(NB: severe jet lag at time of writing.)
LHR - Singapore depart 22:05 arr 17:55 duration 12:50
Singapore - Sydney depart 21:35 arr 06:10 duration 7:20
Sydney - Auckland depart 09:15 arr 14:35 duration 2:20
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| Our home for 24 hours |
On the journey to Singapore, Lindsey spent a while twisting her wrist around trying to work out when sunrise and sunset would be during the trip. We finally concluded sunrise would occur at about 4:00am BST on our way to Singapore. It went dark again just after we arrived in Singpore and were waiting for our flight onward to Sydney. We touched down just in time for dawn a second time.
We made good use of the on demand film service on the way to Singpore. We started by watching Ghost Writer with Ewan McGregor and Pierce Brosnan. It wasn't very good. The second film we watched was Shrek: Ever After, which was much better than previous sequels and on a par with the first Shrek.
Thirteen hours wreaked havoc with our circulation, and both our feet swelled significantly. I kept my shoes on but Lindsey had removed hers and had to loosen them quite a lot to get them back on. Fortunately, in Singapore they had magic foot massage machines. We were a bit apprehensive at first but decided to give them a go. There were 3 massage settings and 3 vibration settings. The machines rhythmically squeezed our feet, and reduced the swelling. It was only temporary though as our next leg was about to begin so we made our way to the departure gate.
The boarding time was stated on our ticket as 19:40, but that came and went without any announcement on the tannoy. We were finally informed that the flight was delayed due to "bad weather" in Sydney. When we boarded the plane the pilot told us a bit more about the situation. It turns out that at Sydney airport there's a curfew for landing on particular runways and there was a heavy southerly wind which prevented us from landing from the north. We had to wait until 6:00am before we could land in the other direction, against the wind, which meant arriving at the terminal at 6:15 rather than the scheduled 5:10am. Our connection was due to leave at 6:15...
Suffice it to say we missed our connection. We thought we'd be stuck in Sydney until midday, but the nice ground staff lady got us on an earlier flight (the last seats!) and gave us $60 for food. So we had a mega breakfast - a BLT baguette, a salmon bagel, a "chocolate croissant" (pain au chocolat) and organic lemonade and ginger beer. The rest we spent on toblerone, kinder bueno, mars bar, hall's soothers (I had started with a sore throat) and some drinks.
At this point we were getting quite tired, we'd each managed about 5-6 hours sleep in around 36 hours and so we wanted to get to NZ asap. The flight to Auckland was very short compared to the earlier legs, and after passing through immigration and customs, which was much quicker and easier than I expected, we stepped onto New Zealand soil.
I immediately spied a Vodafone shop and went to buy a SIM card for my phone to get myself connected again.
We caught the bus to 'Base' and had a long overdue shower, which made us feel much cleaner and refreshed. We shared a box of mini jaffa cakes. Lindsey had 4, I had 2.
Although we were both extremely tired, so tired that the floor seemed to be wobbling beneath our feet, we decided we needed to stay awake and went out for something to eat. After a while of random wandering through the streets of Auckland we came to a Mexican restaurant and shared a burrito and two coronas. It wasn't long before we were back in bed and fast asleep. We both slept through the night and didn't wake up until the perfectly reasonable time of 7:20am ready for our first full day in Auckland.
The rapidly changing time-zones made for some interesting meal times. Here's a list of what we had during the 48 hours we were travelling:
- Nandos - Oxford and G&Ds just prior to leaving
- Malt loaf and iced gems in Heathrow terminal 3
- Dinner on LHR to SIN, beef pie / salmon
- Hot chocolate and snack bag (mars bar, cookies etc)
- Breakfast on LHR to SIN, museli / cooked breakfast
- Dinner on SIN to SYD, chicken curry / lamb stew
- Hot chocolate
- Ice cream
- Continental breakfast on SIN to SYD
- Complimentary brunch in terminal building in SYD as above
- Lunch on SYD to AKL
- Ice cream
Sleep deprivation: before we slept in a bed again we had been awake or dozing on the plane for 48 hours (no wonder the world was wobbling), a whole 41 hours since we left our flat in Oxford.
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