Marina Bay, Singapore, at sunset.
Singapore wasn’t really a destination on this trip. It was a 16-hour stop on the way from London to Fiji, arriving in the evening and leaving again the following morning. That constraint ended up producing more decisions than I expected: whether to use miles to get there, which hotel made sense for such a short stay, how quickly I could get through Changi, and whether the benefits I had planned around were actually useful once I arrived. These are the articles that came out of those 16 hours.
Getting There
The Singapore stop began as one piece of a much longer itinerary. The first decision was whether a 50,000-mile Delta redemption was actually better than paying cash for London to Singapore.
Planning 16 Hours
With an evening arrival and an early departure for Fiji, I wasn’t really choosing the best hotel in Singapore. I was choosing the hotel that could return the most value during the few hours I would actually be there.
Arrival
That plan depended on getting out of Changi quickly. I timed the process from the moment the aircraft reached the gate to the point where I could request a Grab into the city.
The Stay
The Capitol Kempinski was the hotel I chose. One article reviews the stay itself; the other goes back to the assumptions behind the decision and asks whether the plan actually worked.
Leaving
Less than a day after arriving, I was back at Changi for the flight to Nadi. The departure produced two different stories: one about how much Business Class actually added at an unusually efficient airport, and another about the Fiji Airways flight that took the trip onward.
That was the entire Singapore visit: one evening, one night and one early morning. It was never meant to produce a destination guide. These seven articles are simply the decisions, observations and results that came out of making those 16 hours work.
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