Her Month with J Ends

The part of this trip that A has been on that gave me most worry was A flying home alone. The reason was because she would be dropped off not in Singapore, but in Phuket, Thailand because J’s family were continuing to sail for a few weeks. This meant A would have to take a one-way flight alone on an Asian budget airline to Singapore which got her to the airport at 1am and then her flight from Singapore would leave at 6am. That flight from Singapore by the way was a funny one. It stopped in Tokyo, then on to Atlanta. Then after a lengthy layover she’d have to fly five hours west home. I was worried about her getting her bags in Singapore, being in the airport alone for that length of time, etc. I contacted my work colleagues in Australia and New Zealand who fly through Singapore a lot. They assured me they’d done the same themselves and that the Singapore airport is very populated in the middle of the night and also a very nice airport. One of my colleagues even called me, asked for A’s plans and then emailed me back her cousin’s personal cell phone and work details because he was a senior engineer at the Singapore airport and said if anything came up, he’d be happy to make sure she got where she needed to be. My friends J and M in Atlanta said if she had any troubles with her flight home, they’d be happy to pick her up for the evening. I was so touched but not surprised at all by their generosity.


So it’s 3am in Singapore which means her first flight is over and A calls me over Skype (thank goodness for Skype!). She’s sniffling so I immediately get worried and ask her what’s wrong, is she having trouble getting checked in for Delta? She quickly dismisses all that and says she’s in for the next flight but that she’s tired and she misses me and doesn’t want to get on a plane for 20 hours. Unfortunately she’s inherited our inability to sleep on planes. She calmed down and started telling me about the trip. I was at work so I told her to call her dad and they talked for a good hour, and then she was ready to go.

The flight tracker on the airline websites now is awesome! We were able to keep up with her the whole way. She called from Atlanta in a much better mood having eaten some Krystal burgers. I told her she sounded much better than she did in Singapore and she said that it was because she wasn’t on the verge of an emotional breakdown, lol. She proceeded to tell me about all the fun Japanese candy she bought in the Tokyo Airport and how on the flight she was able to watch her all-time favorite movie from their movie library, Singing in the Rain.

After we picked her up last night we plugged her camera into the television and looked at her pictures, heard stories about gangs of monkeys, Universal Studios in Singapore, jetskiing, cats sitting in drink refrigerators on Thai islands, bartering in the markets, and the amazing food. Most of all we heard about all the laughs she and J had. They were emotional to part when the time came. I’m so glad they remain such close friends. She thanked us for the trip and then I was off to bed as she and H continued to talk. She’s had an amazing summer.