Day 1-3 “The Flight” (Thursday 7th – Saturday 9th March 2013)

Today was the day I flew to the other side of the world or as good as. Was I packed… Of course not! But in my defence I had developed chickenpox 9 days before I was meant to leave. This excuse holds up well until you realise I hadn’t even sorted travel insurance or my tax form! Even so, today was the day I left the UK and the extent of what I’m doing still hasn’t hit me, in just a few hours I’d be at an airport saying goodbye to my family and walking onto a plane on my own. Was I scared, no… But I did find it harder than I thought to walk away from loved ones and found myself using a tissue or two!

Dubai to Melbourne

So now comes the flight… In about 22 hours I’ll be in Melbourne, Australia (including about 19 hours on aeroplanes). After I had nearly gone through the wrong departure gate I made it to the right area and sat waiting for the plane, when on it, I realised the people either side of me we really friendly and we ended up chatting and drinking the whole way to Dubai, I also got a film watched! Now in the earlier hours of the morning (UK time) I was at Dubai airport with Pete, the man I had sat next to on the plane and sleep deprived we went and got a water together. He was such a nice and friendly man and was going to Bangkok an hour before my onward flight, so we parted company and I went to look for my next flight… Dubai airport is massive and I had to take a mini train/subway to get to the right gate number but on the upside I didn’t have to collect my bags because they automatically transfer on to Melbourne! A short while later the flight was called through but out hand luggage was searched again and water removed… Not happy! The flight was then delayed an hour and we all had to wait in the gate lounge. Finally we boarded the aeroplane and having the extra leg room for the second flight in a row was brilliant, it did take some sorting out back in the UK but it was so worth it. The downside on this flight were the people, no one really said a word, so I kept to myself on the 13 hour flight and unsuccessfully tried to sleep. I may have dozed off a few times but I began to get ill with exhaustion about 6 hours in, this made concentrating eg. watching films and playing games impossible! I eventually got some more dozing under my belt but noting great and managed to watch a couple of films. Overall the free food and alcohol as well as the entertainment they offered (I couldn’t believe you get a touch screen to pick music, films, TV shows etc and play them when you want… No start times to worry about!) was top notch and the flights weren’t too bad either (coming from someone that doesn’t like flying) I would definitely flight with Emirates again!

Finally I’ve made it, I’m in Australia 2 days after I left (because of the time difference) but I still had to clear passport patrol and the quarantine which took just over an hour and included some panic because I’m not great at filling forms out and even worse when I have some banned items on me like nuts!!! But there wasn’t actually a problem in the end just serious queues and I declared the nuts and no one seemed bothered so I got to keep them. With those queues, collecting baggage and the flight delay my poor Aunty had been waiting for a couple of hours to collect me and take me back to my new home… To make things worse, my flight was meant to land at 6:35am but we met at about 9am, so Avril didn’t even get a lie in on Saturday morning.

The story continues in the next blog, sorry this went on and on… Doubt they’ll all be like this but I hope you enjoy reading what I get up to in the following weeks and hopefully year to come. 🙂