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Fresh idea![\"Singapore](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/b68deb69e6784956b329a35b130398aa9cef1e8b.jpeg\")
Singapore Airlines\u2019 premium economy class.<\/p>\n
Our recent premium economy flights with Singapore Airlines<\/a> from Melbourne to Barcelona, via Singapore, were the best. They meant we started our holiday much fresher, more relaxed and fitter than flying down the back of the plane. We enjoyed a 2-3-2 cabin formation with comfortable reclining seats with almost business-class standard service and quietness. It cost about 50 per cent more than the economy class (we booked with Flight Centre) and about one-third of business. The extra cost added not much more to our holiday, but flying premium class was worth every cent for older travellers like us, who dread the thought of economy but cannot afford business. Cot case<\/p>\n Reader Adrian Neath was bumped from his flight due to \u201coperational reasons\u201d (Traveller Letters, April 4<\/a>). This could mean one of several things, including that a bulkhead seat was booked, and the airline needed it for a cot, or that the configuration of the seating had changed. Coincidentally, it happened to me for the former reason on a Singapore Airlines flight to Paris in June. They moved me to a comparable seat, even though I\u2019m a KrisFlyer Gold member. Irrespective of your fare type (lite, standard or flexi), however, it\u2019s unreasonable to bump you to another flight that is much less convenient. I suggest you call the airline and ask that, at the very least, it compensates you, perhaps by booking you a room at one of the airport hotels or providing you with access to the KrisFlyer Gold lounge for your long transit in Singapore. Singapore slung<\/p>\n Sign up for the Traveller newsletter<\/p>\n The latest travel news, tips and inspiration delivered to your inbox. Sign up now.<\/a><\/p>\n We had an identical experience to Adrian Neath when we were bumped off a Singapore Airlines daytime flight booked for September 2026, on which it is apparently still possible to purchase a ticket, to a later nighttime flight. This was not acceptable. After three long phone calls we got an early morning flight the following day, necessitating an additional night in a not-cheap Singapore. A request for compensation was declined, despite more than 20 years as a KrisFlyer Gold. Times they were a changin\u2019 My daughter, four-year-old grandson and I were recently booked with Jetstar to fly from Bali to Sydney. The original flight was for 10.40pm, but we were told before arrival at the airport that the flight was now scheduled for 11.30pm. Not too bad. At 11pm, it was announced that the flight would now depart at 12.30am. At 1.15am we were told the flight had been cancelled. Jetstar\u2019s employees had no idea what was happening but finally at about 1.30am we were told to collect our luggage, find a hotel and arrange transport. Apart from the total disinterest expressed by Jetstar my contention is that they knew, because of bad weather, that the plane was not arriving. Why weren\u2019t we told? This was my first and last flight with Jetstar. Letter of the week: Heaven\u2019s gates Adrian Neath may have wondered how to spend eight hours at Singapore Changi Airport (Traveller Letters, April 4<\/a>) but we would have no issue with spending many hours there. Apart from the beautiful gardens in Jewel and the variety of retail and food outlets and rest areas, there are free movie screenings 24\/7 in Terminal 3. We have also taken advantage of the free two-and-a-half-hour Singapore tour for passengers with layovers of more than five-and-a-half hours. We had a flight to Bergen (Norway) last year which landed in Helsinki where we had an 11-hour stopover. It is a small modern airport and rates high among European airports, but give me Changi anytime. Patra down pat Hallelujah. At last an article, in the form of your story by Lee Tulloch (Traveller, March 28<\/a>), of some substance about the Peloponnese, a part of Greece that rarely gets the recognition it deserves. Go to Peloponnese and you will avoid the mad rushed crowds at places that brochures highlight, and you will also find it much cheaper. OK, I confess that this is the region of Greece I have a special attachment to due to my parents. It is a region blessed with golden sandy beaches while its tavernas serve oodles of fresh food, cold beer, wine and free dessert thrown in. Travel guides say to avoid the city of Patra, but it has changed dramatically in recent years. Its uni-town status gives it a buzzy vibe as the students mix with locals. Both enjoy the closure of streets to cars in the city\u2019s centre, making it a pedestrian paradise where you can enjoy the many bars and cafes. While you are there, take a ride up to my parent\u2019s ancestral village of Ano Kastritsi, just 11 kilometres away on the side of a mountain overlooking the Gulf of Corinth. It\u2019s paradise, and tell them I sent you. Grim by name\u2026<\/p>\n In relation