Singapore’s Changi Airport a welcome departure

It was Oktoberfest in Singapore. “Eat Pray Love” was opening at the movies. The results of a survey had just been released revealing that 63% of Singapore adults have sex at least once a week.

I was headed here from Kuala Lumpur; only my destination wasn’t exactly Singapore. It was Changi, the Lion City’s international airport, where I planned to spend 24 hours before flying to Indonesia. I wanted to take full advantage of Changi’s celebrated amenities, which include on-site hotels, a swimming pool and a movie theater. I was going to miss seeing the city, but giving it a pass meant I wouldn’t have to go through customs and immigration, claim my luggage, change currency or undergo any of the other indignities to which air travelers are subjected.

Granted, most people would rather have gum surgery than spend time in an airport. But is that fair? Aren’t the hassles associated with flying caused more by airlines, security regulations and clueless travelers than by the hubs themselves — increasingly state-of-the-art operations designed by hot-shot architects, with shopping, dining and entertainment options that steal a page from the Vegas Strip?

OK, most airports resemble the Department of Motor Vehicles rather than Vegas. But they shouldn’t be tarred by the same brush. Especially not Changi, otherwise known as SIN — don’t you just love the code? — repeatedly rated the world’s best airport (most recently in 2010 by the transportation consultancy firm Skytrax).

Changi, opened in 1981 on a half-billion square feet of reclaimed land at the eastern tip of Singapore Island, is the flagship of the city-state known for high-pitched development, order and economic vigor. It is now one of Asia’s biggest and most efficient airline hubs, serving 42 million passengers a year (LAX served 59 million in 2010), with three major terminals connected by a train and in a constant state of renovation aimed at anticipating needs before they surface.

In fact, when I booked a room at the Ambassador Transit Hotel in Terminal 1, I was warned about the possibility of construction noise. I thought briefly about getting a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, connected by a walkway to Changi. But technically, that would have meant leaving the airport.

Remember the beautiful song “I Remember Sky” from the 1966 Stephen Sondheim teleplay “Evening Primrose,” about people who live in a department store 24/7, never venturing outside? That’s what I was aiming for.

Fortunately, Changi Terminal 1 construction was no problem. The expansion of its exterior bays will accommodate gigantic new A380s first used commercially by Singapore Airlines in 2007. Someday I’d like to try one of them. But in October I made the 35-minute trip from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore on the budget carrier Air Asia; it cost $35 one way, which works out to about $1 a minute.

Most airports are out-of-time netherworlds with artificial lighting, stale air and tacky décor. But when my plane landed and I stepped into Changi, I had to blink a few times to adjust my eyes to the golden sunlight streaming in from the windows. The concourses are wide enough to accommodate crowds, luggage carts are provided at disembarkation, and right away I noticed computer kiosks where you can check your e-mail for free. Local calls at Changi phone booths don’t cost a Singapore penny either, and the bathrooms are spotless, with plenty of stalls and fast hand-dryers.

Unlike me, many poor souls getting off the plane were clutching disembarkation forms, headed toward immigration. I watched for a minute, lost in a crowd of people from everywhere. That’s another thing I like about airports: They are places where citizens of the world brush against one another and find that we all drag around the same wheeled suitcases, talk on the same cellphones and need the same Starbucks cappuccinos on arrival.

Many of them, I noticed, were stopping at a place called Fish Spa & Reflexology at the end of the concourse leading into the Terminal 1 transit mall. At first it looked like one of the foot spas you see everywhere in Southeast Asia. But along with rows of padded recliners and manicure tables, this one had three shallow pools of water filled with swarms of sardine-size fish. This specially bred species first used at spas in ancient Turkey feed on dry skin, exfoliating while they nibble.

“It feels good. Try it,” the attendant said.

I’m a fool for spa treatments, the more bizarre the better. The water looked clean, and 20 minutes in the tank cost only about $20. I took off my shoes and dangled my feet over the ledge, emitting a little shriek as a swarm of fish engulfed my legs, pecking and sucking. It was profoundly weird, but I got to like it and sat there giggling while feeding the fish. When my feet finally came out, they were baby smooth. The calluses on my heels had disappeared, and clean, pink skin surrounded my toenails instead of dry, ragged cuticles. I may come down with an exotic disease, but for the moment I could have been a foot model.

The hotel was just up an escalator from the spa, and when I arrived the man behind the counter said, “Hello, Miss Spano.” I imagine he guessed who I was because few people reserve in advance at the Ambassador Transit Hotel. It’s more a refuge for tortured souls between hellish long-haul flights. It cost about $50 for six hours, which worked out to be less than an overnight at the Crowne Plaza, and my room was nice, in a utilitarian, cookie-cutter way. Also spacious, with twin beds, a tub in the bathroom, a hot pot for making coffee and tea, satellite TV and a big picture window overlooking the construction that was proceeding in blessed silence. There was no room service, but with the Terminal 1 mall right outside the door, who needed it?

First, I checked CNN for the latest news, then crossed the hotel lobby to the pool and alfresco bar on a ledge of the terminal perched over the runways. I couldn’t think of any place I’d rather be, sipping fresh pineapple juice at water’s edge while working on my tan in the hot, bright Singapore sun, and when I got hungry, I headed down the concourse for lunch.

The front-desk clerk had advised me to try the Peach Garden Noodle House, a new branch of a popular Singapore franchise. The stylish, sit-down restaurant on the terminal’s third floor serves Cantonese delicacies such as double-boiled shark’s bone cartilage soup. I ordered a less exotic but excellent $20 lunch consisting of hot and sour soup, braised bean curd, noodles with prawn dumplings and chilled jelly royal for dessert.

As it turns out, I could have taken a free, two-hour city tour with expedited passage through customs and immigration organized by the Singapore tourist authority. But the brochure showed people shopping, which I could do right there in Changi. Terminal 1 has all the usual suspects — Cartier, Coach, Harrods — along with well-stocked book and electronics stores. My favorites were Top Orchids, Shanghai Tang and Bee Cheng Hiang, part of a barbecue meat chain established in a Singapore street stall in 1933.

Besides the shops, there are features you don’t find in ordinary airports: a pay-to-use lounge decorated like a tropical rain forest, recycling points, a rooftop cactus garden alongside a branch of Harry’s Bar, kids’ play areas with never-ending DVD cartoons and signs everywhere that tell travelers exactly how many minutes it takes to walk from point A to point B. I wondered how many people miss their flights while gazing at a case of Omega watches or trying on blue jeans in the Prada dressing room.

That night I went out on the town by taking the Skytrain to Terminal 2. I had my palm read in the Culture at Changi booth, e-mailed a picture of myself to family and friends at the Samsung Photo Me display, walked through a fern garden and tucked into a dish of vegetable biryani at an Indian restaurant in the food court.

I never felt cooped up, though I recalled that the airport was built on the site of a prison camp for Allied POWs during the Japanese occupation of Singapore in World War II. I had everything I needed right here, with the possible exception of a Laundromat and yoga studio.

Maybe, just maybe, I would have tired of Changi if I’d really been stuck here like the characters in the Sondheim play who can hardly remember the sky. But I’ll never forget the time I spent in the steel- and glass-enclosed utopia of Changi. I’ll never forget Dr. Fish and “Hello, Miss Spano” at the Ambassador Transit Hotel.

Life is strange, and even stranger for the traveler with disparate needs — sometimes for succor, sometimes for adventure. Let’s all put our feet in and see what it feels like.

travel@latimes.com