The return journey

Ok we’re home! But I’ll do two more posts to wrap up this trip. This one covers our trip home. In the next and last one I’ll summarise the good things and the not so good things we experienced during our 4 weeks away.

So, first up, here’s how our trip home went. I would’ve posted at Dubai and Bangkok or Sydney, but in all cases the stopover wasn’t long enough (which is a good thing!).  🙂
Our return journey comprised 4 flights. Yup it’s usually a 3 leg journey, but it was all about what was available for the price at the time we booked. The only hot deals were with Malaysian Airlines back then. For some reason they weren’t in demand. Maybe that also contributed to the fact that all of our flights (including the last leg home with Qantas) were chocka full. No spare seats at all. Ok here goes.

Leg 1 of 4:
We departed Frankfurt at 10:20pmish on a 6 hour Emirates 777-300ER flight to Dubai where we’d have 2 hours before boarding for the next leg. This leg would be our best Emirates flight of all. Upon reaching our seats we struck up a conversation with the hostess in our area. She was Singapore born, Brisbane based and had a true blue Aussie accent. She was really friendly (and so were we) so all of a sudden we had a connection which would set us up for the rest of the flight. She even served us orange juice before we took off (nobody else in cattle class got the same). After we reached altitude she swooped back and asked if we wanted something stronger. JD and Coke, Bacardi and DCoke please! Done. Maybe she felt sorry for us because we weren’t taking the direct route to Sydney on the A380 (instead the 777 has to stop at Bangkok for fuel). More on that later. Regardless she checked on us regularly and would bring anything we wanted. We could see she was paying us more attention than others but we didn’t complain. She even popped back just before landing and wished us well for the remainder of our journey. She was so nice. We (nor others that we could see) got anything near that on all the other Emirates flights. All other staff just did what they had to and nothing more, not even a random drinks run. So for us, apart from this one hostess at Emirates, Singapore Airlines still rules overall on the service front.
We arrived at Dubai at 6:30am local time. On the landing approach the viewing distance was cut short by a heavy dirty smog seen in all directions. On the ground there we could see sand, sand, sand and more sand. Surprise? 🙂 When buildings came into view the first thing noticed was that it looked like you could build in any colour as long as it’s a shade of brown. We saw several large organised compound like building complexes, one of which looked like it was made from lego blocks.
At the airport… we taxied for ages before parking up in what appeared to be the plane equivalent of a spare parking lot extension, miles from anywhere. We disembarked down steps (front and back steps were driven up to the plane) and walked across to waiting buses. It’s 6:30am and 34C.

This bloke politely requested that I stop taking photos by the plane so I did.  Not sure what the deal was. You can see the buses for the front part of the plane.

Although we were near the back of the plane, our bus was first away. The drive to the terminal took about 20 minutes! But the upside of that was we got a great look at the layout of the airport and an appreciation of the size of it with monstrous rows of planes parked up against the various terminals. 100s of Emirates plane tails in a row everywhere. We got an up close drive by of every Emirates aircraft. Heaps of them, mostly the big ones.
There’s no denying that is airport is monstrous (it is of course the world’s busiest airport for international passenger traffic). I figured that our ‘backstreet park up’ would allow planes that were ‘ready to load’ to be moved across to the terminal for departing passengers to walk on via the air bridges. Who knows, just a guess.
We eventually arrived at their massive Terminal 3 which is the second largest building in the world by floor space and the largest airport terminal in the world. It’s used exclusively for two airlines only – Emirates, and their code share partner Qantas who can only use it for their A380s (we saw two Qantas A380s parked up as we drove by in the airport bus). Dubai airport is also the busiest hub for the Airbus A380, and you can’t argue with that. They were everywhere!

At the terminal building we found ourselves in a short queue behind buses from other planes. But soon enough we were off and inside and passing through another security check before they let us loose inside the building. We had quite a reasonable walk to our gate 30 but it wasn’t too bad.  At Dubai there was only enough time to:
a) take the bus ride,
b) walk to the seated area next to our gate,
c) take a ‘freshen up visit to the loo’,
d) sit for about 20 minutes (although Kath did some duty free shopping),
e) queue for our flight’s passport / boarding pass check,
f) sit in an area right beside the gate and
g) board the plane.
As we were getting our passport checks done there was a woman (I assume it was) just in front of us wearing a full black head to toe outfit including the niqab face covering veil. I said to Kathryn: How on earth do they do her passport photo match? Surely her photo looks identical to thousands of others. I looked at how the guy doing the checks to see how he would react. He looked at her passport and then gave it back to her. So what was he checking?