to \u201cGrim findings\u201d (Traveller Letters, April 4<\/a>). Some would say there is a more significant reason to recognise Tasmania\u2019s Cape Grim. On February 10, 1828, 30 members of the local Aboriginal Peerapper people were murdered by Van Diemen\u2019s Land Company workers, their bodies thrown over the 60-metre-high cliff at Cape Grim. The freshest air in the world referred to in the letter is tainted with a terrible history. Straight outta Melbourne<\/p>\n Regarding Australia sightings in our travels overseas (Traveller Letters, April 5<\/a>), while I was in Los Angeles recently I popped into a cafe in Manhattan Beach for a coffee. Looking at the menu, I was surprised to see a weirdly Melbourne-themed menu consisting of Vegemite on toast and a flat white. The coffee was the best I had in North America. Mugged in California Once on a day-drive from Los Angeles, I stopped at Bakersfield in the San Joaquin Valley for morning coffee at a family-owned cafe. While having the coffee, I noticed a weathered porcelain mug with an image of a red-haired Ned Kelly, in a display cabinet. I asked the owner how this mug came to be in his cafe, he told me that his grandparents had emigrated from Cairns, Queensland, to California in the 1960s and that this mug was one of the few items they\u2019d brought from Australia. He\u2019d assumed it must be a famous Australian politician, without having ever asked them of its significance. I told him about Ned Kelly, and he thought it was typical of his grandparents to be honouring a genuine Australian bushranger. He appreciated that he now knew the secret of the mug\u2019s identity. Full refund<\/p>\n I had the same experience as your reader Gabrielle Haumesser (Traveller Letters, April 4<\/a>) in having duty-free liquor confiscated at a transit stop, even though I paid extra for a sealed container that, I was assured, would allow me to carry the purchase through transit security. I made a complaint to Heinemann Duty Free and received a full refund, with an admission that the sales clerk should not have sold me the liquor in the first place. Plastic not fantastic As I travel through South-East Asia, I\u2019m struck by the sheer volume of disposable wooden chopsticks, plastic cups, straws and bags. Much of this waste finds its way into lakes, rivers and surrounding seas. It\u2019s not just local practice that is at fault; small tour groups like ours are complicit for not protesting about the problem. Australia has shown that change is possible through bans and public awareness. When will South-East Asian regional tourism bodies take co-ordinated action to reduce plastic dependency and protect their fragile environments? Full bottle<\/p>\n Those two bottles of spirits Gabrielle Haumesser was prevented from taking with her to Vanuatu (Traveller Letters, April 4 <\/a>) must have been huge ones. Vanuatu\u2019s Customs and Inland Revenue department website, and other sources, say adults can bring into the country up to 2.25 litres of spirits duty free. (A standard bottle of spirits is, of course, only 750 millilitres.) Tip of the week: Tea and temples I have just returned from a trip to Taiwan. It is a nine-hour or so flight with direct options with [code share partners] China Airlines and Qantas. It\u2019s safe, friendly, and very affordable. At the airport on arrival a local went out of her way to help us with metro and Uber directions. Taipei is an interesting city of tradition and modernity with great food options. Strong Japanese influence blends with local and Chinese cultures. Din Tai Fung dumplings are popular, but there are many others to try. Take a cable car to Maokang for tea and temples; see local Hokkien opera or visit the excellent National Museum. See Pingxi and Juifen and the reopened Taroko Gorge on day trips. In the south, visit Kaohsiung with its Tiger and Dragon pagodas, Alishan forest and Sun Moon Lake all there to visit. Riviera revelation Nice was my favourite stop on our French adventure \u2014 chic yet relaxed, sunny and dripping with Riviera vibes. Perched between the azure Mediterranean Sea, romantic views over Vieux Nice and sweeping glamour of the Promenade des Anglais, there\u2019s something impeccably put together and wonderfully laid-back about Nice all at once. We stayed at Hotel Apollinaire, which was easy to reach on foot thanks to its prime central location. From there we spent our days strolling along the Promenade des Anglais, swimming in the clear turquoise waters and getting totally lost in the hustle and bustle of colour in the old town. Cafe de Turin is great for seafood \u2013 fresh, plentiful and great value, with a really buzzy local atmosphere. Nice managed to toe the line between sophisticated yet casual, buzzy without being hectic. Full frontal<\/p>\n Thank you for your good tips, Michael Gebicki (Traveller, April 5<\/a>). I remember carefully the advice from an assistant at a tourist information centre in Paris: wear your handbag and\/or backpack across the front of your body, with your hand on it. It\u2019s difficult