How We Spent 45 Hours at the Singapore Changi Airport
Mini-Adventure, Milk Cheese, & YOTELAIR
What do you do with 45 hours between countries and a ticket to Japan? You live in the airport—and not just any airport, but the best one on the planet.
After saying goodbye to our friends in Malaysia, we set out for our next adventure—Singapore! We had been looking at reward flights, trying to find a good deal on a flight to Japan. Japan wasn’t on our original itinerary because it’s wildly expensive, but knowing we’d be there during cherry blossom season, we wanted to find a way to make it work.
We worked some point magic and found a reward flight on ANA Airlines using Virgin Atlantic points, which we transferred from our Chase and Bilt credit cards. Out-of-pocket flights were costing around $800 for the both of us on budget airlines, and up to $1,500 on non-budget airlines. For our flight, we paid $222 total. However, the date of this flight left us with an almost two day gap between Malaysia and Japan.
So, we decided to turn this into a mini-adventure and spend our time in the world’s top-ranked airport. This was a win for both of us—Andrew was super excited to go to Japan, and Erin had been wanting to visit the Singapore airport and explore all it had to offer. For the record, Erin was also excited for Japan—but not so much for the budget (Andrew is in his menace era when it comes to the budget).
Some light internet research showed that Changi Airport has been ranked as the top airport in the world 13 times—clearly, there’s something special about it. Once you land and clear customs, you can take a free shuttle to the Jewel. The Jewel is a landside feature of the airport—essentially a mega shopping mall connected to the terminals. People living in or visiting Singapore can also visit and explore the Jewel, in addition to those on layovers.
We booked two nights at the YOTELAIR, which meant we didn’t need to leave the airport for the duration of our stay. Our YOTEL ended up costing more than most of our hotels on this entire trip ($227 total for both nights—this was after applying $50 in reward points), but the convenience of being able to explore the Jewel at all hours made it worthwhile. After arriving at Changi and making our way to the Jewel, we had several hours to kill before we could check in at 6 p.m (rude). At this point, we were tired and hot from the plane ride and found a corner to lay down and sleep. Seriously, we slept in this corner for a couple hours.
Once checked in, we had to laugh at the size of our room. We’re not sure the pictures accurately convey this, but the room was tiny. There wasn’t enough space to open both of our bags at the same time, and the bed was the full length of the room. Despite this, the purple lighting was fun, and it served as a quiet oasis from the hustle and bustle of the Jewel. Plus, we have a micro-van at home that we sleep in on trips so this was huge compared to that!
The main feature of the Jewel is the world’s largest indoor waterfall, which can be viewed from most floors in the ten-story building. The Jewel is filled with various tourist attractions, food spots, and shops. Attractions ranged from canopy walks to virtual reality experiences to garden viewings to a movie theater. We opted not to pay for any experiences while in the Jewel. However, we did explore the Pokémon store, Starbucks Reserve, Don Quijote, and many of the food venues and stores. As a reminder, Don Quijote is a Japanese discount store, and we’ve now found it in Thailand, Hong Kong, and Singapore!
Our time at the Changi airport served as a nice rest period for us—we were able to catch up on various things and recharge without feeling too guilty that we weren’t out sightseeing. Besides, as we kept saying: we were in the world’s best airport! It’s totally a destination in and of itself. If you ever get the chance to do a long layover or spend the night here, we highly recommend it just for the experience.
The time passed quickly. We were able to eat some good food, get our steps in walking through the Jewel, and find lots of snacks. We spent a lot of time setting up our Japan plans—booking hotels and trains—as well as flights and accommodations for the country we’ll visit after Japan. We’d do some planning for a few hours, take a break to walk around the Jewel, forage for food, come back to our room, and repeat!
Our food consisted of more than one trip to A&W for some good old-fashioned cheeseburgers (that actually tasted pretty close to home), and 7-Eleven ramen. Another perk to the YOTEL, was having a secluded seating area that overlooked a section of the Jewel. We also enjoyed several delicious desserts, ranging from Cinnabon to brownies to milk cheese ice cream. The milk cheese ice cream was hands down one of the best desserts we’ve had so far on this trip. If you get the opportunity to try it—you should!
Finally, the morning came for us to leave our little YOTEL and walk through the connecting sky bridge to our departure gates. This airport was so comfortable, clean, and easy to navigate—which we loved. Just being able to walk a little ways and be at the gates, ready to check in and drop bags, was a dream. Plus, while waiting to check-in at our terminal, we were greeted by this animated water entrance - so cool.
One last thing—and a sneak peek for Japan—without knowing it when we redeemed our reward flight, we found out at the gate that our plane was one of ANA’s Pikachu Jets! This is a Pokémon-themed airplane and flight, which made Andrew super excited and had him totally geeking out when he realized we were on this special flight.
See you in Japan!
Overall Trip Illness and Injury Count: No new additions for Singapore!
Andrew - 2 (dehydration in Australia and food poisoning in Indonesia)
Erin - 2 (cold and food poisoning in England)
Your friends in travel,
Erin and Andrew