Reaching Melbourne

*****It’s about 10ish in the morning on the 2nd as I’m writing this but I imagine it will be posted at a completely different time, so just keep that in mind as you’re reading this!*****

4 days after we arrived at Heathrow and 2 days later than originally planned… We have finally made it to Melbourne!! I don’t know where to start really because it feels like so much has happened and we’re only on a second (and unfortunately now, final!) day here. 

Firstly, the airline delays. 

Ooooobviously our luck meant that both of our outgoing flights were delayed by more than 24 hours. 

Our first flight out of London (22:50) was delayed due to a technical fault but at 23:30 they announced over the speakers that the flight was cancelled and they would be putting us all into hotels. We found out the following day that one of the valves has needed replacing. They didn’t have it in the area so it had to be flown in the following day from Zurich on a flight that (can you believe it) ended up being delayed by an hour. You really couldn’t make this journey up, I swear. 

We had our free breakfast the next morning then went back to our room to wait for the 10:30am announcement letting us know when our flight would be. That announcement never came but we were called by reception and told that we would be having lunch (for free!) and there would be a phone call at 2:30 for another update. 

Enjoying the fact we were eating and sleeping for free, we made full use of the buffet and filled ourselves up. The 2:30pm phone call was, thankfully, a lot more informative than the first and we were told that we had to check out and be in the reception area for 4pm because two coaches would be arriving at 4:30 to take everyone to the airport. Hallelujah! We celebrated by having naps and showering so that we would be refreshed and ready to finally board our 13 hour flight. 

I don’t think anyone would be surprised to learn that the coach to pick us up (we were in the second group of people) was an hour late. We weren’t surprised either to be honest. “Delayed” was fast becoming the main theme of our big adventure so far. 

When we arrived at the airport, we were told by the ticket desk that because of our delayed arrival in Manila, there wouldn’t be a connecting flight for another 12 hours. 

Actually, the woman’s exact words were: “There isn’t a connecting flight to Melbourne” which obviously forced all 3 of us into an alarmed silence. Was she going to tell us we would have to live in the Philippines now? What was she saying??? Were we paying for a different flight?

Turns out she has just phrased it terribly and was actually telling us that because there wasn’t a connecting flight within 12 hours of us arriving in Manila, we were going to be taken to a hotel for the evening and would be told when our flight was going to be when we were there (doesn’t that sound familiar?).

So while our journey delays literally repeated themselves, we went back through security and went to find our flight information. I won’t bore you with descriptions of us waiting around in the airport, waiting for Tom to pluck up the courage to ask the Dixons guys about GoPros, discovering that the Philippine Airline staff actually knew as much as we did about the flight (nothing), or of us trying to find somewhere that would accept our £7.50 refreshments voucher for the airline and actually pay for more than half a meal. All I’ll say is that although the board said our gate would be announced at 8:45pm and that the flight was at 10pm, we weren’t actually told what gate it was until 9:30pm, 5 minutes after the air crew found out themselves. And that after the 4 shuttles had driven everyone from the gate to the plane, and everyone had been seated, it was gone 11pm by the time we actually took off. 

But the main thing was: we had taken off! We were finally on our way!!!!!

…..to another delay in the Philippines but whatever. 

The plane itself wasn’t quite what we were expecting (there was no personal in-flight entertainment, just 2 TV screens in the middle showing films) but we were all sat together which was the main thing. We all managed to get to sleep at least once during the flight but I think Tom was the only one who managed to sleep for more than 5 hours. 

We landed in Manila at 7:30pm local time and made our way through passport control to our baggage. We were all really glad we were being allowed to take our luggage with us. Clean clothes!! 

For some reason, Tom’s bag was wheeled past us and after a lot of confused conversations with airline staff, he managed to find it outside the airport on a trolley full of smaller bags all labelled LTH. We have no idea where it was headed, or if it was just going to be held somewhere ready for us to come back the next day?, but I think it was really lucky that Tom insisted on them giving it to him because given our luck, it was probably headed back to London or something. 

