- The crowd is back, everybody's flying.
I am so excited, about to explode,
flying Singapore Airlines.
- It's Sam Chui!
- [Sam] Hi, how are you?
(everyone laughing)
But your feet go inside a box.
So, which is... can be difficult when you turn around.
You don't have the menu anymore?
They serve actually a very authentic Indonesian breakfast.
Just landing in Singapore, very quiet.
I met a lady from Indonesia and guess what she have?
She have a very cute aeroplane t-shirt.
The whole airport is very quiet.
I've never seen Chinese so quiet.
- How are you? - [Sam] Look at your hair!
I love it, perfection.
- Thank you so much.
- [Sam] Love it. What is it, French twist, right?
- No, no this is just a bun.
For economy class we have this sustainable meal box.
- I see some shocking sights
of all the Thai Airways A-380, 777, parked,
some without engines.
(upbeat music)
I'm back at Dubai Airport, the crowd is back.
Everybody's flying.
Look at the lines, the queues,
it's really, really crowded here.
Terminal one is back.
They reopened the terminal
and today I'm going on Singapore Airlines.
(upbeat music)
Guess what, I met another YouTuber in the lounge
and I ask him,
- [With Khaled] In the YouTuber lounge,
not first class lounge.
- Oh, YouTuber lounge, With Khaled.
- Yeah, With Khaled.
What kind of YouTube video do you do?
- Do you love football? Just watch me.
- Ohhh, soccer.
- Soccer, exactly.
- Okay, cool man, aviation, nice to meet you.
When aviation met soccer.
- Exactly.
- [Sam] What are you cooking?
- [Cook] I'm cooking omelettes, sir.
- [Sam] Omelettes?
- [Cook] Yeah, one sitting only.
- [Sam] Omelettes at 11:00 PM, breakfast all day.
Thank you, nice burger.
- [Server] Leia.
- [Sam] Leia. It's nice you still remember me
before COVID 2019.
- [Server] Yeah.
(server chuckling)
- It's nice. You're still here.
It's great to see everybody's back.
Bye, I see you next time.
(all exchanging goodbyes)
(upbeat music)
- I am so excited, about to explode,
flying Singapore airlines.
I know it's been a long while.
(background noise of people talking)
- Take one of these?
- [Employee] Yup.
Thank you.
- [Sam] Thank you, thank you.
- [Employee] Have a nice flight!
- [Sam] Alright. Thank you very much. It's a little weird.
They hand out all the sanitising kits
and a water at the gates instead of on board.
How are you?
- [Airline Attendant] Good, yourself?
- [Sam] It's been a while. (both laughing)
Been a long while, two years almost.
First time flying Singapore.
- [Airline Attendant] (laughing) Welcome back!
- [Sam] Okay.
So just settle in my seat.
This is actually the regional configuration.
This is also my first time flying
in one to one regional configuration on their A-350.
(upbeat music)
- [Airline Attendants] Go straight ahead, please.
Good evening, sir.
Thank you so much.
Welcome aboard.
Thank you, this way.
- [Passenger] It's Sam Chui! - [Sam] Hi, how are you?
(all laughing)
- [Passenger] I'm good!
- [Sam] Good to see you.
- [Airline Attendants] Hi, good evening, ma'am.
- Right now, it's toward the end of the boarding process.
It is a happy sight to see a lot of passengers
coming on board and they're excited.
- [Sam] You got the last one coming now.
- [Airline Attendant] Yes, welcome aboard, sir.
Go straight ahead.
You can move, right there, to your right.
Yup!
- [Sam] Yeah, flight's no longer empty.
- [Airline Attendant] Yes.
- [Airline Attendant] Mr. Chui, here's a pair of socks,
a pair of sneakers, and eye shades.
Welcome aboard SQ-495 to Singapore.
Flight time today is seven hours.
- It's almost midnight.
The whole cabin hue was very blue with the lights.
I just boost up my white balance a little bit
to make it a little bit warmer tone.
Hopefully it looks a little bit better.
(relaxing music)
(aeroplane engine whirring)
(relaxing music)
- [Sam] So beautiful night view with Dubai
and now I just reclined my seat.
Going to take a few hours nap on this overnight flight.
They're pretty good privacy seats, I must say.
Your feet go inside a box,
which can be difficult when you turn around.
Alright, we'll see you in a couple hours.
(relaxing music)
- [Airline Attendant] Good morning, Mr. Chui.
May I take your breakfast order now?
On the menu today,
we have a cheese egg frittata with veal sausage, mushrooms,
and roasted potatoes.
We also have fried noodles with beef and vegetables.
The other asian choice is a coconut rice dish
with fried chicken.
- [Sam] Just wondering you don't have the menu anymore?
- Why Mr. Chui, the menu's still available online.