Leg 2 of 4:
The next part of the journey is (according to our ticket) to Sydney but there’s actually a transit fuel stop at Bangkok (we used the same plane from Dubai to Sydney). You can either fly direct to Sydney (on the A380) or take this one (the 777). I guess the additional stop doesn’t sound like something you’d choose to do but we thought a decent 100 minute leg stretch half way through the journey wouldn’t a bad idea.  Plus the opportunity of getting some non-plane food would be a plus, not to mention being out of the air conditioned cabin.  Besides, if we took the direct flight we’d just have to wait longer in Sydney to get the same connecting flight to Wellington. So it’s either:
a) 14hrs 15mins on the A380 direct to Sydney (with an extra wait in Sydney for the Wgtn flight), or
b) 16hrs 55m on the 777 including a ‘half way’ Bangkok stop.
The price difference helped confirm our choice, but now that I’ve done it, if I was doing it again, would I choose to do the one big haul instead?  It’s a tough choice, but probably yes. The stop in Bangkok didn’t turn out to be the nice break we thought it would be. A break in Sydney would’ve been more pleasant. Read on to find out why.
We arrived on time at Bangkok in the early evening. The weather was partly cloudy and calm. As usual the humidity hits you when you exit the plane in these parts. Awful and uncomfortable. Ok… now the fun part.
Pain # 1: We had to take all of our carry-on bags off with us (Even though we’d soon be returning to our same seats). Maybe this is because cleaners would come through the plane?  Not sure.
Pain # 2: We walked 500m with our gear (including our boxed cuckoo clock!) to do another security check. Hello, why? We just did a security check before boarding at Dubai! “Thai security directive”. So through the scanners we went (this included removing our shoes for scanning – the only place where we did this).
Pain #3: After leaving this area and heading up some stairs and 300m back in the direction of our plane, they wanted to search our (just scanned) carry-on bags. So we’re now in another queue for this. Watching the way they went about it made me wonder why they’re actually bothering.  It was a waste of time.  Naturally they found nothing in anyone’s bags.  I had to open the box with the clock in it. I’d no sooner lifted a bit of the bubble wrap to reveal the clock when he said “Ok” and I was allowed to close it up again. Ummm… why are you here? (I kept that thought to myself!).
Pain#4: We next joined another queue so they could do our passport check.
Lastly (not painfully) there was the boarding pass check as we re-entered the plane. Yes it consumed time, and no we didn’t get the nice break we thought we’d get. And all of this was done in the stuffy humidity that is Bangkok.
I realise new passengers would be part of the next flight, but surely the transit passengers could’ve been directed straight into the gate lounge. Lift your game Bangkok!
So next time – would I choose the Bangkok transition to Sydney over the direct flight and longer stopover in Sydney? (even with the extra cost). No I wouldn’t. Returning via Auckland also gives other options. We’ll suss it out at the time.

Leg 3 of 4:
Our 777 left Bangkok later in the evening for the 8hr20m flight to Sydney. It was good to be back in the air conditioned tube after the uncomfortable Bangkok humidity. Leg 3 passed in the same way as leg 2. We’re still missing our friendly hostess from leg 1.
My neighbour in the aisle seat is a woman from the Gold Coast who was returning from visiting her daughter in Dubai. She’s now visiting another daughter in Sydney. She was pleasant and obliging each time we had to leave our seats, and just the right kind of person you’d want sitting next to you on long hauls.
As we approached Sydney (arrival time 7:45am) the captain announces that it in Sydney it’s raining and 6C. Hmmm… sounds like a report you’d get when approaching Wellington!
We land smoothly and taxi to the gate, but stopped just short. The captain announces that there’s another plane in our gate and we’ll have to wait because there’s no other spaces. We must’ve sat there waiting for 20-30 minutes before they moved this Singapore Airlines A380 out of the way and let us in. Our 777 would continue through to Christchurch but for Kath and I, we had to find the gate where we’d board the 737 belonging to our Emirates code share partner Qantas. The transition time for us was 1 hour 50m and we’d just used a chunk of that waiting for a gate, and then waiting to disembark.

