Changi Airport

“As a boy, i had often found airports exciting because they were the closest thing around to the starship Enterprise, a cut-rate Adventure-land, Tomorrowland, and Fantasyland combined, rich in flashing screens and exotic costumes; now you can see the same kind on every other street corner in Paris, or Sydney, or Vancouver. The modern city is a place where everyone's a stranger, so it seems, on his way to somewhere else."

"Airports say a lot about a place because they are both a city's business card and its handshake; they tell us what a community yearns to be as well as what it really is (much like the people inside them, often, who are dressed up for the occasion, and worn ragged and bare by the experience)."

Pico Iyer, The Global Soul

Airport. n A tract of levelled land where aircraft can take off and land, especially one equipped with hard-surfaced landing strips, a control tower, hangars, facilities for passengers and cargo, and usually a customs house.
(Reader’s Digest Universal Dictionary)


There's something about Changi Airport that makes it enduringly charming - to a local like me, at least. It's a place that I've always enjoyed going to, in large part because of its special character and the vibes it emanates. Accolades notwithstanding, Changi Airport has a snazzy appeal that is closely related to its functional design. I especially delight in its broad walkways and abundance of space. Not being a frequent traveller myself, I am of course only refering to the parts of the airport within reach of non-travellers, who go there variously to send or receive friends and family members, study, luxuriate in its cozy atmosphere or, well, work.

The role of Changi Airport, as with other airports the world over, similarly lends it a certain timeless appeal. It's that one place on the island where one embarks an aeroplane and - legally and officially - leaves the city-state (as well as a dreary soul). That's as close as one can get to feel almost out of Singapore. Even a casual visitor is not immune to such feelings of surreality. After all, remove the barriers and dismantle the physical structure, and one would find that he is as close to being out of his country as the traveller who has just checked in. And as if to accentuate its specialness, Changi Airport is tucked away at the fringe of the island, modestly situated where distance provides a veneer of exclusivity.

Travelling by car along the ECP towards the airport, there's a strange, familiar feeling welling up within as the car nears the destination and moves at a constant speed. The straight road leading to the airport is the first sign that hits on you, telling you that you're about to reach the building; the immaculate trees and flowering bougainvillea that line the road come into view soon enough; and one gazes out of the window to steal a peak at the control tower, that iconic structure that is captured in countless number of postcards and magazines. It's a feeling that is somewhat tinged with a mix of nostalgia and wistfulness: after all, for many Singaporeans, this is a familiar route leading to a repository of memories.