Hello Again!
It’s been nearly 10 weeks since I returned from South America, and frankly the time has flown by! It was good to catch up with friends and family, but I was also aware that I had planned for two periods of travel – South America, and a second solo slot to include Australia and Myanmar in particular – and it wasn’t going to organise itself!
Original plans were to visit friends and family in the east and west coast of the USA, and up into the west coast of Canada, before heading to Australia and South East Asia, and coming back via either China or Japan – but after a good “honest” look at finances – this wasn’t going to happen, so sadly I had to cut off the USA/Canada at the front and China/Japan at the end, and save them for another time!
My new route will therefore now be through parts of Australia, Singapore, Thailand and Myanmar, and be almost 2 months away.
Once the main flights were booked, there followed further weeks of researching/organising accommodation, visas, activities, contacting friends and family I would try to meet up with while away, and having a few more farewell get-togethers before the big departure day rolled round again!
Sarah kindly gave me a lift to the airport, and I felt surprisingly nervous about setting off again – although in theory this should be much easier than the last adventure, so it was something of a relief after I checked in at Heathrow, and from there, there was no going back!
Maybe Tuesdays are not big days to travel, but the departure lounge at terminal 5 was like the Marie Celeste, and once on board the flight, it became apparent, so was the plane! There were about 25-30 people in the economy section (which could easily hold hundreds), so we all spread out and all had a row (and a flight attendant) to ourselves on the deserted plane for the 12 hour flight to Singapore.
My plan was to stay awake until Singapore, then sleep on the flight to Brisbane, so I busied myself with watching a coffee fuelled back-to-back movie marathon of “Wild”, “Gone Girl”, “The Theory of Everything”, “Kingsman” and “Mockingjay” and even “Paddington” which, for better or worse, passed the time!
Changi Airport in Singapore is one of the best ones to spend some time in when in transit, which was a good thing as my primary aim was to not fall asleep and miss my connecting flight, but after 26 hours awake and the prospect of a 5 hour layover I was glad to find the distractions.
There were lots of “gardens” to visit, spread out over the three terminals, connected by a sky train – so I set out to visit them all!
3 hours later I’d visited the Orchid Garden, the Butterfly House, the Sunflower Garden, the Enchanted Garden and attempted to find the cactus and water lily gardens (which turned out were closed for re-work), and had wandered in and out of the shops, and posted a cheesy picture of myself to The Social Tree, it was time to check in and go through security at the boarding gate for the final flight.
Although much busier than the first flight, I still had two seats to myself by the window, and so settled in and made myself comfortable.
Apparently I somewhat cocked up on the timings. I thought I had at least 9 -10 hours in which to sleep on the flight from Singapore to Brisbane – it was actually about 6 and a half. Decided I would just try to sleep as much as possible, but after takeoff the smell of tomato and pesto with garlic bread was so good I had to partially open my eyes and did a sort of “sleep eating” thing before pretty much passing out.
Awoke about 5.30am as the plane had started its decent. It was dark outside but the orange pink of sunrise was just peeping over the horizon, and as it got brighter and the colours increased, we touched down just after 6am.
I was finally there.
Hello Australia, it’s been a while!
The Senior Moments 