Leg 4 of 4:
Fortunately the walk to the Qantas gate 55 wasn’t too bad. But there was one thing we needed to do immediately, and that was to get our seats changed. Why? Well after receiving all of our boarding passes at Frankfurt Kath noticed that our Qantas flight passes had her sitting in a row in front of Murray! Emirates at Frankfurt said they couldn’t change the Qantas seat allocation which meant we’d have to wait until we got to Sydney (by which stage all other passengers would’ve had their seats allocated!). We approached the woman at gate 55 who soon told us the flight was 100% full so she couldn’t do anything. She did however say that there was a woman sitting next to Kathryn at a window seat who might consider taking Murray’s window seat 1 row back. Later we found that she had no problem switching seats so that worked out ok. Who knows why we were allocated different rows when booking 2 tickets (and we were probably amongst the first people booking that flight!).
We had an interesting chat to the woman at gate 55. When we mentioned that we’d been sitting on the plane waiting for a gate to be cleared she told us that this is now normal at Sydney airport. She said that it’s really bad. They have more flights than they can handle and that there are delays on most flights. She added that they keep building more duty free shops when they should be building more terminal gates. Needless to say that our flight out of Sydney left late (only 15 minutes). This was soon cancelled out when the captain announced the flight time would be 2hrs 35mins due to a tail wind. Nice.
I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this Qantas 737 flight because I know how tight their seating is (and it didn’t disappoint). I felt like the proverbial sardine. Ridiculous. But… partly making up for that was their service. Here we had 3 flight attendants who were giving it all. Very pleasant and very obliging. And they even filled up your glass (I mean plastic cup) with drink! Except on leg 1 Emirates were really tight with their drink servings, preferring to serve half measures (which meant I’d always ask for at least 2 drinks to get a decent swig!). Qantas were great. Murray also appreciated the garlic bread and ice cream on the trans-Tasman flight. (Good supporting food for any main meal). Well done Qantas. I didn’t know you had it in you!  So for Murray the service and the quicker flight time sort of almost covered the disappointment of his sardine seating situation.  Kath was happy with all her plane food.
But at the end of the day, plane food is plane food. i.e. it is what it is (unless of course you’re in Business or First Class when it’s a bit more ‘real’!).
As we approached Wellington the captain made an unusual announcement. He said the weather in Wellington was fine, the wind was very light, and the temperature was 13C. Are we really landing at Wellington?? After I was admiring the views of the South Island I suddenly remembered that I should take a few photos. Ooops almost too late. Never mind. Here’s some that I just sneaked in.  Here you can see Blenheim on the right.
Nek minute we’re about to land.

Touchdown. We made it back.

While many others queued at the passport check, Kath and I used the scanners instead and sneaked ahead of them into the duty free are to pick up the obligatory alcoholic supplies. Our bags were out on the carousel early which gave us another head start into the customs area where, because we were declaring food and wood we need to go and get that checked out. No problems there. The guy was friendly enough and he soon sent us straight out the door where we met up with Buzz and Susan who were kind enough to come in and pick us up.
That’s about it. We’re both pretty knackered. Kath got some sleep on that overnight leg.

We freshened up with well overdue showers before heading around to see Steph and pick up Justin. Many thanks again to Steph for playing mother of 3 for a month. You’ve been magnificent and we really do appreciate you helping us out. Justin loved the food that you and Howie cooked and was more than happy to stay with you. So he’ll be back next month!  Nah kidding.
We came back home and there was one more thing we had to do before hitting the sack for that overdue sleep, and that was to watch the All Blacks vs Argentina game. Murray found it really difficult to keep his eyes open and several times was close to nodding off. But there were plenty of Cantabrians on display so he completed the task. But straight after the game it was lights out for Kath & Murray. Knackered.
So there ends the journey home. There’ll be one more summary post which will probably go up tomorrow.