Scooting

Scooting to Athens

My Scoot flight with a fare for SGD250 including tax and fees, from Singapore to Athens pushed off on time.  Scoot doesn’t allow wearing of earphones during taxi, take-off or landing.  They don’t seem to have compromised on safety in terms of passengers being able to hear commands during emergency.  Other airlines now even allow their own entertainment to be on during these phases of the flight.  On the other hand, Scoot doesn’t require passengers to turn their phones to flight mode.  They may be used inflight except for voice calls but the reality is that you won’t get much signal and then there will be roaming charges when you leave your home country.

With an 0235 departure, I wasn’t hungry and tried to sleep.  The seats recline quite well and legroom is adequate for me.  By 0400 I hadn’t slept a wink.  I resorted to a sleeping pill and had under 4h of light sleep  and hour plus of dozing.

I got slightly peckish through my awake moments and satisfied myself with the Bika Ambon I had bought in Semarang.

The crew did the second meal service 4.5h to 3.5h prior to landing, as opposed to the 3h they had indicated earlier.  I wasn’t ready to eat and confirmed with them that this was the last meal service of the flight.  But over an hour later, they were still down the back finishing up the round. With my long bus and short boat trip ahead, I thought it was prudent to eat.  I was nearly ready now.  But they had run out of hot meals so I made do with a wrap.  It turned out to be tiny and being Singapore-based, the numeric price was similar to AirAsia’s but in SGD rather than MYR, nearly three times.

Then the cabin lights came on, and the crew delivered prebooked meals and sold extra beverages and snacks.  Instant noodles count as a beverage I suppose as it requires the addition of hot water.  That was a little confusing for me as I’m used to having the prebooked meals being served before the buy-on-board.

While the Boeing 787 was quiet new, the carpet must have been of very poor quality. The pile had been completely worn off to leave the bare plastic/rubber underlay. While this spot is a high traffic area near the toilet, there was lots of wear throughout the aisle and many spots in the aisle as bad as this.

 
Going to Hydra

We landed on time at 0910.  My seat on the plane, just forward of the disembarking door, meant that I was one of the first to get off.  In fact, with only one airbridge in use, I was off before Business Class.  Immigration was super super swift and done near the gate.  I thought, I’d be out landside in no time but I was wrong.  It was about 20 minutes walk largely underground to the customs area where I exited without any hassles.

The first couple of ATMs I saw were the private non-bank ones.  So when I saw the first bank ATM, I accepted the EUR3 fee and just made up for it by taking out more than what I might need.  I later found ATMs with lower and/or no fees.

I had time to kill till my 1010 bus to Piraeus for my 1310 ferry to Hydra.  I found the Vodafone kiosk where the promos were pricier than what I had read online.  I skipped that and went to the bus to find that it was actually scheduled for 0950.  So I’m glad I didn’t spend too much time fluffing around with a SIM card at the counter.

The X96 bus ride took 1h30 from the airport to Piraeus where I got dropped off outside my ferry gate E8, before the bus continued to its final destination at gate E1.  I found the office for collecting my ticket and killed some time before joining the queue in the scorching sun to board the ferry.

While the ferry looks like a Rejang River ferry in Sibu, it was much larger than it looks from the outside.  It is like a widebody jet inside with 8 seats across.  Just shows that sizes can be deceived by proportions!

I sat next to a Jewish South African family, who spend a lot of time in Israel.  That’s a combination new to me; and I’ve seen some unusual combinations, eg. my father’s lawyer was an Jewish Indian!  From the things they were talking about, they must be very well off.  But they were dressed very simply, in fact even sloppy.

Then there were these very modern, slightly skimpily-dressed people whom I immediately guessed were Arabs and very likely Lebanese.  Having visited that region a few times, I’ve become quite good at picking them out.  Likewise with Iraqis who aren’t covered up.  In New Zealand, many people would presume they’re normally white Kiwis, perhaps with some Mediterranean ancestry.  But I seem to be able to tell they’re Lebanese or Iraqis.

The 1h10 journey time, stretched into 1h20 before we arrived at Hydra.  Like the bus ride, the ferry ride was starting to get tedious after 26h of travel from Semarang.

Disembarking, I overheard the family whom I thought were Lebanese, speaking in Arabic.  I greeted them and asked them in Arabic where they were from.  Lebanon!  Of course!  I think my Jewish South African seat mate was a little taken aback from my ability to speak Arabic!

Exploring Hydra

After a shower and a rest, I ventured out.  It was still very hot outside.  My walk was largely along the waterfront and a few of the alleys.  The island of Hydra has no cars or motorbikes.  It is hilly and has no roads so transportation is done by sea from one town to another or by donkey within each town.  In port were many beautiful and no doubt expensive boats and yachts.

I had dinner on the waterfront before walking it off afterwards.  I found the Sunset Restaurant perched on the hill on the west side of the harbour.  Would be a lovely spot to watch the sunset but would probably be nicer to diner somewhere more shaded.

There were also near some swimming terraces which had ladders into the water.  That’s something to check out for tomorrow.

I retired around 2130 after having done very well travelling from Semarang to Hydra in one hit.  While the aircon wasn’t really a necessity here, once you turn it on briefly, it feels less pleasant when you turn it off.