TRIP REPORT: Taking the long way (and back) to Singapore
With Finnair, NoRRA, British Airways, Jetstar, Cathay Pacific and Norwegian
Or… where the hell has my iPhone… Oh *expletive*…
It is that time of month again – when long-form writing takes over this blog and I start to tell not just a few headlines, but go into narrative and detail. Yes. It’s a long trip report. Gather close, my dear readers. There’s a lot of stuff I need to unload and write about, and I have many stories to tell from this trip.
In this adventure
- I needed a break
- 02:40 on the coach? Nothing changes, with Heathrow Terminal 5 and British Airways South Lounge
- BA776 London Heathrow to Stockholm Arlanda (Club Europe)
- An afternoon in Stockholm featuring ABBA The Museum
- Off to Stockholm Bromma, AY840 Stockholm Bromma to Helsinki Vantaa with NoRRA (Economy Class)
- A Rapid Helsinki Transit and The Finnair Lounge
- AY099 Helsinki Vantaa to Hong Kong International with Finnair (Business Class)
- Transiting Hong Kong and Cathay Pacific’s The Pier Lounge
- CX715 (AY5855) Hong Kong International to Singapore Changi Terminal 4 with Cathay Pacific (Business Class)
- Into Singapore, IBIS Budget Crystal
- The Mercure Hotel, Bugis
- Boating around the Singapore River
- Exploring Hawker Markets and random fooding around Singapore
- The Best Camera is the One You Have With You – Exploring The Gardens by the Bay
- Up to the Marina Bay Sands Skypark…
- …and the fallout of a stolen and returned iPhone
- Back to Changi Airport the Pokemon Centre at the Jewel and Terminal 4
- 3K513 (AY6379) Singapore Changi to Bangkok Suvarnabhumi (Jetstar Asia Economy Class)
- One night in Bangkok and the Avagard Capsule Hotel, Bangkok Suvarnabhumi
- An early morning at Bangkok Suvarnabhumi and The Miracle Lounge, D Pier
- AY142 Bangkok Suvarnabhumi to Helsinki Vantaa with Finnair in Business Class
- Out of Vantaa Airport and into Helsinki… and a little beyond
- Holiday Inn, Helsinki Airport
- Early morning at Helsinki Vantaa Airport and The Finnair Schengen Lounge
- AY841 Helsinki Vantaa to Stockholm Bromma with NoRRA (Economy Class)
- The slow return to Arlanda Airport (with a military band)
- D84459 Stockholm Arlanda to London Gatwick with Norweigan Air Shuttle
- How to get home… coach or train?
- Sometimes, Simple Isn’t Needed… Or Wanted
Editors Introduction
Welcome back to the bread and butter of Economy Class and Beyond – long unending trip reports that focus on passenger experience, travel experiences, and anything else that grabs my fancy.
This time – we’ve gone long haul. Why? Why not? I need a little adventure and spice in my life. And yes – not North America for the first time in forever.
I’ve chosen to go in deep for this trip report – mainly as it is a chance to flex those memories and writing muscles… hard – something I don’t get to do when doing my usual news and views coverage.
There are some segments which are going to be compressed (after all a flight on an ATR isn’t that interesting), while some parts will get the full in-detail look they deserve.
So settle in.
Onto the usual bit. Whilst I am using Grammarly a lot more than I should (dyslexia is a pig and gets me most days of the week), my usual detractors who moan about my spelling and grammar can read this press release I wrote a few years ago about this inconstancy and how I deal with it.
And yes, I do go on a bit. More than usual it seems…
I needed a break
Those of you who have read my Hamburg trip report (and thank you so much), will know that I’ve been in desperate need of a break for some time.
With my mood in the office being… less than pleasant, punctuated with two moves, many repairs and a partridge in a pear tree, it’s time for this engineer to hang up their network cable, uninstall Microsoft Teams from their personal device, and disappear somewhere in the world where response times are 7 hours or greater.
Mainly because… I need to get away for a while. I need time where I don’t have to deal with some people for a while and answer the call “Have you got a minute to have a look at this…”
We don’t have minutes in IT. We have hours to fix the problem you present. And you’d better have logged a ticket for that problem.
But where?
It’s the summer season and prices are stupidly high. That’s the excuse to go to Google Flights and start entering random city pairs and see how much fares cost.
