The Longest Day - Part II

SYDNEY AIRPORT, AUSTRALIA - 1st February 2010

continuing from Part I...

Surprisingly enough, little has changed here in Sydney Airport in the 17 days since I was last here, and most importantly there are still free internet terminals for crucially important tasks like this blog.

The last sentence is, for those of you impervious to written irony, a total lie, made poignantly clear when placed next to the genuinely crucial task facing me presently - attempting to book my ferry from Buenos Aries to Colonia del Sacramento (in Uruguay) for this afternoon (which, adjusting for time zones, is 5am tomorrow Sydney time). Ridiculous time calculations aside, it's a simple enough job - my Qantas flight lands at 10am local time in BA, and want to get on the 4.15pm ferry to Colonia that arrives at 5.30pm. Should be simple enough task, given the sleek website and English option... but naturally, things don't work so easily.

For reasons unknown, I am able to register my name, identification details, choose my ferry crossing, and get to the penultimate page of the booking process, only to have to stupid system refuse to accept that I've input any passenger details... regardless how many times I re-type them right there and then. There's no choice but to give up... but if I land in BA in 13 hours time to discover that that ferry is fully booked, there's gonna be one angry backpacker and an inevitable literary litany to follow.

First though, it's time to cross the Pacific!

The Longest Day - Part I

AUCKLAND AIRPORT, NEW ZEALAND - 1st February 2010

After staying up till late hours to watch Andy Murray get Federered in the Aussie Open final, the clock has ticked over to the early hours of the 1st February. Provided things work as they should, today will, at 40 hours in length, be the longest day of my life so far and quite possibly ever, thanks to a unique blend of flights, a ferry, and the international date line. What's more, within the confines of the 1st of Feb, I'll be setting foot in 4 different countries, spread across 2 continents either side of the Southern Pacific.

Things kick off here in Auckland where, after 3 and a half hours of remarkably comfortable sleep sprawled out along a nicely cushioned bench looking out over the airfield from the airport's observation deck (Sydney could learn a thing or two about accomodating overnight travellers), I've just checked in for my 5.50am LAN Airlines/Qantas flight back to Sydney, due to land at about 6.30am local time. See you on the other side of the Tasman Sea...

The Other Antipodeans

AUCKLAND, NEW ZEALAND - 15th January 2010

I know a thing or two about crappy nights of sleep - aside from this trip's countless overnight buses or waking up on New Year's Day under a table in Sydney, I've had to sleep in the open desert in the middle of a sandstorm; woken up in the middle of a dancefloor on Hat Rin Beach during the Full Moon Party, and it'll be a long time before the night I slept in the middle of the GAB quad is forgotten (even if it was in my bed, complete with bedside table, right). It says something, therefore, when I say that the night I slept in Sydney airport comfortably ranks as the worst night of sleep I've ever had. Unlike the long, broad, bench-like chairs you find it pretty much every other international airport, Sydney has crappy little self contained chairs with horrible little plastic armrests between them - meaning you certainly can't sleep (or indeed sit) comfortably upright, but damnably can't lie down on your side either. They also have the audacity to charge $5 to get from the domestic to the international terminal. Long story short, not impressed.

One positive Sydney does have is an awesome duty free that includes an Apple store (and thus free internet for all), and was the scene of my tidy purchase of a Lumix DMC-FZ35 new digital camera. It's awesome.

Qantas flight QF43 was also awesome, featuring a fantastic meal of braised and herbed chicken with cous cous, and Qantas' state-of-the-art High Definition on demand entertainment system. Shame it was not even a 3 hour flight.

New Zealand immigration is like Fort Knox - their biosecurity gateway makes Australia's notoriously tight customs regulations seem liberal. Clear of food, camping/farm equipment or swine flu though, I was clear to enter.

Necessity (again, I'd hastened to book anywhere in advance) resulted in a cash splurge on a nice B&B joint that included airport pick-up, but despite being a bit of a mission from Auckland's city centre (45 mins by bus), I enjoyed a nice warm evening and clear sunset while wandering around the various waterfront piers and busy streets. Viaduct Pier in particular looked wonderful...if I wasn't on my own and/or operating on a budget! Instead, I settled for a good old Singapore-style food court and some delicious seafood fried noodles.

