Southeast Asia Map

Southeast Asia Map

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Changi International Airport (Singapore)

What to say? Try to arrange a late flight and check in as early as you can! Or, if you're lucky to have this airport as a layover, try to make it as long a layover as possible! This is an airport that caters to all your needs and more. Besides the usual retail, service and food outlets they also offer things like free movies, gaming stations, social network activities, interactive e-postcard booths and themed gardens. If you're in transit for more than five hours, the free 2-hour guided tours of Singapore are an amazing option. Or if you're tired, you could head to one of the free snooze chairs ergonomically designed and located in the quietest areas of the airport. For a nominal fee there is a rooftop swimming pool, multiple gyms and laundry services. Wow!

We checked in about four and a half hours prior to our scheduled flight. Before we headed through security we stopped to check out the 'Kinetic Rain' artwork in the public area. The teardrops move in patterns controlled by a software program. It's spellbinding to watch and there were a lot of oohs and aahs from the children in the audience. I'm afraid the static photos hardly do it justice.



Once we'd gone through security and immigration we were free to move about all three terminals via the Skytrain. Each terminal has something special to offer. Because it was right in front of us as we came through security we started by playing at the social 'tree'. Here we could choose a background for a photo, e-mail it to friends and family or share it on facebook.


After that little bit of playful fun we went in search of the orchid garden.


Dennis sat and rested, watching the Koi in the pond, while I took a few photos of these gorgeous flowers. Singapore is famous for its orchids.






The Skytrain left every couple of minutes and only took a couple of minutes between each terminal. This was taken through the window, terminal 2 on the right.


The highlight of our visit to Changi Airport was definitely the butterfly garden.





We thought these butterflies were pretty amazing. They looked just like leaves with their wings closed but had beautiful irridescent blue and orange colouring when open.


Caught this guy admiring his reflection in the glass!


Hard to believe all the photos in this post were taken inside an airport! All too sooon it was time to make our way to the boarding gate and catch our flight to Denpasar, Bali.


3 comments:

  1. Nice! Wouldn't it be wonderful if our airports had places like this for relaxing? Maybe there would be less incidents on planes. Great photos!

    ReplyDelete
  2. What a great strategy for drawing tourists into Singapore! Have a great airport so that people chose to fly via Singapore rather than elsewhere in Asia. It sounds like much has been added since we were last there.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Wow, wow, wow, wow!!! All in an airport!!! I love those leaf-like butterflies!

    ReplyDelete