Postcards From Kevin: Singapore in Style

Visiting Singapore is worth the flight

By Kevin Raub
Published: Dec 30, 2007
Photography by Singapore Airlines

At first tuck in, the bed I'm currently slinking into might seem something miraculous, a Sleep Number or a Sealy Posturepedic, perhaps; but it's neither of those, though it is a miracle. As I pull the soft and weighted cover over me—it's Givenchy, mind you—I have mere minutes to ponder how wonderfully comfortable this is before I'm off in a Xanax-induced dreamland from which I will awake very far away from where I laid myself to sleep. Though these priceless little ZZZ's do come courtesy of something formerly called a SpaceBed, I'm not somewhere over the moon, but somewhere over the Sea of Japan.

As hard as it is to imagine, I'm actually on a Boeing 777, one purchased by Singapore Airlines and currently on its way from Los Angeles to Singapore, an 18-hour journey (with a brief stop in Taipei) that would be wholly intolerable if it weren’t for the airline's over-the-top business class cabin, and its newly-tweaked business class, on planes on this route since July.

Now, I have experienced my fair share of business classes (American, Air India, Air Tahiti Nui, Quantas, Lufthansa, and Austrian to name but a few) but thus far in my illustrious travel writing career, the fully flat bed has eluded me. And believe me, there's nothing more disappointing then flying upright and realizing that the wonderful seat you're occupying goes a hell of a lot further down than coach, but not quite flat. It's like wining and dining a supermodel, only to get her home and find out she's frigid.

Singapore Airline's new business class beds—once called SpaceBeds, now just called "business class" beds for some indiscernible reason—aren’t as futuristic as they sound (the design is a little dull, frankly) but do boast the widest seats in the sky at 30-inches (not so important to me but it seems something the airline loves to highlight) and convert into a fully-flat, 76-inch beds (three inches shorter than me and a statistic that gets me much more excited). The problem is getting the damn thing to work. Converting the seats from takeoff position to sleep position should be a Roadblock on The Amazing Race. You could stare at it for hours before figuring it out.

Which is exactly why lovely flight attendants like Chen Wei-Ju make up your bed for you. It turns out the bed doesn’t collapse into a flat bed like most airline seats, but rather folds over itself like the backseat of a Lincoln Navigator. It could have taken me the entire length of the flight to figure that one out. Once my bed is made, another problem arises: Sleep, eat, or spend all night rummaging through the ridiculous entertainment system.

I opt for all three. The personal video monitors are huge by airline standards (15.4 inch LCD's) and feature enough choices to suffocate the most avid coach potato. There are 100 movies from a dozen or so countries as well as 150 television shows and 700 full-length CDs. It's headspinning. I feel like a porn addict in a Vivid Video warehouse. Do I watch Quo Vadis, Baby? (Italy), Dvenoy Dozor (Russia), or Shootout at Lokhandwala (India)? Oh… here’s a French film (Hors de Prix) with Audrey Tautou (remember her? Amelie?). Yeah, she's a cutie. I go for that while deciding on my meal selection. I see Chef Nancy Oakes, of San Francisco's Boulevard fame, designed one of the signature dishes, the sautéed prawns with tomato relish, tortilla with melted jack cheese, and green pumpkin seed sauce. It is the single greatest dish I have ever eaten at 35,000-feet, though my SpaceBed does leave a little to be desired during meal service. The tray table isn’t situated appropriately in relation to the upright position of the seat. It's a small design flaw, but I can still eat.

When it comes time to sleep, the usual plane sleep roadblocks are nowhere to be found. I don’t hear the slow hum of the engine, I don’t have anyone bumping my feet or elbows as they walk down the aisle, I can't hear the beeps of the flight attendant call button when the jackass in 35E keeps bumping it with his iPod. It takes all of five-minutes to descend into high-altitude slumber. Before I know it, breakfast is served (fried egg noodles with char siew, shrimp, and cabbage). Eight solid hours.

I'm pretty sure I dreamed of Audrey Tautou.

Kevin Raub is a freelance travel and entertainment writer who contributes regularly to Travel+Leisure, Town & Country, American Way, and Organic Spa, among others. He often finds himself in precarious parts of the world, doing things his mother wholly advises against.

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