Ewens-Downing Adventures in Asia

(By Ron) The time finally arrived to board our flight to Hong Kong. Because the traffic getting to the airport was so light, we had several hours at the airport before our departure time of 1:20 am. I was surprised that many of the people at the check in counters were headed to India. I guess when you’re going halfway around the world, it doesn’t matter whether you go via London and Frankfurt or via Hong Kong and Singapore. It turns out that our flight (Singapore #001) was a code share with Air India. But all of the people going to India were in economy class and they headed off to the gate area. I had to ask if there was a Singapore Airlines departure lounge for business class. Yes, there was and it was called “Silver Kris” for the airline’s frequent flier program.

The Silver Kris departure lounge was OK, with snacks and beverages; it wouldn’t have been a bad place to hang out for an hour or so. But we were there for about 2 and 1/2 hours. Better to be early and have time to kill rather than be late and get overly stressed, right? Our boarding passes told us that boarding began at 12:50 am, so I hurried Louis to shut down his laptop at 12:40 am.