Two days after arriving back in Brisbane, this is the first time I’ve felt like going near a keyboard thanks to this rotten cold I picked up.  I’ve slept most of the time since coming back.  But yes, safe and not-quite-sound, I’m back home.

My last day in Singapore!  This update comes to you from the refurbished Qantas/British Airways lounge at Singapore Airport.  Today we caught the MRT to a couple of “suburban” shopping centres, the goal being kid’s clothes and other things for Nicholas.  As always, Quek was very accommodating and spent way too much of his time with us!

Today was a very tiring day, as it seems I’ve caught a cold and I really didn’t feel up to more long walks.  I’m glad I did it though — there’s a chain of shops in Singapore called Kiddie Palace and they have a lot of kids clothes and toys, and I’ve brought a bunch of shirts and some Thomas the Tank Engine VCDs (which might be interesting as they might be foreign language even though the sales assistant said “English”).

As I’ve already written, I’m really looking forward to getting home but at the same time I’m sorry that the trip is nearly over.  It’s been a really difficult trip, and to be honest we have squeezed way too much into too short a time, but each place we stopped had something to offer and I would not like to have missed anything out.

I’m beginning to think that three weeks is about my “hump” for being away from home.  I’ve been thinking the whole time about Nicholas and Susan and home, but it usually happens at about the three week point that it gets a bit stronger and I start longing for home.  Maybe it’s just that I’m in the final stop on the “tour”, so I know that home is that much closer now…  Anyway, whatever it is, to everyone at home I want to say I miss you and I can’t wait to see you.

Last night we arrived in Singapore after very smooth flight from Frankfurt.  Surprisingly, I managed to get some sleep overnight and I’ve felt quite good today (on my last legs now but!).  Today in Singapore had us visiting a number of shopping areas for various things including of course, a visit to IT-geek-heaven, Sim Lim Square.

The transition from still-in-cold-winter-mode Europe to balmy tropical Singapore has been fairly smooth — no doubt aided by the air conditioning in the shops we’ve visited.  We went for a walk before the shopping trip though, and that was horrendous.  I guess that was the short sharp drop into the deep-end that set up up for the rest of the day (either that or I sweated so much during the walk that there was nothing left to sweat for the rest of the day).

To me, traffic in Singapore is disproportionately bad.  I can understand Dublin, where population growth has outstripped predictions and left road and public transport infrastructure gasping.  But Singapore has really good roads and one of the best public transport systems in the world (well, to me the MRT is fantastic); yet, the roads are always full of cars.  Not only that, but demand for car parking is unbelievable in some places.

As usual I’ve spent too much money (only saying that, I haven’t really).  Sim Lim Square is just 6 floors of pure and utter temptation (ladies, imagine the ground floor of your downtown Myer or Macys or Marks & Spencer repeated six times in the one building and you’ll get an idea of what Sim Lim Square is like for a geekguy).  I think I’ve done well to get away with the little I did pick up (a couple of memory cards and a spare battery for the camera, and some more memory for the home server)… having said that, the bed is strewn with the price lists from all the shops I visited, so that I can build a shopping list…

If you ever find yourself on a sector that transits Frankfurt, make sure you get all the boarding cards for all your onward sectors!  Aer Lingus said they couldn’t give us our FRA-SIN boarding pass, and said “just go to the transfer desk in Frankfurt”.  Trouble is, there is no transfer desk airside in Frankfurt, and the security people won’t let you past without a boarding pass!

Rog and I had to cross the border to get landside in order to go to the Qantas check-in counter to get a boarding card, then cross back over the border again — it’s a shame that our passport stamps don’t have the time on them, as I’m sure we could lay claim to one of the quickest visits to the EU and Germany ever!

If you’re flying First or Business and your flight goes from a “D” gate in Terminal 2, you can get to the lounge without going through security and get a boarding pass from there.  If only we’d known that — we would have saved three laps of Frankfurt Airport looking for a non-existent transfer desk!

Of course, we’d have no funny story to tell either…

I’ve been spoiled by free Internet access in most places we’ve been; so much so that the thought of paying €8 to do this update was a teeth-dryer.  Anyway, we are in the Delta lounge at Frankfurt airport after a frenetic stopover in Dublin.  What’s happened the last couple of days?  Well, I’m glad you asked…

After our day trip to Rotterdam we had to back-up for an early start for the flight to Dublin.  Rog had another stuff-up at check-in, as for some reason his booking showed up as having a paper ticket and he nearly was not able to check in.  Once that was sorted we were able to enjoy the delights of early morning at Schipol Airport without lounge access.

Dublin Airport arrivals was a shocker.  After negotiating a labyrinthine corridor from the arrival gate, we got to the end of the queue for Customs and Immigration — still in the corridor.  The reason for that was evident when we eventually got to the customs hall — I think our family room at home is larger!  After getting through customs we managed to reunite ourselves with our bags and make our way to the second-longest taxi queue I’ve ever seen, and (eventually) the second-grumpiest taxi driver I’ve ever met.

The Holiday Inn in Dublin claims to be in the City Centre, and they have a map hanging in the lobby that allows them to prove it: except that the “you are here” pointer is right at the right-hand edge of the map!  Still, about 15 minutes walk brought us to the centre of town.

