Singapore Diary. Part 1: The trip from Boston

Saturday, July 22, 2007

SingaporeMedicine, the medical tourism branch of the Singapore Tourism Board organized a media event around the launch of Josef Woodman's Patients Beyond Borders, Singapore edition. Joe suggested I come along to see what Singapore had to offer, and I decided to use it as an opportunity to do some research for MedTripInfo.

I'm posting interviews and speeches from the trip on the site. These diary entries will add a bit of color commentary.

Singapore is a long way from Boston, especially flying coach! I left Boston on a 9 am flight Saturday morning and arrived at the airport in Singapore just before midnight Sunday night, Singapore time. And that was with a reasonable itinerary and without delays.

On the way over I read the ebook version of the new Woodman book, which includes the advice to fly coach because international business class tickets are so expensive. That's reasonable advice, yet there are ways to make the experience a little better. I'm a frequent flyer on American Airlines and was able to get United (my carrier to Singapore) to match my Platinum status. That helped me secure aisle seats in United's EconomyPlus section, which provides extra legroom. I found it made a real difference. If you do fly United (a big carrier to Asia) and don't have elite status, you might consider purchasing access to Economy Plus, which they'll provide for $299. And if you somehow can get a business class ticket, you might consider it, even if just for the return trip.

I changed planes in Chicago, then took the 12-hour flight to Japan, thinking of the Tokyo Test along the way. At Narita airport I noticed a bathroom feature that is an obvious idea , but one that doesn't seem to have made it to the US or Europe (unless I've missed something). It's a motion-activated faucet with the added feature of a lever to control the temperature. That way you can find the temperature you want for handwashing rather than relying on the default setting. Kind of cool.

After packed planes on my first two legs I was lucky to encounter an almost empty cabin from Tokyo to Singapore. That's probably because the Asian airlines plying the route have much better customer service than their US counterparts. In any event it meant I was able to lie down across several seats and arrive in Singapore more rested than would otherwise have been the case.

See Part 2: Arrival in Singapore