I’m writing this after arriving in Chiang Rai and a decent sleep, which means I’m in a better state of mind now. I’d hate you to think I was being hard on Auckland Airport security — Auckland’s our home and we love it, especially our little patch. We’re fond of Air New Zealand too.

So welcome to Singapore.

Shitty experiences are worse when you start off really tired, so we weren’t amused to learn that we could have, and should have, filed our Singapore Arrival Card online before leaving home. Heather’s argument, that transit passengers like us weren’t technically entering Singapore, didn’t convince the authorities, who argued that arriving at Terminal 1 and departing from Terminal 3 meant that we were.

Thankfully most people hadn’t made our mistake, and we slow learners got to watch them head for the exits as we were directed to a counter and three iPads on which to complete the form.

When I got my hands on one of the iPads things started out well, asking for my full name, passport number and date of birth, our date of arrival and departure, and a few yes/no questions, simple for honest folk like us to answer. For example, had we ever entered Singapore on a different passport? But things soon derailed.

In no particular order, because there’s no way I’m going to fill it in again, it wanted to know quite a few things, like:

Our country of birth. That was fine. We had to select from a pop-up alphabetical list. There are two hundred or so countries, so scrolling down to New Zealand with sweaty fingers wasn’t too hard. Aussies would have been happier than us, but we were pleased not to be from the UK, USA or Yemen.

Then it wanted to know which country had issued our passports, so more scrolling, alphabetically again.

Then our country of residence. More scrolling.

Then the flight we’d arrived on. It’s amazing how many airlines and flights there are. Scroll, scroll.

Then our place of residence. By town! New Zealand is a country of just five million souls, but even we have quite a few towns. But New Zealand comes after India, and India has God knows how many. We scrolled through them all. Same with China. We were glad to be from Auckland, and still more glad not to be from the UK or US, after Pakistan, Russia and Turkey.

Then came the place we’d departed from, and our next destination. More scrolling, and frequent warnings that we should take care, or we’d need to start over. The woman who’d used our iPad before us had abandoned her form in despair, so our first challenge was how to do just that.

There was a uniformed man fully employed helping us slow learners on the iPads, and we needed him more than once, for example when it came to declaring the hotel we were staying at. Heather had booked a short stay at YotelAir. I selected Yotel, which turned out to be on Orchard Road, so I should have entered “Others, YotelAir”. The form didn’t seem to mind, and I’ve left the country now, but there may be retribution on our way home.

Eventually I was rewarded with a smiley face, and a check mark or something to say that I was free to enter. I took screenshots of the unprintable PDF just in case my email didn’t arrive.

But … then we had to do it all again because I’d made an Individual Entry instead of recording us both as a Group. That sort of mistake doesn’t make you popular. Nor does it make you feel like the experienced travellers that, honestly, we are, but at least we didn’t need help filling in The Form for the second time.

One shout-out to Singapore: the security staff at Auckland were overworked and rude. The guy helping us in Singapore was overworked, helpful and very polite.

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Our next challenge was passport control, and my third effort in front the cameras, and my third fail. I was told to stand up straight, look directly at the camera, and take off my hat and my glasses, all of which I’d done. In the end I was directed to Special Assistance and a live human being, and gave up more finger prints than Donald Trump in Manhattan. I had particular trouble with my thumbs. It seems they have to be parallel.

Then we headed off in the wrong direction to collect our bags. By the time we made it they’d been taken off the belt and were sitting lonesome beside it with a couple of other strays.

Then it was off to find our hotel, which was in our departure terminal, in a multi-story complex called Jewel. On the way we spotted Paris Baguette, and were hungry. Now Farro in Auckland makes a very nice ficelle, buttered and stuffed with cheese, ham and pickles. It’s delicious, and Paris Baguette had something very similar on display, so we bought two with coffees. There was no resemblance to Farro, and the bread (“baked fresh every day”) was too dry for even these travellers, hungry after their Oriental Vegan.

Paris Baguette had seduced us. The creatives had designed the buildout and the menu, hired some good people (everyone everywhere seems polite and helpful) and walked away. Who cares that the bread is halfway to wood? It’s appearances that count.

So we trundled our bags through more shopping opportunities, the branded boutiques passing us by like ships in the night, or the ads you skip on YouTube. After a few more missteps we made it to YotelAir and checked in to the smallest hotel room we’ve ever seen. The head end of the bed was folded up to form a sort of sofa facing a rather large TV. There was an electronic control to lower it. When laid flat the thing took up the entire space. How they made it up with fresh bedding I can’t imagine. But it was comfortable. We showered, changed and, yes, did sleep a little.

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The short hops from Singapore to Bangkok to Chiang Rai were uneventful — except the onboard food, which was a simple, delicious relief — and so was entry into Thailand. But after the best part of two days maybe I was too far gone to complain.