Did you know Singapore has more than one airport? Most people don’t; they only know Changi. Seletar is Singapore’s second airport. It is, in all respects, the exact opposite of Changi. While Singapore’s main airport is huge, Seletar is small, and only regularly serviced by a single airline: Berjaya Air. Changi is full of shops and restaurants selling just about everything you could want, while Seletar has a couple of vending machines.
Not that there’s anything wrong with Seletar. After all, with only one airline, it wouldn’t make sense to have too many shops. Berjaya, on the other hand, definitely hasn’t impressed me. When I booked today’s flight a month or more ago, the itinerary was issued with a departure time of 12:00 noon. Since there’s no flight from Bangkok that will get me to Singapore in time for a noon connection, I arranged to fly in last night and stay in a hotel.
I arrived at Seletar around 9:30 for my "noon" flight. There was nobody at the check-in counters, but it was early, so I took a seat in the waiting room. The time passed 10:00, then 11:00 and still nobody at the counters. By this time there were several other people waiting for the same flight. Someone finally called Berjaya’s office in Kuala Lumpur, and was told that the flight time had been changed to 3:05 pm.
Oh well, it gives me time to write this up. It would be nice if there was some Internet available here, so I could post it.
Just an update: The plane eventually arrived around 4:00 pm, in the midst of a torrential thunderstorm. It had obviously been circling for a while before it landed, and we didn’t get on the plane until around 5:00. However, once we got to Tioman, it was a beautiful day. So I made it, eventually!