The over-abundance of fast food chains is as prevalent here in NZ as it was back in Oz, but it was nice to see McDonalds reunited with its old sparring partner Burger King over here after the latter's whole "Hungry Jack's" local branding nonsense in Australia. Nicer still, however, was the dreamy wafting waves of scrumptiously intoxicating cookie dough that were drifting down Queen Street, emanating from Mrs Higgins Oven Fresh Cookie Shop. Anyone who's read Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince can safely assume that after inhaling this they'd know the smell of their Amortentia potion...

My extra spending afforded me an amazingly comfortable bed, so this morning's early start was not enjoyed. However, I'm now all set to head over to Mount Maunganui over in the Bay of Plenty (on the north coast) and meet up with Joe - of Judd School maths teaching/1st XI cricket team scoring fame - and her husband Simon to check out a game of domestic twenty20 cricket. The juggernaut continues...

P.S. For those of you missing me, you can take comfort in knowing that now I'm in New Zealand, pretty much anywhere I go from here will bring me closer to home!

Dean's Aeroplane Curse strikes again

Back in October when this blog was still in its nascent form, my first post after leaving England mentioned how my British Airways aircraft had had to abort its return journey to London one hour after takeoff after the fire alarms went off.

Clearly I have some sort of jinx over airplanes because today's news featured interviews with terrified passengers who "feared for their lives" after one of the engines of Qantas flight QF10 caught fire 45 minutes after takeoff from Singapore. Sure enough, that's the same Qantas QF10 from Singapore to Melbourne that I was on a couple of weeks back...

Qantas has notified Australia's air safety authorities after a Boeing 747, with 354 passengers aboard, had to return to Singapore's Changi Airport after passengers saw flames lick out of one of the engines.

The plane was flying at 31,000 feet at the time, about 45 minutes into the flight. Dylan Brady, 38, was on board when the plane ''convulsed and lost power''.

''[My business partner and I] both thought something had fallen off the bottom, or the landing gear had come undone,'' he said. ''Then we saw this orange light and we both looked out the window to see fire coming out of the back of the jet. It was pretty scary.''

It logically follows that people planning on flying from Sydney to Auckland should be aware that I'm flying on the 14th January, and should plan to leave before then...

Not finished yet!

CHANGI AIRPORT - TERMINAL 1, SINGAPORE - 2nd December 2009

It has transpired that Singapore's Changi Airport features dozens of free internet access computer terminals and, with an hour and a half to wait till QF10 begins boarding, who am I to say no to such generosity?

Sharp readers may have perceived a degree of rush in my blog from a couple of hours back. I was supposed to meet Billy - another Londoner from the Prince of Wales who's flying on a flight to Sydney 10 minutes before mine - at 4.30pm to head off, but what with all the excitement of writing about tasty food I ended up running a fashionable 15 minutes late, and probably failed to "fill in all the gaps" I wanted. Ironically, I now cannot remember what I wanted to write about then...

However, since then we took Singapore's excellent MRT subway system straight to Changi Airport and had the fun of immigration and security. I've had a fairly colourful history of banter with airport-officials in the past - it'll be a long time before I forget the last time I flew home from New York JFK. My 15-year-old self was taken to one side away from my parents to have my bags "chemically tested" (God knows...) and searched. On my way out from Heathrow, I'd picked up a book in duty free called "Why Do People Hate America", and it was sod's law that the first thing this angry-looking security official sees as he opens up my bag is a huge image of the Star Spangled Banner up in flames. I wouldn't have been wholly surprised if I'd been shipped off to Guantanemo...

Anyway, immigration here in Changi involved an interesting interrogation from the border control woman. "What's your name?", "Why are you going to Australia?", "When are you going back to London?" are all fairly run-of-the-mill questions, but it was when she asked "Have you started preparing for Christmas yet?" that I started wondering what was her game. Our little chit chat then shifted onto my passport photo - "Ooooh you were young in this photo! When was it taken? How old were you? How old are you now?". She might as well have asked for a date.

The PCs here run on a 15 minute timer so that people don't hog the machines, and I have 50 seconds left. So, and this time it's for real, that's it till Australia!

