Arrival in Sydney

So after a gruelling 22-hour flight the main tour party finally touched down in an overcast but pleasantly warm Sydney. It was probably the worst flight of my life, having been wedged in between two giants for the first flight to Hong Kong, I was then treated to the pleasure of sitting next to an Englishman who was very probably suffering from a serious bout of dengue fever. He had to ‘pop to the loo’ every five minutes and was sniffling like a wounded rhino and breathing his germs over everyone within a five mile radius.

Volker had a bit of a scare as he checked in at Tegel. His ruthless German efficiency confused BA staff at the counter who couldn’t find his visa registration. It turned out he had entered the extra letter on his passport denoting nationality. The system wasn’t able to process the extra information and the gum-chewing BA employee could only quote from ‘Little Britain’ – “Computer says no!”

Arvind was able to show off his teleporting skills at Hong Kong airport – after being stopped for carrying nail scissors in his hand luggage, he then teleported over to the departure gate leaving us waiting at security scratching our heads. He then showed us the trick again at baggage reclaim – although why he needed to take a flight to Sydney is not clear as he could have simply teleported straight from his home in Berlin to the hostel in Sydney!

So unfortunately, no missing luggage or grounded planes to report – the ‘main’ tour party arrived safely and John Leslie was on hand at the airport to drive us to our hostel. Stage 1 complete.