South East Asia 2017 - Day 1: Napier to Singapore

Flying from daybreak to dusk

 

5 August 2017 - fine / partly cloudy, 28° 

One of the pitfalls of living a little bit off the beaten track ( both being in Napier and then being in New Zealand ) is that unless you are making the ( relatively ) short hop over to Australia, the start of an international holiday requires a day of travel.  So it was today as we had to get up @ 4:40am to fly from Napier before the sun rose, and headed to Auckland to meet our connection to Singapore.  No complaints though: the short 1 hour flight was a great way to see the sun rise over the Pacific Ocean and cast it's light over the green hills blow us.

 

After a few hours in Auckland we jumped onto our Singapore Airlines flight and headed off again.   The flight was pretty bumpy most of the way with a headwind, but we got some nice views of Brisbane and the vast Australian nothingness as we head over at 38,000 feet.  As we dodged the thunder storms on our way into Singapore we were treated to some nice shots of those clouds catching the last of the light, before we dropped into Changi Airport.  A taxi ride into town to our hotel ( Peninsular Excelsior ) to find we had scored a corner room with a view straight out to Marina Bay Sands.