Filling in the gaps

LITTLE INDIA, SINGAPORE - 2nd December 2009

Having just undertaken an epic feat of packing, I am shortly departing for Changi Airport and onwards to Australia. Before leaving, however, I thought I'd write one last blog from Asia and fill in a few bits and pieces that didn't make it into my sleep-deprived entry from KL.

I'll start with my hostel. In classic backpackers' fashion, I decided on a place to stay by opening up Lonely Planet, looking at the first recommended place, and going there. The place is called the Prince of Wales, and is an Aussie-joint that features a pretty good bar downstairs (with your 10th beer on the house!), and a large dorm room that must sleep about 20 people upstairs. Being what it is, it is full of Europeans, mainly Brits, 95% of whom are en route to Australia. The setup is great - the atmosphere of the place means you invariably meet lots of great people who've usually had some pretty amazing experiences in their own travels. For example, I went wandering down to Chinatown with a couple of guys this morning, and one of them is a New Zealander who basically travels the world doing freelance photography. He's been to some 150 countries, and seriously knows his stuff - but had some great tales to tell.

Anyway, the big feature of Singapore yet to be mentioned, and what I am definitely going to miss the most when I leave, is the food. Going back to what I said in an earlier blog about Singapore combining everything, cuisine here caters to everyone. At one end, there's the expensive side. Last Thursday evening I met up with yet another fellow Pembrokian, William Abi-Habib, who's just moved out here with a new big-money job with a Korean construction firm. He's worked like a dog, but as Friday was a national holiday we were able to chill on Thursday night down at Boat Quay - a fashionable restaurant area on the Singapore River. Dinner included lobster, tiger prawns, seafood noodles and an excellent white wine - I have no idea what the cost was but I owe Habib a damn nice meal when he comes back to London!

At the other end of the scale though, I've been a regular customer at a plenty of the city's many Food Halls. They are a great invention - take the open seating plan of the Food Courts you see in British shopping centres, but fill the edges of the hall with a multitude of stall-like structures, each one selling a certain speciality at a bargain price. Different parts of town have different specialities it seems, but what I've sampled has ranged from seafood noodle soup to duck fried rice to mutton biriyani to mixed parathas with sambhar - all excellent, none more than about £1.50.

Then, there's the chilli crab - a local speciality that I sampled with Rui and Neha on Saturday night. Mangloreans would see the similarity with a classic crab curry - it's fully shelled crabs cooked in an incredible curry, and you're given an apron at the table and use your hands to break open the shells and get to the sumptuous crab meat. It's a mission, but a seriously rewarding one!

A final thing to mention before I go (I'm now late so better be quick) is Times Square Mall in Kuala Lumpur. People in London got excited about the size of Westfield when it opened, and indeed the size of Bluewater. You should come to KL and see this place. Take the physical area of Westfield, and make it 14 stories tall, all filled with shops, except one section that is filled with a massive indoor roller coaster. The place is mind-bogglingly vast - the economist in me was struggling to understand just how so many shops in one place is financially viable... but it is something that has to be seen to be believed... particularly when you're on the 14th floor looking down at row after row after row of escalators, intertwining down to the depths of the building where you see a floor... but that floor itself is 5 stories up. Crazy.

Now I'm seriously late, so this ends this. Next stop, the Land Down Under.

Indian Farewell

MUMBAI, MAHARASHTRA - 24th November 2009

It's the end of days for Mumbai - tomorrow I depart on Qantas flight 52 to Singapore as my 7-month journey heads another step eastward. However, departure is not before a couple more action-packed days...

Our journey back from Matheran turned into a minor epic - after climbing up we decided to take the toy train back down, and hop onto the mainline suburban train from the bottom of the hill. The toy train journey was epic - certain stretches provided spectacular panoramic hilltop scenery akin to that of the Bangalore-Mangalore line through the Western Ghats (photos will follow in a few days); the difference being that our toy train ran on a 2ft narrow guage and simply worked its way progressively down an isolated hill, as opposed to carving a route through the middle of a range.  It was 2 hours down to Neral at the bottom, but it was there where the wheels somewhat fell off what would have been a relatively quick journey back to Mahim.  It turned out - much to our chagrin - that the Central Railway line into Victoria Terminus was undergoing Sunday maintenance for a stretch of our journey, so we'd have to switch to bus.  

