After 18+ hours in the air—all of them spent comfortably reclined in my most excellent Singapore Airlines business class cubby—I am now ensconced in the business class lounge at the Singapore Airport, availing myself of the copious complimentary amenities. Chief among them is the extensive international breakfast buffet, a somewhat more subdued version of the lavish spread found in most Asian hotels. Lest they fail to please every last guest, these dining rooms offer an international round-up of every conceivable breakfast fodder—and I'm talking pancakes, waffles, gelato and brioche, omelettes and eggs every which way, crepes, full-on English fry-ups with kippers and sausage and tomatoes, croissants and muffins of every stripe, groaning platters of tropical fruit, miso soup, Vietnamese pho, Chinese dim sum and congee, Indonesian fried rice, hoppers, porridge, muesli, and that's not all. When I stayed at the Conrad Hotel in Bangkok with my friend Lisa, we tried desperately to monitor our intake every morning but inevitably trudged out for a day of sightseeing, shopping and more eating with already pronounced potbellies. To wit, I landed here at 5am, it's now 7, and I've already been to the buffet twice.
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This is going to be the view from my window in a couple of days. More vacation? you say. But you just got back from Antigua! I admit, it does look an awful lot like a holiday but, in fact, it's more of a rescue mission. G got into a motorcycle accident while on a job in Indonesia and shattered the bones in his left shin. He's currently recuperating from surgery in a hospital in Yogyakarta and I'm hopping a Singapore Airlines flight to be by his side. By the time I get there (having flown nearly 24 hours on three planes), he will have checked into the lovely hotel you see above. He needs to recuperate for a couple of weeks before he can fly (danger of deep vein thrombosis), so I'll be posting from there for a while. It's called making lemonade.
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