For this adventure, I wanted to head East. Since life has slowly returned to normal in the world and restrictions have been lifted, Asia (light versions or otherwise) has been back on my agenda.
However, prices have been high due to the soft market and lack of flights.
So I do what I always do when I’m bored. Check the FlyerTalk Premium Fare Deals threads and also Google Flights to see what I can come up with that will make me go “Oooooooooooooh”.
One of those evenings I clicked around… and suddenly saw a few fares pop up under £1800 to Singapore and Bangkok. And a fair few destinations in that area.
These all were departing from Stockholm. This had a lot of possibilities, as I started playing with the tickets.
As this is more of a leisure flight, as opposed to a Chicago trip, where I want to be in and out, I was more than open to long transits and routes out of the norm.
After fiddling with Google flights and toying around with some options, Finnair.com started spitting out interesting fares and timings – all from Stockholm Bromma Airport and Helsinki Vantaa Airport, aboard an ATR72 from Bromma and an Airbus A350 to and from Helsinki.
This would mean that I would encounter the Finnair and Collins Aerospace AirLounge seats.
For the outbound, I had a choice of a direct flight to Singapore or one with something interesting, with a diversion via Bangkok or Hong Kong. It was a matter of “which airlines were the most interesting”.
Cathay Pacific was the most interesting – with me having to go via Hong Kong on the way out. Granted, I would be arriving after midnight – but in some ways, it makes the hotel choice a lot easier for night number one,
The way back was where it got interesting. Both flights would require a night stop in Bangkok (which I was fine with), requiring a flight with Jetstar Asia.
I then had a choice of returning to Stockholm (in the dead of the night), or Helsinki (with a full day to enjoy the city), and then onwards to Stockholm the next morning.
That was not even a hard decision. Not even one thought – Helsinki it is.
With that, it was time to paste together the rest of the adventure. I had planned to use Avios Reward Flight Saver to position in and out of Stockholm. I found I could use it for the outbound flight – but for the inbound flight, I was stuffed.
Thankfully, Norwegian Air Shuttle is there to the rescue. Well, “rescue”, being a £97 fare to Gatwick Airport, including luggage.
More than I would have liked to have paid, but I’ll take it.
Let us move on to the fun that are hotels. For the first night, I’m arriving around 1 am in the morning – I just need a crash pad, nothing special. Thankfully, there are many Ibis Budgets in Singapore. And many near the Geylang Road for some reason.
So. Many. Ibis. Budgets. Within. Spitting. Distance. Of. Each. Other.
7 IBIS Budgets in a compact area
I mean to say – How many budget hotels do you need within spitting distance of each other?
I went for the Ibis Budget Crystal – mainly as it was near Old Airport Road Food Centre.
For the main hotel stay, three hotels came into focus, as I’m not using an IHG Ambassador voucher – The Mercure ICON in Chinatown, The Mercure Bugis or the M Studio in Clarke Quay. I fiddled, toyed and played with them, with the M Studio being close… until it sold out of the room I was after – thus it was back to Accor and the Mercure’s. Given where I like to be in Singapore, I decided to splurge a few extra pennies and picked the Mercure Bugis as opposed to Chinatown.
Tracking back to Europe, I would need somewhere to kip for 10 hours in Bangkok. Now, I looked around and considered the options – if to stay in downtown Bangkok, if to go out to explore, or if to find something near to the airport.
In the end, I wussed out hard and chose The Avgard Capsule Hotel. The bottom line is that I’ve got a 12-hour transit maximum… and I just need a place to bed down for a few hours before a long flight to the Nordics.
For the one night in Helsinki, I did actively consider the Crown Plaza (again). However, with an early flight, I chose convenience and the Holiday Inn near Vantaa Airport. It would be a useful enough base to explore from, but close enough to get back to the airport first thing in the morning.
Finally, there was a coach ticket to get – so National Express to the rescue again on the way out. On the way back, I’m landing at around 19:15 (allegedly)… so we’ll see if I can make the late train home.
So, I have a plan. My only deadlines are those that I self-impose – ie, I need to be at the airport at x, at a place at y.
Or a weird thing for me called “a holiday”.
Let’s go travelling. And hope I don’t have at least one travel disaster.
….crickets…
Next. 02:40 in the morning. Nothing changes.
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