats! No wonder we were over 20 rows before our
chosen seats.
Premium Economy is almost as good as Business Class in terms of
space and
their bucket seats, just the food isn't fancy, that's all.
There's
plenty of leg room, wide arm rest, recliner-like chairs and better
entertainment unit. It's comfortable to fly in those seats!
The code
share flight was also barely a third full which is very bad for the JAL
CEO but very good for us passengers, haha.
Changi airport seems much bigger than I remember from 10 years ago
and there's some kind of Disney thing going on till Dec (or maybe
January?).
By the time we came out of the restrooms, there's nobody around
us.
The vast immigration area was almost deserted! Perhaps this is a
reflection of
the bad global economy, thus few travelers?
As soon as you leave customs and out the doors, you'll see the
transportation counters in front of you. We chose the shuttle bus
as
our means to get to our hotel which was quick and efficient. We
only
had to wait about 10 minutes before a staff from the counter came to
lead us to the bus outside. The bus has nine single seats, and
again
it was empty except for us two passengers... Half an hour later, we
were at our hotel, Meritus Mandarin on Orchard Road, the same hotel we
stayed at ten years ago.
Our room was great, amenities were excellent and service was
impeccable. We were greeted by every single happy employee we
made eye
contact with throughout our stay, from cleaners to catering staff to
the ones opening doors
for guests. There are small details in the room such as a scale
(very
important to me who aimed to stock up on grocery!), large magnifying
make-up mirror, closet lights that come on automatically,
easy-to-adjust faucets, complimentary 1.5 L water everyday (except for
the last day) etc etc that makes our stay comfortable.
If I have to find fault with our room, it is the freezing cold air-conditioning. No matter how high we adjusted the temperature, it remained freezing. It's so cold KL turned it off entirely and it was just the perfect teperature for us! So I guess the problem was solved quickly and hassle-free. I would without a doubt return to Mandarin next time.
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