I got to Dulles at 10:30am on Wednesday, and left Changi at 11:30pm on Thursday. Taking out the time change, that is 25 hours of airports and airplanes, and about 20 hours in the air.
Everything went smoothly. Flying business class kept me out of the long lines, and gave me plenty of space to stretch out. Still, I can't say I enjoyed it.
I ignored the advice to not sleep during the flight, which would certainly have been bad advice. But I had spent the days prior staying up later to start preparing for the time change. But since I hadn't been sleeping in at all, I was just poorly rested. Then I slept only fitfully on the plane. By the end of the second leg, I was feeling very queasy and a bit dehydrated. I was keeping the airsick bag safely nearby, but luckily never needed it.
I think on any future flight, I'll have to consider breaking up the flight into legs with a day or two stopover.
Other than that, I was disappointed that we didn't fly over the arctic (it was Alaska and Siberia instead) and that you can't really keep looking out the window because everyone is trying to sleep, and it floods the cabin with light.
Dehydration is a real problem on those long flights. On future flights, ask the flight attendant for a bottle of water on the first pass through for service -- then take it to the lavatory and keep refilling the bottle. The flight attendants can't do cabin service often enough, and keeping hydrated is a problem -- and probably the cause of the nausea. I agree on breaking up the flight. Stop over somewhere enroute and take a break -- wish we had done that on the way to Australia. We did it on the way back, and it really helped (stopped in Hawaii).
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