singapore hotel: Luxe Nomad: Sydney"s second airport

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Most airport terminals have coagulated in my mind into a blur of travelators, duty-free shops, Starbucks outlets and conjoined bucket seats. Some are more irritating than others, with seeming miles to walk between gates, cafes that only serve highly processed food and gridlock at the immigration counter if you’re trying to get out of there.

Twice in recent years I’ve missed connections and had to hang about airport terminals for several hours. Luckily, one of these times was in Hong Kong and another at Singapore’s Changi, both places with plenty of food options, shops, comfortable lounge chairs, showers, and the other distractions necessary in the Twilight Zone that is the transit time between flights.

Changi’s T3 terminal, which won world’s best airport at the 2014 Skytrax Awards, is like an amusement park, with butterfly garden, huge children’s playground, movie theatre, TV lounge and a four-storey spiral slide. It’s a destination in itself.

Kath and Kel felt that way about Tullamarine, in the episode of Kath and Kim where the lovebirds end up being stranded there and turn it into a holiday.

If you would like to join them, sleepinginairports.net actively promotes the idea of saving yourself hotel fees by bedding down overnight at an airport. It rates most world terminals according to the four Cs – comfort, convenience, cleanliness and customer service. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport, with museum, movie theatre and free Wi-Fi, is Europe’s best terminal to sleep in; Auckland is the best in the Pacific region and Changi is the best in Asia.

Most travellers are hostage to which terminal their airline accesses. If you’re flying into San Francisco on American or Virgin America, you get to enjoy the dazzling T2 terminal, with its fabulous art museum, great restaurant selections and a yoga room, if that’s your thing.

Of course, an architecturally interesting building does not necessarily make for a great terminal, in the same way that one great terminal doesn’t necessarily make a great airport.

Even so, a beautiful, well-organised space does lift the spirits when you get off your flight, tired and bedraggled. It helps if there’s lots of filtered natural light, if the way you’re moved around the terminal is fluid and clearly signposted, if the gates, shops and cafes are conveniently placed nearby.

If Sydney ever does get its second airport, it would be brilliant if it were an award-winning design that (perhaps) echoed the sails of the Opera House or was shaped like a bilby with the gates in its tail.

But give me free Wi-Fi, healthy food, comfy lounge chairs, a short walk to the gates and as little exposure as possible to those perfume-wielding duty-free sales assistants, and I’ll be satisfied.