We made our way down the aisle of the Finnair plane that would take us from Helsinki to Singapore and all looked good until we sat down. They must have dragged this plane out of the museum. Whilst it was good to just have 2 seats between the window and the aisle, the personal entertainment system was a tad outdated. The screen was about 15cm by 10cm and could only be controlled by the buttons on the handheld remote control. Not even a touch screen. Although someone who sat in David's seat before obviously didn’t realise this and pushed the screen so many times that it had broken – the small screen now had a finger sized spot just off the centre that remained black which was very distracting. Fortunately David prefers music on a flight so it was no big deal.

Despite being a little past midnight, a good dinner service was brought round and washed down with wine. Trays were cleared quickly and the cabin lights were dimmed. It wasn’t long before we were both nodding off.

David never has a problem sleeping on a flight but, unusually, also Maria managed to sleep for the majority of this flight. We both woke after about 7 hours of sleep and shortly before the breakfast service.

This is the time when flying east has it problems. As a way of avoiding jet lag, it’s recommended you change your watch to the destination time at the beginning of the journey and try to start living in that time zone straight away. When flying east, you are actually flying into the future so to speak. You miss out a chunk of time and something has to give. Trying to go to sleep before your usual bedtime is difficult so missing out on sleep seems obvious but it has its pitfalls.

So when we woke up, it was about 2pm in Singapore but the crew were bringing us breakfast. That seems reasonable for people who have just woken up from a sleep but way too late even for a brunch for those working on Singapore time. The breakfast was pretty good though and would keep us going until we were on the next flight in a few hours time.

With breakfast over, it wasn’t long before we started our descent into Changi Airport in Singapore. If you’ve never been, you’re missing out. It is simply amazing and could probably be described as the Disneyland of world airports. Singapore Airlines allows transit passengers with at least 4 hours between flights to leave the airport and go sightseeing downtown but with everything in the airport, there is actually no need. You could quite easily spend a day walking round it like an amusement park. But the best thing is that everything is free, or at least the majority of things. High speed internet goes without saying but there are also gardens, a movie theatre, shops galore, special loungers for sleeping on, Xbox games, dozens of bars and restaurants catering for every taste. They now have an outdoor beer garden on the airside of security which I’m sure must be a world’s first.

Despite not being so long since breakfast, David was keen to move his body clock forward and being 5pm that suggested "beer o’clock". We made our way to Harry’s Bar, the one with the beer garden, but decided to stay indoors because of all the smokers. Even compared to Finnish prices and airport prices in general, it was one of the most expensive beers ever bought by David – and it was nothing special, only Carlsberg.

There was only time for one beer, thankfully at those prices, before our next flight was boarding. We were changing onto Qantas for the next leg to Sydney. It was the same type of plane that brought us from Helsinki, an Airbus A330, but this one had been put through a major refurbishment. It had new seats and the entertainment systems were huge tablet sized, LCD, touch screens. Even the choice of movies, TV programs and music seemed endless.

It was pretty handy having such a good entertainment system because our body clocks, despite our efforts, remained firmly on Scandinavian time. It was 9pm in Singapore and midnight in Sydney but our bodies thought it was 3pm. We knew that having woken up from 7 hours sleep only 7 hours ago meant that this was going to be a long flight.

The entertainment system was great though and so was the dinner service, but the wine service was simply awesome. The South Australian Shiraz just kept coming at the push of a button. Or more precisely, a well placed tap in the corner of the wonderfully large entertainment screen so the viewing wasn’t even interrupted.