So at 8:30pm local time, all three of us and our luggage were on the bus and about to leave for the hotel. It took us maybe 20 minutes to drive there? and just wow. I knew it would be different and I had a vague idea of what it would look like but it was just like nothing I had ever seen before. I don’t even know how to describe it. Although I will say that I don’t think I ever want to drive there because if I thought Italian driving was bad, this is on a whole new level. At one point I thought we were on a roundabout and we weren’t, it was a normal road just with cars littered every which was. We even saw a guy riding a bike the wrong way down a road. Just casually. 

The hotel we stayed in that evening was amazing. We were all given our own rooms (twin beds for some reason) and the bathrooms in those rooms had glass walls (probably why we had our own rooms). The bathrooms had baths in them so all 3 of us had long, hot baths and completely washed off the 15 or so hours of travelling. We had vouchers for dinner, breakfast, lunch and another dinner because we were going to be in the hotel until 6pm the next day (obviously it was a 24 hour delay, obviously). The food was so good! It was a mix of different cuisines and we all (even me!!) made an effort to try almost everything on offer. I passed on the sushi, but Tom tried it twice (and hated it both times). I think my favourite thing was a kind of beef stew with steamed rice, and second to that was rolls that seemed to have butter or something on top because they were really soft and sweet. Tom and Meryn went to town on the desserts and tried every single one on offer, including this really gross looking rice pudding that was a contender for Tom’s least favourite food, after the sushi. 

We didn’t spend long out of our hotel for a variety of different reasons, none of which seem good enough now but at the time, to our sleep-deprived, jet-lagged, worried about missing our connection and the fact we had no money brains, they were good enough and so our experience of Manila was limited to a 15 minute walk around our hotel. Even this was too much for Tom, who kept asking if we could go back to the hotel now please. The humidity was intense, but it was so interesting to see all the different cars and lorries and people walking past or waiting around, and the buildings! Nothing looked familiar or similar in any way to home, and I really hope I get the opportunity to go back one day. Preferably by choice, and a lot more prepared! 

I think we got to the airport at about 7. We were told our flight would be at 21:10 and were given our gate number. We had to check our luggage back in and while we were waiting for Meryn (who took a weirdly long time), Tom decided to weigh himself on the luggage scales and instantly decided they must be wrong because there was no way he had put on that much weight (despite eating 3 or 4 helpings at each meal in our hotel). 

Turns out that security in Manila airport is a bit stricter than in Heathrow and that the security guards there don’t like bike locks in hand luggage. We had a very stressed 30 minutes of Tom trying to reason the guy into letting him take his bike lock, pedals and some screw thing in his hand luggage; us trying to get our hold luggage back (“it’s still outside the desks, I can see it, I can see it!” “I’m sorry sir, it’s already been checked in, we can’t get it back”); Tom eventually winning back his pedals and screw thing and then the sad moment we watched the security guard throw the bike lock away. Small victories (and sad moments when he found keys that no longer had a purpose). 

We didn’t have to wait too long for our flight (it still didn’t take off until 10ish) and we were all sat together again (yay!). Annoyingly none of us slept much on the flight so it was mainly just 8 hours of us sat with our eyes closed wishing we were asleep. 

I think there was one person who boarded the flight with a cold, and by the end of it there was at least 6 or 7 people around us coughing and sneezing. About 20 minutes before we landed, the cabin crew came through spraying some kind of hygiene spray that they reassured us had been approved by the World Health Organisation. Not the most reassuring thing that has happened on a plane before, but pretty in keeping with the disaster that had been that journey so far ha ha!

[It’s thanks to that awful person that I now have a horrible cold - blocked nose, sneezing, headache, dizziness and lethargy that all feels AWESOME when it’s combined with jet lag. And it’s so weird having a cold in hot weather - I simultaneously want to cwtch up with a blanket and sit in shorts in front of a fan.]

So after a less-than-reassuring end to our flight, we finally landed in Melbourne at 7am local time. I’ll save the details of our first day here for another post. Meryn has just got back from the shop, and I think? I can hear the sound of Tom’s bike coming down the corridor. We’re going to cook ourselves some pasta in the kitchen downstairs (without salt - unless we act on Meryn’s idea to steal some from McDonald’s) before spending the afternoon exploring the city by the free tram service. 

That’s assuming we don’t melt of course - it’s going to reach 30 degrees today. 30! In spring! Melting is a real possibility. Especially with our luck…