in a tram, holding on to a strap suspended from above, but it\u2019s still good advice. No stress A big thumbs up to LATAM Airlines, the Chilean national carrier, in South America. Fifteen flights in 34 days, encompassing Chile, Ecuador including the Galapagos Islands, Peru and Bolivia, may sound daunting, but it was no stress with LATAM. For every domestic and international flight, English-speaking LATAM staff were available at check-in kiosks assisting with boarding passes and baggage tags. No fuss with the jobs done in minutes. It was a far cry from my air travel experiences in Australia over the last 10 years with kiosks out of order and scant availability of airline staff at check in when you really need them. We need to catch up to South America. Off the rails Ben Groundwater\u2019s column on fast trains (Traveller, April 5<\/a>) greatly exaggerates some of the benefits of fast-train travel over flying. The taxi fare to Charles de Gaulle is \u20ac55 ($91), and my recent taxi fare to Gare du Nord was \u20ac50, so, unless you are living in the railway station, there is no saving there, and this applies to almost every city in the world. Furthermore, instead of checking your bag at a convenient counter and collecting it at a carousel at the other end, you have to lug it onto and off the train yourself and hoist it onto an overhead rack in transit (something that I almost always need help to do). You might think airline departure lounges are bad, but train departure lounges are generally worse, and my experience is that passenger information is hopelessly uninformative and worrying. Scot free<\/p>\n After making the hard decision to cancel our month-long, self-drive Scotland trip, I was expecting hassles in cancelling hotels, car rental, day trips, ferries, chasing refunds etc, but it was achingly easy. I even received kind messages from some providers that they hope to see us in the future. I strongly recommend choosing hotel bookings which allow for refunds even when they are more expensive, and the app Get Your Guide<\/a>, which I used to reserve day trips, was great. The Letter of the Week writer wins three Hardie Grant travel books. See hardiegrant.com<\/a><\/p>\n The Tip of the Week writer wins a set of three Lonely Planet travel books. See shop.lonelyplanet.com<\/a><\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n
Tony Danino, Wheelers Hill, Vic<\/p>\n
Richard Ferrero, Hawthorn East, Vic<\/p>\n
Ben Adler, Mount Waverley, Vic<\/p>\n![\"If](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/371012cb51d62406f1d8e3046183582c23345b41.jpeg\")
If Jetstar knew the plane wasn\u2019t arriving, why weren\u2019t we told?<\/p>\n
Helen Haines, Potts Point, NSW<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/52fa74cde2a26819c6c3b649bd959d527777d4c6.jpeg\")
The Rain Vortex indoor waterfall in Jewel at Singapore Changi Airport is a popular attraction.iStock<\/p>\n
Judi Rosevear, Wantirna, Vic<\/p>\n![\"Overlooked](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/416854058d109260df1f3f432ac0aea2db67b14c.jpeg\")
Overlooked Patra, also known as Patras, is Greece\u2019s third-largest city in the country\u2019s northern Peloponnese.iStock<\/p>\n
Con Vaitsas, Ashbury, NSW<\/p>\n
Siobhan Steven, Glenroy, Vic<\/p>\n
Craig Bowers, Mooroolbark, Vic<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/09797145d835d6c79cc305987bc1983c9dc38283.jpeg\")
A California cafe owner somehow mistook this notorious mug lair for an Australian politician. <\/p>\n
Mino Rosewarne, Green Point, NSW<\/p>\n
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy, NSW<\/p>\n![\"Rubbish](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/f52c4e96e47d794280a02e5246afe4bfeb1c782c.jpeg\")
Rubbish such as this washes up on Bali\u2019s western beaches between September to March each year.<\/p>\n
Joseph Ting, Carina, Qld<\/p>\n
Ross Duncan, Potts Point, NSW<\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/d578b44324f9c577b6bd6c7c703213837d6cfbd4.jpeg\")
The Tiger and Dragon pagodas are a must-see attraction in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung.iStock<\/p>\n
Victoria Hayes, Hawthorn, Vic<\/p>\n![\"Buzzy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5ea50d474f938085568d8846a39c02d3d199d2a4.jpeg\")
Buzzy without being hectic, the French seaside resort city of Nice is sophisticated yet casual.iStock<\/p>\n
Gary Levin, North Bondi, NSW<\/p>\n
Alison Stewart, Waitara, NSW<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/114f671a1e383da568cc488b9cf71c69beb23373.jpeg\")
A view of the modern Providencia and Las Condes districts of Santiago, Chile, the hub for LATAM, the Chilean national carrier, against the backdrop of the Andes. Getty<\/p>\n
David Querzoli, Miranda, NSW<\/p>\n![\"Paris\u2019](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/04e9026710503b7a41a130405445c9bfd0b2dc00.jpeg\")
Paris\u2019 Gare du Nord train station is Europe\u2019s busiest, receiving more than 220 million visitors a year.Getty<\/p>\n
Bruce Hyland, Woy Woy, NSW<\/p>\n
Kathy Gall, Toronto, NSW<\/p>\n<\/p>\n