As I have promised, here’s a summary of the trip to Australia and our first days here. This post covers the trip. The next post will cover the first days here.
Saturday, 9 July
As I have previously written, our first flight departed from Arlanda airport at 14:30 CEST. A semi-sick Gustav and a better off Linnea were seated in 37J and 37K on their way to Bangkok. The flight with Thai Airways departed on time and shortly after take-off the cabin crew started giving out snacks and drinks.
The snacks were some pretzels, and the drink of our choice was apple juice. Linnea’s first-hand choice was coffee, but apparently, Thai Airways only serve coffee with hot meals. I guess Thai Airways might not be familiar with Swedish coffee habits.
Linnea and I started watching a movie each in the in-flight entertainment system after we got the snacks. Linnea watched the new live action Djungle Book while I watch 10 Cloverfield Lane. I liked the movie. If you like mystery-thrillers watch it, but don’t look at trailers or reviews. It’s best watched without knowing too much about the story.
We got our hot meal during the movie. So after pausing the movie we ate the meal consisting of a Curry chicken with rice, salad, bread, camembert, saltines, a cheesecake for dessert, and last but not least coffee! Well, tea for me since I find it more soothing than coffee.
After the meal, we finished watching our movies after which we fell asleep – I wish! We laid under our blankets, with our neck pillows around our necks and with sleeping masks over our eyes – still, sleep was scarce. I managed to get a few hours in total, but it was hard as the three loudmouthed, whisky-chugging, Swedish men on the row in front of us stayed awake for quite some time. And at each bump and kick from the passenger in the seat beside me my focus on falling asleep was lost again for the moment. But I was lucky. Linnea gave up her attempt to fall asleep after a while and watched movies instead.
At one point during the “night”, Linnea woke me up, point out the small aeroplane window. We were somewhere close to India, and at the horizon, in a dark and ominous cloud, a thunderstorm. Linnea and I managed to catch a glimpse of the whole cloud lighting up as thunder rolled.
Sunday, 10 July
When “morning” came, i.e. when the cabin crew slowly turned the cabin light back up, breakfast was served. The Swedish breakfast brands greeted us as we were served orange juice, yoghurt, fruit salad, marmalade, croissant, scrambled eggs and sausage, and coffee or tea.
Shortly after we had finished our breakfast, we began our decent. Bangkok greeted us under a cover of smog, fog, or both.
We landed at about 6 am local time (ICT). Stepping out of the plane, meeting signs with strange writings and stepping onto the walkways. After finding a sign with departures and finding the gate of our second flight, we found the escalator for that section of the airport. But in front of the escalator, blocking the way an airport employee stood checking each and everyone’s boarding card and said whether or not they were supposed to go up the escalator. As you might imagine the line for the escalator was very long, and at the end when I showed my boarding I simply got the response: “Sydney, yes” and a pointing gesture up the escalator.
When we got up the escalator, we found ourselves in the line of a security control and panically drank up the water in our water bottle, which we had just refilled on the plane. After the security control, we strolled through the duty-free shops and went to our gate.
When we finally were allowed to enter the boarding area of the gate, the area was filled fast. This was due to the fact that boarding didn’t start until 20 minutes after the scheduled time of take-off.
On the flight, we were served breakfast again, pretty much the same things as last flight only in a more Thai way. After breakfast, they turned down the lights again and “night” began. This annoyed me a bit as my intention was to stay awake during this flight in order to better adjust to the Australian time. My attempt to stay awake failed. While listening to podcasts and news, I soon dozed off and so did Linnea as well.
We slept for most of the second flight and woke up just before the hot meal was going to be served. The second flight they server – surprise – Curry chicken(!), only this time in a more Thai way. What Thai way means when it comes to Curry chicken is more spices. I toke one bite, and that was enough for me. I ate the salad and bread instead.
The arrival to Sydney was only a couple of minutes behind schedule. When we walked off the plane, we arrived at immigrations and customs. Everything there was quite easy. Scan your passport, get a ticket, go to line, put ticket into a machine, look into the camera, walk through, fetch bag, go to customs, hand over paper slip, “weapons or medicines?”, “medicins”, “did you bring any food from the plane?”, “no”, “can I check your backpack?”, “sure”, “you can go”, “thanks”, and that was pretty much it. We had to wait a short while for our luggage, but not very long.
When we came out to the arrival area, we were greeted by my friend and former colleague Sebastian and his girlfriend Hermione. They drove us to their (and their roomate’s) appartment where we slept horizontally for the first time in a long, long time, or that’s how it felt. Before we went to bed we tried four kinds of Tim Tams, which is an Australian biscuit that Sebastian had bought for us. But in the end it felt really nice to sleep!
Monday, 11 July
Linnea and I woke up and took a well-needed shower. Getting out of the shower, the not-so-warm air of New South Wales hit me, but it’ll get warmer soon (hopefully). When we were dried up, Sebastian had prepared breakfast for us. He had also been out and got us Opal cards to use when travelling in NSW. Thanks, Sebastian and Hermione for meeting, driving, having and helping us! Also thanks to Matt and Angelica for letting us sleep in your living room!
I’ll continue the story in the next post.
Nightie, night! / Gustav