My flight to Amritsar was scheduled to leave in mid-afternoon, so I had some time to kill in the morning in the city. I went back to Nanyang Old Coffee for breakfast again, and then took the MRT to Raffle's Place and walked to Merlion Park, home of the iconic Merlion fountain, a famous symbol of Singapore.

I then walked from the Merlion through the Downtown area to Amoy Street Food Centre, and went to get more chicken rice and lime juice for lunch. It is not hard to find good chicken rice and Singapore, and even though this stall is not famous, I think it is just as good as Tian Tian. I then walked back to my hostel and stopped at Nanyang Old Coffee for one more taste of Singaporean kopi before heading to the airport.

I took the MRT from Chinatown to Changi Airport, which took about an hour. I went to check in for my Scoot flight to Amritsar. I had placed the minimum bid for an upgrade to ScootPlus, which is Scoot's premier cabin (it is more of a premium economy equivalent), and I had won, but it wasn't very helpful for expediting the check-in process. I had applied for an Indian 30-day eVisa at the earliest opportunity, which meant I was issued a entry authorization that expired today, and then when I arrive in India I would be given a 30-day visa from the date of entry (i.e. today is the last day I can enter, and I will be allowed to stay until March 30th, I could've entered yesterday and I would have been allowed to stay until March 29th, etc.). This really confused the Scoot staff, who didn't believe the email I showed them explaining this, probably because most passengers are either Indian nationals, or have other Indian visas which just have typical expiration dates. I had to go speak to the station manager who called the Amritsar station manager, who then had to go speak to the Indian immigration officials, who said it was okay for me to fly to India. The whole process took an extra half an hour.

Since checking in took so long, I didn't have much time to do anything in Changi Airport, so I just headed straight for my gate, went through security, and waited a couple minutes until it was time to board. I must have been the only passenger who bid for a ScootPlus upgrade, because the other two seats in my row were empty.

After boarding they handed out 30MB inflight wi-fi vouchers to all ScootPlus passengers. 30MB is an insultingly small amount of data, it's not really enough to do anything, and the in-flight wifi also didn't really work.

ScootPlus passengers get a free meal and alcoholic beverage, and after we were in the air, they came and took my order. I went for the black pepper beef with rice, which was just okay, and a Tiger Beer, which I wished was colder. After dinner they served a dark chocolate ice cream, which was very good

After an uneventful (especially compared to the Pikachu Jet) flight we arrived in Amritsar, the economic capital of Punjab, a state in north-west India. Amritsar is located less than 30km from the India-Pakistan border, and it is also the holiest city to the Sikhs, which I will elaborate on tomorrow. We had to wait a long time for checked bags because they were scanning all of them individually before releasing them on the belt, then they made everyone put their carry-on bags through the x-ray before leaving. I exited customs and looked for an ATM, but there were none in the arrivals hall. Instead there was one located just on the opposite side of the road outside the airport, which I found a little strange.

I used Ola, which is India's version of Uber (although Uber is available in many places) to call a ride to take me to my hotel, Hotel Heaven View, located near the Golden Temple in the center of the old city. The driver didn't want to go into the old city, so he called the hotel and arranged for a tuktuk (called an auto, short for auto rickshaw, in India) to pick me up outside the old city, and I changed vehicles mid-trip.

After checking into the hotel I went out to try to buy a SIM card. Mobile data in India is ridiculously cheap if you have a local SIM Card: you can get 50GB of Data for 300 rupees, which comes out to 7.5 cents per GB, whereas the most efficient eSim I could find online cost $2 per GB. I walked 20 minutes to a Jio store (Jio is major cell provider in India) but the guy working there didn't feel like selling me a sim card and turned me away. He told me to go back tomorrow at 11am. There weren't any other phone stores open at the time so I just walked back to my hotel. I was very hungry, so I stopped along the way at Bharawan Da Dhaba, a restaurant that was full of people so I assumed it must be good. A Dhaba is a roadside restaurant in India and they are particularly popular in Punjab. I wanted to try some Amritsari food so I ordered a cheese-stuffed kulcha thali (a thali is a type of meal where various selected dishes are served on a platter). All the restaurants in the old city are vegetarian only, so the thali was served with some onion, curd, and what I think is chole, a chickpea curry. The bread was freshly made, and it was hot and delicious.

As I walked back to the hotel I saw tons of street dogs. There are tens of millions of them in India, and they are plentiful in the Amritsar old city. I observed that when people walk their pet dogs, they hold a stick in the other hand to keep the street dogs away, because they are territorial and will defend their territory from the pet dogs that walk past. I don't think dad would like the treatment of the dogs here, it is nothing like in Turkey.