It probably sounds so far like I didn’t like Dublin, but from arriving at the hotel and onward the experience was totally different.  Most of the people we met were friendly and helpful, and we had a great time, which started almost straight away: our rooms weren’t ready, so we decided to walk into town and came across a hop-on-hop-off bus tour that we cannot recommend too highly.  €14 got us a ticket that lasts 24 hours and allows unlimited travel for that time.  Thoroughly enjoyable!  Lunch in the Temple Bar district, then back on the bus to stop at the Guinness Storehouse — well worth the visit even if you’re not a fan of “Arthur’s Best” (and especially if you are!).

Dublin was a very quick stop with mixed emotions for me: I’d love to have stayed longer, but I’m eager to get to Singapore and home.  I’m glad we decided to include Dublin in our trip, and I’d hope to get back again to do a proper visit.

Today we did a day trip to Rotterdam, south of Amsterdam (no, not all the names of towns in Holland end in “dam”).  We caught the Intercity train to Rotterdam Centraal and spent the day looking around the sights of this fair city.

Rotterdam is know for some striking examples of modern architecture, and we saw many of those today.  From an engineering standpoint, perhaps the most remarkable is the Erasmusbrug, a suspension bridge with only a single support tower at one end.

We also saw the Euromast, which gives a fantastic view of Rotterdam and the surrounding area from an observation deck 112m above sea level.  I ventured into the Euroscoop, which takes you to as high as is possible — approximately 185m!  That was a real adventure.

I also went looking for the building made famous (to fung-fu fans at least) as the building that Jackie Chan jumped from and slid down in the movie “Who Am I?”.  I’m pretty sure I found it, near the waterfront district, but it’s been a while since I saw the film and I couldn’t be totally sure.

A bit of shopping in the very extensive shopping district made the day complete.  Thank you Rotterdam!

That was us yesterday, as we took a “Canal-Bus” tour.  It’s the hop-on-hop-off style of tour that we’ve had in other cities, except this time it uses a canal boat instead of a bus.  Three different “lines”, and a total of 14 stops to visit — we managed to fill up the day quite nicely.  The ticket only cost €16 for all day usage; in fact, it’s still valid until midday today!

For the most part we simply stayed on board the boat and watched the city go by.  We hopped off at one stage to have some lunch — here’s ironic; for all our commentary about America recently, where did we go for lunch but the Hard Rock Cafe Amsterdam.  The nice thing about the Canal-Bus service is that it provides three different tours of Amsterdam as well as the hop-on-hop-off facility.

We had another stroll around the city as well, including skirting the edges of the Red Light District, and a bit more shopping.

And, we saw the sun!  The cloud cover broke in the afternoon, allowing some sunlight through.

The hotel I’m in has the usual channel on the TV that shows you all about the place, the restaurants, the movies, and so on.  But in the background, they’re playing a local radio station, and I could make enought sense of the Dutch announcements to identify it as Sky Radio.  On a whim, I went to Google Netherlands and sure enough the station has a website (here if you’re interested).  A terrific variety of music — I don’t think I’ve ever heard Sugababes and The Righteous Brothers on the same station, let alone consecutively.  Very listenable — it’ll be on my streaming list from now on.

The state of the union might be good, but the state of the Union is not.  Rog and I are both making statements like “this is our last trip to America”, which now that we have left the US are reinforced by the difference between travelling to and within the US and our experience so far in Europe.  What follows borders on political, and is possibly a rant partially fuelled by a can of Danish beer, but I can see no good coming from the US’ obsession with security.

I’m not going to get started on 9/11 or the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan — I don’t have anything to add on these topics.  But as a foreign traveller who visited the US a couple of times just prior to 9/11 and on numerous occasions since — a traveller from a supposed key ally and “friend” of the US too, I might add — I am appalled at the way that the US treats its own citizens and its visitors.  Dignity and privacy go out the window in a US airport nowadays, or at a foreign airport for flights with US destinations.  Apparently it’s the price we have to pay for travelling by air these days.

We have taken what was even only ten or twenty years ago the most prestigious form of travel (with the possible exception of luxury ocean cruising) and turned it into one of the most impersonal, stressful and dehumanising experiences on the planet.  In my opinion, anyone who says that deprivation of liberty is a requirement for air travel is part of the problem — we should be intolerant, we should be complaining, we should be angry at what is happening.  The longer we “grin and bear it” the more it will become the accepted norm, and what will be next?  Every time we accept having our fingerprints and photograph taken at the US border we accept that part of our privacy and liberty be sacrificed to a foreign power, and what will be next?

The secondary issue to this is the attitude displayed by these screening people.  I do not doubt for a minute that these folk have a very difficult job — but if our attitude as travellers forms part of the screening process or carries the risk of prosecution, then so should the screeners’ attitudes be kept in check.  Are they deliberately being obtuse and agressive in an attempt to solicit a response from would-be aggressors?  Who knows.  But at the least, I would expect the courteous, respectful treatment that the TSA themselves state I should receive.

Even within the US things are different.  The street at the boundary of the South Lawn of the White House in Washington DC has been closed, preventing clear access to one of the nicest White House photo opportunities.  Supposedly the most powerful man in the world, and he cowers from his own people behind concrete and steel and men with guns.  What happened to the Office of the President being more important than the person holding it?

I’ll post an update after I’m home, once I’ve calmed down from the whole travel scene — it might be that I’m just strung out from too much transit and not enough sleep.  I’d really like to think that