Changi Airport always comes through also. We arrived into our gate at around 4:30am with the airport fairly empty - but the lounges are open 24/7 which is always great. We arrived into Changi's pristine T3 (where most of the long haul flights reside) and within ten minutes I was nestling into the sleep room of the KrisFlyer Business Class lounge. Helps taht since all flights in and out of Singapore are international, there is no security to get back airside when you arrive - it is much like arriving on a domestic flight in the US. The lounge was nearly empty, and there was one pod available in the sleeping area, so I nestled in to try to force myself to sleep to around 7am local time (again, trying my hardest to get close to Asia time zones).
The lounge chairs in the sleep area are super comfortable, but weirdly at 5am they started playing music. Now, it was some relaxing, sleep type music, but for someone who was forcing sleep anyway, it wasn't ideal. I was able to get some decent sleep for a few hours, but promptly at 7am, I escaped that area to a far busier lounge. I got some breakfast shumai and dumplings, coffee and settled in while I waited around 45 minutes for a shower suite. It was well worth the wait though, as the lounge had these great showers suites with just lovely touches. Overall, it was a great experience in the T3 lounge, where I left aroudn 8am, with still four hours to go in my layover.
My flight to Bangkok was departing out of Terminal 2, which is easily reachable by sky train, but since I had the time, I walked msot of the lenght of the main part of T3 to visit the Butterfly Garden, always a nice delight. Most of my flights in and out of Singapore have been in T3, so I was actually excited to visit Terminal 2 and see their gardens, both the ones inside the terminal that are just beautiful, serene, stunning, and the Sunflower Garden on the roof which was lovely, but sadly didn't really have a view of apron below. Traipsing through Changi is just a lvoely experience. Sure, some airports are more architecturally stunning, but no airport is as green and as pleasant at all times.
Finally, I did reach the T2 Business Class lounge, which much like T2 overall vs T3, was a little simpler, not as fancy, but offered basically all teh same food, and the big win being it was way less full. I was able to finish off watching the really good Jail Blazers documentary on NETFLIX, and some shut eye before the flight to Bangkok.
The flight to Bangkok was on SQ's B787-10, which it uses for these short ot medium haul flights. Funnily, the seat in business class is probably better on this than their long-haul A350, but whatever, enough shitting on the seat/bed. The flight itself was great - classic SQ with a multi-course lunch despite the two hour flying time.
We got a perfectly lucky gate at Suvurnabhumi, where it opened up basically right to the immigration line, which was basically empty. Granted, all this meant is about a 15 minute wait at baggage claim, but still better than what can be really long walks through the cavernous halls of Suvurnabhumi. By 3pm I was getting into my Grab cab, and within thirty or so minutes I was at the Aloft deep in teh heart of Sukhumvit. I've never had the process from plane to hotel be so easy and pleasant - Bangkok seems emptier than usual. Granted, this is early afternoon on a weekday, and I'm sure hours from now when we struggle to get a cab to get us to Gaggan in time, it may be different.
I didn't really have much plans for Bangkok, so I traipsed around the Sukhumvit area through various glistening malls and the Bangkok Arts Center, a place I first found on my most recent trip to the city in 2024, despite going quite near it a bunch as it sits right across a lane from the Siam complexes. Now, the one closest to it seems to be a fairly new one, named Siam Design, but that connects to Siam Central and Siam Paragon, the last being maybe my favorite mega-mall on Sukhumvit. For the arts center, the sad news is one of the three floors was being redone for a new installation, but the good news is the top floor was showcasing about 30 winning art pieces from a country wide art competition and they were just lovely, mixing great modernism and vibrancy with recognizable images of Thailand underneath.
After a while and a couple iced coffees (usually not my go too, but combination of jet lag, tiredness and heat made this a no brainer), I went over to the Hair of the Dog Beer Bar off Sukhumvit, a trusted bottel shop. The Canadian owners weren't there this time like they were on the last trip, but the beer options were just as good as always. On the whole, while my limited time sightseeing in Bangkok largely consisted of me re-tracing things I've done a handful of times already, that doesn't matter since this is almost intentionally not a trip about Bangkok, and more than that the real gem of Bangkok was to come.
We weren't supposed to go to Gaggan this trip. In fact, when we were planning to go in February, we weren't - it was sold out. But after we switched to April it was available - at least three seats were. I volunteered to take the wait list spot, given I'd gone there before and the other three hadn't, but about ten days or so before the trip, the waitlist spot cleared, so here we go. This is an interseting time to visit - about a month before they unveil a new menu with a new high for them of 28 courses (the initial restaurant was 25, moved down to 22 for a few years now), and more interestingly, chef Gaggan Anand saying he would ban people from using phones to take pictures during hte meal. That hasn't happened yet, so I was interesting to see how much phone / picture usage there would be, or if he would comment on it.
In the end, Gaggan was amazing, with the one sad bit being that the chef himself wasn't there this time, making it twice I've gone without hin being there, three times with. From a food perspective, it was maybe my favorite meal there since my very first one. I may have gotten my research wrong, as it seemed they were already doing the elongated menu, though it was 25 courses, first with six each from/inspired by India, Japan and Thailand, and then seven more "communal". The pace was rapid, the chefs were charming, funny and entrrtaining and the whole experience was as good as ever.
So was #FindTheLockerRoom, which my friends enjoyed tremendously, from the weirdness of the names of the drinks, to the taste of them as well. They even got a fair kick of the "hidden-ness" of the entrance, to which I spent a good two minutes trying to remember / figure out how to open. I didn't tell them, though, of the real surprise, which si the second set of lockers up the stairs, which they just loved. Anyway, it was a traditional Bangkok day in a sense, doing all things I've done before, but with friends and some in better (Gaggan) ways. In the end though, that was the idea of the first day to ease my way into the trip before a whole lot of new things start tomorrow.
