3rd time even luckier

Singapore - again!

We were catching our flight to South Africa from Singapore so we visited it for the third time and once again took advantage of Rob's hospitality. We also made sure we were there for a Sunday as we wanted to visit one of the Sunday Brunches run at the large hotels. Rob booked us into one at the Hyatt which served a buffet brunch washed down with as much Taittinger champagne as you could drink! Bring it on.

It was a huge splurge for us and Rob had to keep reminding us what a bargain it was in the non backpacker world. We did however want to get our money's worth and were there at 11.30am for the start.

I don't really know where to begin, oh yes I do, we were seated and within 3 seconds a waiter appeared and asked us if we would like some champagne. Silly question. Being our cynical selves we had assumed we would have to be calling waiters over and waiting ages for our glasses to be topped up. This wasn't the case. In fact, every time we took a sip the man appeared and filled our glasses. Brilliant!

Just so as the champagne wouldn't go straight to our heads we tried a few bits (code for 'everything') from the buffet. And I know we talk about food a lot but this was spectacular. Sushi, fresh oysters, lobster, prawns, French cheeses, Japanese tepanyaki, Chinese stirfry and roast lamb and beef complete with yorkshire puddings! Who knew champagne went so well with Aunt Bessie's finest.

But that was not the end. They also had a huge range of desserts but I knew where I was headed - the chocolate fountain! I was straight in there with my strawberries and marshmallows. Unfortunately I was getting a little full by this stage so I didn't do the desserts justice. We all did, however, do justice to the champagne, and drank more than the cost of the brunch alone. We were also the last to leave having made sure we got our final top up just before they stopped serving. What a fantastic way to spend a Sunday. Being old codgers we then headed home and went straight to bed for a nap. Rob however went straight out to a party.

The other other different thing we did compared to our other visits was to hook up with Jake and Catherine. These were the friends we had stayed with in Saigon at the very beginning of our trip. They had recently relocated to Singapore and it was great to catch up with them and their daughter Lily Mei, a Vietnamese orphan they adopted just after we left Vietnam last year. What a cutie.

The day after we went out for dinner with them we bid our final farewells to Rob and caught our flight to Cape Town. Cheers Rob.

And what a flight that was.....!
It started at take off when the plane shook and made so much noise that I convinced myself we wouldn't make it higher than 20 feet. In fact I hoped we wouldn't as I didn't have a lot of faith in the plane. But we kept climbing and eventually the shaking stopped.

Then we hit the turbulence and this lasted for approximately 80% of the flight. To the extent that once, when I had managed to fall asleep it woke me and had Mik reaching over to tell me everything was going to be alright. I have definitely become a very poor flier over the years. Still, Singapore Airlines do have a fantastic in-flight entertainment system so although I didn't get much sleep I did watch a few films.

All this was made worse by the fact that an elderly man sitting just 2 rows behind me was suddenly taken very ill. I turned around when I heard a commotion and saw him. To be quite honest, I thought he had died. He hadn't, and luckily (as always seems the case) there were doctors on board who could help. They even called doctors on the ground to try and work out what they should do. I then checked the flight path map and realised we were over the middle of the Indian Ocean and that the nearest land mass was Mauritius. I was convinced we would be landing there. We didn't and the man made it through the flight. Unfortunately for him we heard that he had no travel insurance as he was over the age limit. This was the first question the medical staff asked once we had landed in Cape Town. Poor guy.

I was delighted to get off that plane. We'd made it to Cape Town. What a relief.

Cara