Day 1 - Leaving Sydney

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Crazy day packing and making last minute purchases today before leaving early at 17:00 as Nick’s flight was at 20:40 but the rest of us were leaving at 21:45. Nick was a last minute addition to the group and the airfares on our China Southern flights had increased from under $1,000 return to about $3,300, so he had to take a different cheaper with Air China.

Daisy dropped us off at the airport Nick went to check-in while we waited for ours to open up. We were waiting in the line when Vicki arrived and found us in the line. Then a lady came around and was asking if anyone was flying to Kathmandu and she took some others away but left us in the line. When it was our turn I was taken separately to the Service desk and apparently the second flight to Kathmandu had been overbooked. Vicki then came along and said she was in a group with us and she thinks she may have been bumped off if not for that. However I then explained that I had already booked seats and in the end we got our boarding passes with exactly the seats we had booked.

After that confusing experience everything went smoothly and we all had McDonalds for dinner as all the other places had pretty outrageous airport prices for food. After that Mitchell and I returned to the entry point to claim back tax for a few items we had purchased for the trip and the line was quite long and I thought it was going to be a repeat of a few years ago when I went to China with Dad and initially got rejected when I didn’t make the 30 minuted before flight time rule but got through because my plane had a delayed take-off. First time I was ever grateful for a delayed flight. This time however the line moved very quickly as they had about 6 people manning the desks and I got our refund with about 30 minutes to spare and by the time we got to the gate it was boarding time and off we went onto our exciting adventure in Nepal.

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