Virgin Melbourne to Adelaide
There are roughly 6 direct flights a day between Melbourne and Hong Kong. Due to excessive tightarsedness, I have chosen to pretend direct flights do not exist. Note: I made up a word in the very first sentence.
Similarly, there are roughly 50 x 1 stop flights a day between Melbourne and Hong Kong however these are still not convoluted enough for me.
Why not add a huge amount of time and potential for cancellation by inventing a 3 flight method of getting to Hong Kong?
The check in lady at Melbourne airport was very confused when I told her I was going to Hong Kong via Adelaide and Singapore, and said 'hmmm, not sure I have ever checked that one in before, let me see if I can get your bag all the way there' and she could. Well she said she could.
I will find out in about 18 hours time if my bag is waiting for me in Hong Kong.
Anyway, this is the first of a few dribbles of nonsense for today while I have time to kill in airports. The actual flight from Melbourne to Adelaide was non eventful, Virgin Australia put me in an economy x seat, which is their name for fat business men seats they charge slightly extra for, however it being Saturday, no fat business men.
I periodically see this horrific carpet in Melbourne airport getting discussed. It looks like a mass stabbing has occured and they cannot clean it up. Either that or a shark attack, very welcoming.
The view from Adelaide airport, shot through tinted glass with reflections and weird white balance. Nice sunrise today, the 1 hour flight was a bit turbulent leaving Melbourne, which I actually enjoy.
Adelaide airport has had quite a few good upgrades in recent years, I would say it is probably the nicest airport in Australia now, seriously.
In fact even the Virgin lounge is good, the Melbourne and Sydney ones are worse than a 3rd world country zoo, where that country has just undergone a military coup and the starving populace are eating the lions.
Adelaide to Singapore on a Singapore airlines A350
The flight was very full, not one spare seat, but that is not why it was demanding. Everyone around me kept pressing the call bell and demanding more and more stupid stuff. Bags of nuts (one guy asked for 5 bags of nuts!), extra ice creams, whisky, crackers, extra pillows, extra blankets, headphones. It was crazy, I have never seen anything like it. People were pressing the bell, waiting 5 seconds, getting frustrated that their next glass of ice had not arrived, and pressing the bell again. People were pressing it while the seat belt sign was on for turbulence parts of the flight and getting up to wave at the the stewardesses when they did not come over. All this in the cheap seats for tightarses like me.
My guess is quite a few people around me do not fly very often, Adelaide is hard to escape... and when they saw one guy get his call bell demands, they all joined in, even though the people dinging the bell were not related.
The only other boring things of note, the flight left Adelaide an hour late, but I still have plenty of time in Singapore to type this boring stuff, and then we were a bit more delayed as on descent into Singapore there was a storm over the airport so we circled for a while. There was however, no turbulence. These days they put the seat belt sign on even when they think there might be a chance of turbulence after a few high profile recent incidents.
Oh yeah, Dune II is a dumb movie. 3 hours of worm riding and I had no idea who anyone was.
Here is my jet still on the ground in Adelaide. Is it an A350 or a dreamliner? I am not sure now. I prefer the older 777 (wider) and especially the A330 (narrower but less abreast seating layout). The marketing of the newer ones are all bullshit, humans per cubic m3 always increases with every new generation jet.
If your kids misbehave in Singapore airport you can put them in a cage. And let them tire themselves out mini trampolining. Probably a lot of injuries have resulted from this.
You still cannot walk the full lap at Singapore airport, I always try, but construction is going on, one day my dream will become a reality. BTW, you can walk a full lap at the criminally underrated Taoyuan airport in Taiwan.
Today's smoking area disguised as a garden of choice is the sunflower garden. This is about the extent of it. There are a group of airport workers behind me smoking and hacking up a lung. Also I had to stand out here for 10 minutes waiting for my camera to de-fog. Going outside from the air conditioned terminal building makes the entire innards of your camera water logged.
And now this is where I am sitting. Same old lounge. It has showers these days though, but since it is a day flight for me today, no need for a shower. And now it is nearly time to board my next flight to Hong Kong, and hope to get on the last airport train into the city so I don't have to figure out the night bus.
Singapore to Hong Kong on an A350
OK, this flight was an Airbus A350 and the previous one was a Boeing dreamliner. I no longer know my planes. They are both almost identical, 3 x 3 x 3 seating in a space that should have 2 x 4 x 2, I am not sure I am using my x's correctly in that but you get the idea.
Anyway, I set 2 new world records. The first one was the most number of flights taken in a day to get from Melbourne to Hong Kong, which is 3.
The second one was the amazingly fast exit from Hong Kong airport, from the time I was off the plane to the time I was on the train, 12 minutes, including clearing customs, getting my bag and walking to the train. Astonishing!
The flight was again full, and so I was thrilled that a child too old to cry yet still quite small sat next to me, he seemed ok at first, but you guessed it, by the end he had developed full blown covid and went through 1.5 boxes of tissues, the remnants of which filled the air and littered the floor. So that is probably going to be the end of my holiday, medivac flight coming soon.
I am actually typing some of this sitting on the airport train, but I know the only remaining photos of the day are going to be the hotel room photos, if they let me check in, refer previous Korean trip when a Japanese hotel chain decided to cancel my booking and give my room to someone else for arriving after midnight, despite me advising the hotel I would be arriving after midnight and them replying that would be fine. I am still bitter.
Here is the inside of the Hong Kong airport express train. Low effort photo, I am tired.
And since there are photos of my hotel room here, it means they did not cancel my booking. It really is bed time now, but the hotel seems good enough, room is quite big.
It would not be a long day of boring photos if there was not a photo of a toilet. Now, sleep.