Scooted!

We went to Hong Kong for a 5D4N trip, which explains the lapse after my last post on our Venetian stay.

I even brought my newly acquired MacBook along, naively thinking that I would blog about the trip day by day at the end of each day. Really silly of me. We ended up going back to the hotel quite late every day, and we were exhausted at the end of the day just about every single day! It also means that we woke up late, like close to 10am, and getting out and about after 11am or 12pm. Quite a shame to have 'wasted' the holiday like that.

It was a last-minute decision to travel. I booked the flight and hotel just about a week before we flew. The itinerary was not even completed. I was not very sure what I wanted to achieve or where to go. I just wanted a trip out of Singapore, but I did not want to plan much, so I chose a familiar place I had been to a few times.

I don't know what got into me, but I probably wasn't thinking when I booked the air tickets. I chose a 6am flight!

Coco asked,"Wouldn't we need to be at the airport at 4am?"

Quite a few hiccups too.

I have always booked Scoot ever since the first time I tried it. In spite of the bad press that it has been getting lately, my experience with Scoot had been quite good. However, this time round, the experience was less than stellar.

1) I thought I had booked a FlyBagEat ticket for William while the rest of us just FlyEat as we didn't need 4 big luggage for a 5-day trip to Hong Kong, but I got a shock of my life when we tried to print the luggage tag and we didn't have the option to print it. The staff at the Scoot counter informed me that I didn't buy the check-in luggage for both trips. We had to pay $58 for the luggage in cash in Singapore and buy the luggage option online at $30+ in Hong Kong.

2) Then I thought I bought meals on board for all of us. However, when Baby tried to look at her meal options, no box was checked, which suggested that I had not bought the meals.

I tried to tick the boxes and found that every tick added additional payment to my ticket prices. That 'confirmed' my suspicion that I really had not bought the meals.

I told the girls,"Well, it would be really early. Let's take it that we would go there on an empty stomach and work up an appetite after we reach the hotel." The girls agreed.

It turned out that I did purchase the meals. The Scootee (Scoot's flight attendant) serving us requested for our boarding pass and served us the meals!

Well! Not sure what had happened but it was an unsettling experience for me.

3) When we boarded the return flight, we were one of the last few passengers to board the plane. We got a shock when we found that our luggage cabin were filled with other passengers' luggage, when they were seated elsewhere.

We managed to put one luggage in the cabin above our seats in Row 3 and 4 but had to stow the rest at Row 11!

I spoke to one of the Scootees and understood that luggage cabin space is on a first-come-first-serve basis. While I appreciate that most things in life are in that order, but isn't it, or shouldn't it be, common-sense that your luggage ought to be in the cabin space at your seat? Sigh.

I ended up having to squeeze through a dozen men's backsides to get to our luggage so as not to end up being the last passengers to get off the plane. Never mind that my tummy and butt were equally squashed by them. Aunty already. It's okay.

Thankfully, a nice young gentleman with a million-dollar smile helped me to get the luggage down. My saving grace amidst of the unpleasantness!