You can access it on the screen here.
- [Sam] On the screen?
- [Airline Attendant] With the QR code.
- [Sam] On the QR code? Okay, thank you.
- [Airline Attendant] The plate is hot.
Please enjoy your breakfast.
- Good morning.
Woke up, I'm at 41,000 feet flying over at Indonesia
over Medan and Aceh.
Haven't flown over this route for over two years.
They serve actually a very authentic Indonesian breakfast,
which is an Indonesian bami, beef noodle, full of flavour,
excuse my bad hair,
but I had a pretty good sleep
for about three and a half hours.
And now we're just about two hours before landing.
(upbeat music)
(aeroplane engine whirring)
Just landed in Singapore. Very quiet.
The airport is literally very few traffic...
The whole flight's been very quiet.
It's just, COVID, very sombre.
You know, there's very little engagement,
very little interactions around
and I'm going to transit Singapore,
four hours transit here, onto my next flight to Thailand.
- [Airline Attendants] Keep safe! See you real soon.
- [Sam] Bye, bye.
How was your flight?
- [Passenger] It was great.
It was my first time flying with Singapore airlines.
- [Sam] First time with Singapore airlines?
- [Passenger] Yeah.
- [Sam] You fly for Emirates, right?
- [Passenger] Yes, I do.
- [Sam] Yeah, and we have common friends, which is...
- [Passenger] Kelsey!
- [Sam] Kelsey, say hi to you.
- [Passenger] Hi, Kelsey!
- Okay, so I'm in the transit area,
trying to get to terminal three,
contrary to some early report,
which I've heard, and I've seen,
people were held up in a confined transit area.
And I think right now out of this flight,
they allow us to move around,
to look at the shops and maybe I can go to the lounge.
The whole airport is very quiet.
I've never seen Chinese so quiet.
I know it's normally a very busy airport, right?
- [Employee] Okay.
- [Sam] All good?
- [Employee] Yup, you just turn to the left of the lounge
and scan the QR on the table.
- [Sam] Oh, you order by QR?
- [Employee] Yeah.
- [Sam] Okay, alright. Thank you.
(upbeat music)
- It's really good. There's a shower open,
can take a shower, maybe can done up my hair.
(Sam speaking foreign language)
(Employee responding in foreign language)
(Sam speaking foreign language)
(Employee speaking foreign language)
(Sam speaking foreign language)
- I'm enjoying the dim sum.
She recommended dim sum and laksa,
the best two items in the lounge.
You have to order everything on the QR code on the table
and then go to collect at the counter.
Hopefully things will recover in step-by-step,
hopefully all the buffet will come back.
At the lounge, I met a lady from Indonesia
and guess what she has?
She has a very cute aeroplane T-shirt
I want to show you guys. You must be a NAF geek.
- Yes. I'm a hardcore geek and a big fan of Sam.
- [Sam] What's your favourite airline I must ask you?
- Singapore airlines, definitely.
- [Sam] Of course.
What's your favourite aeroplane?
- My favourite aeroplane is A-380.
- [Sam] 380? Yeah.
- [Passenger] Yeah.
- [Sam] So you designed this shirt?
You have this shirt on sale?
- Yes. I have this shirt on sale
and it's my, my clothing line is called pilot the label
and it's also on Instagram.
- So we haven't travelled in two years
and this our first flight
and we're going to be on the same flight
with Sam later on to Bangkok, so excited.
- Yeah, it was a pretty good lounge.
Three hours went very fast
when you made lots of friends,
having fun and good food in the lounge.
Look, who's here.
The Singapore airlines A-380. Isn't it exciting.
Gave me so much energy they're back.
That was also very cute.
Never before, I will see a Singapore airlines 737.
(upbeat music)
- Hey, how are you?
- [Airline Attendant] How are you today?
- [Sam] What's your name?
- Michelle, how are you?
- [Sam] Michelle. Look at your hair. I love it. Perfection.
- (laughing) Thank you so much.
- [Sam] Love it, it's a french twist, right?
- No, it's just a bun, not the french one.
- [Sam] Oh, only on Singapore airlines.
- Yeah. (laughing)
- [Sam] That's the famous Singapore girl.
Yeah. Everyone's in masks.
- Yeah, it's a little bit different,
but we smile through our eyes.
- [Sam] Yeah, I see you smiling.
- (chuckling) Thank you.
So for today, so we have a water bottle here,
headphones, and also the care kit here.
- [Sam] Oh, the care kit? Okay.
- [Airline Attendant] Yeah, inside will be hand sanitizer,
disinfecting wipes, and also masks.
- Is this the best seat here?
- [Sam] Every seat is good. All the seats are good.
- Every row?
- [Sam] What do you have? Where are you sitting?
Yeah. You've got the best seat there.
