Singapore's Changi Airport a welcome departure

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