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Published: December 28th 2006
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Well here I am in sunny England. No not really sunny, but certainly not cold as I was led to believe. I arrived yesterday at Heathrow airport. We touched down at 11.22am and I was on the train by 12.36.
I am not adding photos at this stage as a) I only have a couple and b) I am not sure how I will do it on this machine I am using. Will probably try when I am at Erina's or at Geoff's.
I left Auckland at 6.00pm on 26 December on board Emirate's flight EK433. The seats in economy are only a little bigger than what we are used to on Air New Zealand, flying to Sydney and places like that. There was a bit more room but not a lot of extra leg room. However, if the person in front of you tilted their seat back you did not suddenly have a seat in your face and you couldn't move or get in and out as happens on Air New Zealand.
We stopped at Brisbane, Singapore and Dubai. Unfortunately there was not time to do anything much except take a quick walk around the transit lounges and then report to our boarding gate again. We had a maximum of an hour at each stop and you had to report to the boarding gate 35 minutes before boarding so there was just time to go to the toilet and stretch your legs before boarding again. Dubai was a little longer but only by about 20 minutes and you needed that extra time to queue for the toilet.
The service on Emirates is fantastic. Think Air New Zealand in its heyday. Real cutlery, fantastic top cuisine meals, hot towels just after take-off to refresh yourself with, and free booze or soft drinks or water as often as you wanted. I kept to soft drinks and water except for the last leg when I had a small bottle of wine with lemonade just because I could and hey it is my first major trip after all.
One couple sitting acrosss the aisle from me on the flight to Brisbane were knocking back the alcohol at a great rate. She was drinking Bailey's and Kahlua and milk and the steward at the end of the flight commented that they had drunk the bar dry. Another couple of guys on the leg from Dubai to London were also doing their best to drink the bar dry in their favourite tipple. I admit to having several tomato juices at a time but that is all.
The airports - Brisbane was not overly remarkable. It had the shops and places to get coffedd and duty free stores but about the same as Auckland really. Singapore the first thing you noticed was the soldiers walking around in pairs with rifles. As we got in at night and a lot of the shops etc were closed there were only two pair that I saw. All the boarding security was done by soldiers checking your passports and boarding passes and standing by the x-ray machines. They had what I presumed were airport security employees actually manning the x-ray machines but soldiers at the gate and standing by. These ones were not armed but no doubt could call on ones who were. With even that low level of security, which is much more than we are used to it seems to show to me that they are serious about security and knowing the penalties for bringing in drugs etc you wonder why anyone would even consider it.
Dubai airport was an experience in itself. The transit lounge part that we were in is very long. We came out into about two thirds of the way along on an upper level. You walked across past some stairs and escalators that went down to the lower level which was the duty free mall and it literally is a huge mall. Right the way along are these huge palm trees that reach from the bottom floor right up to the roof. There are also tall steel columns with gold tinsel around the top. I assume it is tinsel, who knows, over there it might just be gold.
The smoking areas are really interesting. They are like a small horseshoe shape counter with some stools there and it is all surrounded by clear perspex. There was a sign on it designating it a smoking area and saying that smoking was not permitted anywhere else. So here were all these men crowded into this box all puffing away looking out on the rest of the transit lounge. Interestingly, I did not see any women in there so don't know if that is because they don't smoke or because there just did not happen to be any, or maybe they have their own area. I did not have time to find out.
I am staying at Holland Park youth hostel tonight and then I will be going to visit a friend, Erina Hitchon and taking some things to her from her family. Unfortunately I had to take a couple of items out at Auckland Airport as they weight your cabin bag as well and I was about 4 kilos over. Even so I will be glad to pass on her things to her as it will make dragging my suitcase around a lot lighter.
The youth hostel is not glamorous but adequate. I am in a room with about 6 other women and that is not something I have experienced for many a long year. It is almost like being back camping again. One of the women sounds as though she is schizoprenic and talks to someone who is abusing an old woman who is both blind and deaf and in dreadful agony. She goes on like this when she is awake and t o a lesser extent in the middle of the night, but she seems to restrict it to a low murmur at night.
Nearly got done for passing dodgy currency. Apparently they have changed their £10 note and the bank in NZ had given me one of the old ones. If I cannot change it at a bank here then I will bring it home and be expecting a refund from the BNZ. You think they would be up with currency changes wouldn't you?
Well that is about al for now, I am planning to go and see the sights today and find out how to get to Whitstable tomorrow. Hope everyone is keeping well and in case I don't do another blog berfore then I hope you all have a very happy new year.
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