- Yeah, I checked the seat.
- [Sam] Yeah. I'm sitting on the other side.
So that's the best seat there.
- I think it's confirmed that's the best seat there.
(Sam laughing)
- [Sam] Alright, enjoy your flight.
Just settled in the second flight to Bangkok,
it's the same regional configuration,
but I can't complain for two hour
with a one to one going fully flat.
It's just spread out.
You've booked the whole private cabin for your family.
Like absolutely no one else in the cabin.
Enjoy your flight.
I have noticed two small changes,
as there's no more welcome drink before take off.
And also there's no menu on board.
And what I miss the most
is actually the SilverKris magazine,
because I used to love that magazine,
had lots of nice travel aviation stories.
(upbeat bouncy music)
From the taxi,
you can see Changi Airport nowhere as busy as it was,
lots of aeroplanes are parked.
And also a lot of terminals are vacant, empty.
It's really sad.
And hopefully the country opening up
and we'll get more traffic back.
(aeroplane engine whirring)
(upbeat bouncy music)
- Mr. Chui, today we are serving a light dinner,
we are serving the Bismillah chicken Biryani.
We also have the Asian beef noodles.
The other choice would be the fried fish.
What would you like to have today?
- [Sam] I'll have the biryani, please.
- The biryani? I'll come back to you.
- So I'm having this Bismillah Biryani.
It's quite a different biryani style to the one I'm used to
in the middle east.
This one has an egg and the whole chicken leg.
So with the food, I didn't like the biryani.
The taste was not so strong.
I'm used to more flavorful biryani,
the crew were really kind,
they offered me another chinese beef noodle
which I quite liked it.
Now, I'm going to go to economy
to check out what kind of food they serve
because I heard Singapore airlines have new regional food.
- So for economy class, we have this sustainable meal box,
which is a new way of serving the meal now.
And it's...
For today, we're serving braised beef with mashed potato,
with mushrooms as well.
And the other one will be the salted fried rice.
- [Sam] Fried rice?
- [Airline Attendant] With chicken, yeah.
And also we will sell ice cream.
- [Sam] So you get one out of two choices?
- [Airline Attendant] Yes.
- [Sam] And you don't have appetisers anymore?
- [Airline Attendant] Oh, we don't have anymore appetiser,
so these meal boxes are only two hours and below flights.
- [Sam] Only for two hour and below flights?
- [Airline Attendant] Yeah.
- [Sam] What if, what if this flight is longer?
What do you have?
- [Airline Attendant] Oh, we will have a bigger meal
as normal.
- [Sam] How many passengers do we have today?
- For today, we have 76 in economy,
and 15 in business class.
- [Sam] So almost a hundred passenger?
- [Airline Attendant] Yes.
- [Sam] Are the flights getting fuller now
because you have the vaccinated travelling?
- Yeah, actually in December, a lot of flights
are fully booked, especially for Europe and America.
Let's say like London and from New York,
people now are starting to travel.
They not afraid anymore.
- [Sam] Oh yeah, we have the dividers now.
- Exactly.
- The end of pandemic now.
(relaxing music)
(aeroplane engine whirring)
- See some shocking sights of all the Thai Airways.
A-380, 777 parts, some without engine,
it looks like they need a wash as well.
They've been just baking in the sun for a very long time.
For over a year, it's really, really sad.
We just landed.
Two very quiet flights from Dubai to Singapore,
Singapore to Bangkok.
And I've been thinking what makes Singapore airlines
so great over the years?
And I think the answer is actually consistency.
There's two factors behind the consistency.
One is they have very good training standards,
which I've seen their training centre.
And second is even more important is discipline.
In fact, there are many airlines
in a world capable of giving great service in the world,
but I think the discipline on Singapore airlines
really makes things more consistent.
And that's their key factors.
How was your flight?
How was your Singapore airlines experience?
- [Passengers] Amazing!
- [Sam] Really?
- [Passengers] Yeah!
- [Sam] Glad you enjoyed.
- [Passengers] Of course, with the amazing crew.
Thank you so much!
(everyone exchanging goodbyes)
- Oh man, I really missed that.
And off the walkway,
it's been almost two years since I came back
to Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok
and today we'll use the Thailand pass
to see how this work to get into the country
without quarantine.
(people chattering in the background)
So it's really easy.
All the information matched
what you have given earlier
when you apply to Thailand pass.
They scan a QR code and match.
And now going to just proceed through to the immigration.
15 minutes from the plane door,
all the way to outside of the hotel shuttle,
all you need is a QR code Thailand pass.
Then you go through the immigration custom
and you'll meet the hotel representative.
They escort you in a van like this,
and now off to hospital checking other PCR on arrival test,
and once the results clear,
you're in Thailand and so far so good.
And thanks for watching today's video.
(soft music)