Two out of three ain’t bad!
It’s here, it’s finally here, the day I get to step onto that long awaited flight. With our lives reduced to matching mid-sized suitcases and backpacks, and after tearful farewells to those family and friends kind enough to brave the rage inducing intricacies of airport traffic and parking, simply to watch us walk away, we passed side by side through those unassuming international departure gates; and thus the long and arduous journey to the other side of the globe began.
Now many of you of whom I’ve ever had the pleasure of speaking with about air travel will know that, seemingly without fail, every time I fly I get selected for random explosives and/or drug testing when passing through security. Maybe it is just random, and I’m just randomly unlucky; or maybe it’s something to do with my resting bitch face. Regardless, onward we marched, to join the snaking queue that is the, always exciting, line for security and X-ray scans. We were so close, literally steps away from the conveyor belt, when we heard the words ‘Can the next four people in the line please step this way?’. Ahh well I can’t really be upset, better safe than sorry. I’d rather go through the inconvenience every time if it means that it could stop even one homicidal maniac. And on the plus side, after our belongings and selves were swabbed and tested, we were sent straight to a new belt that had just been opened, and thus weren’t bulked behind the rest of those unhindered travellers systematically, but still in some order of complete disorganisation, emptying their pockets, taking out their one singular sealed bag of liquids, wrestling to remove their electronics from whichever bag they had managed to stow them, and trudging through the scanner, past the dower gaze of the security staff.
Now it must be said that because we spent so long planning and bargain hunting for deals on this trip, we had managed to acquire somewhat reasonably priced one way tickets to London, $550 each to be exact, the only catch being that we had two stops, one in Brunei for three and a half hours, and one in Dubai for one hour. In the end we reasoned that saving $200 dollars each from the next cheapest ticket at the expense of an extra, albeit not even that extensive of a stop, was worth the saving.
Indeed we were right, all of our flights went smoothly. Our flight out of Brunei left half an hour later, but to be honest I didn’t even notice the time, and we managed to get through an entire security check without being swabbed; this may or may not be the first time this has ever happened to me on an international flight. Our connection at Dubai ran smoothly, although we had to disembark just to cut a lap of the airport, pass through security where my partner was stopped to have his bag checked once more by a surly security guard. I’d done it, I managed to not be the one stopped, we showed our boarding passes and stepped through glass doors to go to the separate waiting area for our gate. And then it happened, ‘This way please ma’am.’ As my partner was waved straight through I had to join the three lines of people, waiting for more random swabbing; my moment of unhindered glory snatched away, as I am swabbed once again like the well kempt decks of a band of OCD pirates.
After just shy of 30 hours in transit, and fuelled by meager snatches of air sickness tablet induced sleep we arrived in London at 7am, Sunday 18th March 2018; the first day of our life as travellers. But the details of our first day of adventuring I will leave for my next post.
P.S. Anyone looking to fly Melbourne to London, may I recommend flying with Royal Brunei Airlines. They are affordable, comfortable, and the food was pretty good, considering the low standards we normally all expect from in-flight dining.