Simple enough?  No chance.  

Unlike the UK, when weekend maintenance is pre-planned and forewarned with posters for months in advance (leave alone announcements to the same in pretty much every station within 100 miles), this is India.  Maintenance wasn't mentioned when we bought our tickets in Matheran, and it's a fair probability that most of the people at Neral station had no advance notice either.  The consequence, naturally enough, is another aspect of chaos - our train terminated at some station up the line and we exited the station to find a state of total bedlam.  Buses were nowhere to be seen, instead was a wall of traffic punctuated with auto-rickshaws jostling for the custom of the hundreds of displaced rail passengers, themselves pouring out of the station and out into the middle of the vehicles.  And a scene of general bedlam was finished off by the ongoing construction of the new Mumbai Monorail directly above our heads and on top of the middle of the road.  

Auto drivers are a crafty bunch, and they clearly they'd got wise about railway maintenance - rates across the 10-15km distance to the next station were off-meter and suitably hiked up.  However, with little alternative and my 7-year-old cousin generally unimpressed with the state of affairs, we hopped on board one - only for the driver's seat to be flanked by another two lads heading the same way.  One auto-rickshaw, 6 adults and a kid, at the height of the midday sun... combined with a massive increase in traffic due to the rail passengers... and you have yourself an hour and a half journey and a half.  Personally, I loved it - going on the old "When in Rome" dictum, there's little India does better than chaos, so make hay when the sun shines!  

Monday was supposed to herald a trip to the Elephanta Caves - a UNESCO World Heritage Site located on Elephanta Island, an hour's ferry from downtown Mumbai.  Thankfully, however, Anna called us up just in time with insider info that the ferries don't run on Mondays... so the trip got postponed 24 hours.  Instead, my uncle gave me a comprehensive tour of downtown Mumbai on his motorbike - with the 2 wheels of the bike we were able to cover a distance in 2 hours that would have probably taken at least double on 4 wheels.  It's always satisfying when you realise you roughly know your way around a city - particularly one as intricate as Mumbai - so I was pretty pleased with myself whenever I knew where we were and where we were going!

The trip to Elephanta did indeed proceed 24 hours later, and we got on board a launch from behind The Gateway to India - adjacent to the Taj Palace Hotel that was the centrepiece of the terrorist attacks here almost a year ago to the day.  It's about an hour's ride to Elephanta Island, from which you have a 120-step walk up to the Main Cave.  First, however, came entrance fees - and another opportunity for an argument over whether or not I could get away with paying the "Indian" rate of Rs.10, as opposed to the foreigner's rate of Rs.250.  Mssrs. Dowson, Marshall and Nimmo will remember similar situations occuring fairly regularly last year - most notably at the Taj Mahal in Agra, which boasts one of the most crooked pieces of price discrimination I've ever seen.  Indians: Rs.10.  Foreigners: Rs.750.  It's a safe policy - no foreigner is going to mind paying the equivalent of £10 to see one of the most beautiful structures on Earth, and furthermore no one who's come all the way to the dump of city that is Agra is going to leave without seeing it's only jewel.  But the audacity of charging 75 times the rate... unbelievable.  

Anyway, my uncle told the guard that I'm from Mangalore, and I had to answer to a bit of cross-questioning, but after various backhand comments from all sides I got in for the "proper" rate (though there was no chance of this for Anna the Ukrainian!).  The Main Cave is spectacular - the walls are filled with intricate carvings of Hindu deities and scenes from mythology (such as the one of Ardhanari to the right - a half-male, half-female god) - but, much to my disappointment, the supposed army of theiving-monkeys on the island failed to materialise.  And having seen the litter pollution dumped near some of the island's other caves, it's apparent that despite its UNESCO status, Elephanta is typical of many places in India - a cultural monument that needs a great deal more care and attention in future years to ensure its proper preservation for future generations.  

That's pretty much my story from India tied up though... 7 weeks of travel have already flown by, and from here it's Singapore and onward.  I'd like to take this opportunity to say a massive thank you to everyone who has fed, housed, entertained or otherwise helped me over here.  India is home, so needless to say I'll be back.