SkyHigh - England to Australia in 36 Hours or more

Not going to lie – I was dreading this flight, I mean 24 hours in a plane? No thank you (and over 36 hours travelling time if you take into account getting to and from airports and waiting for checkin/layovers). I also tend to find it a bit of a struggle to sleep on flights so I really wasn't that optimistic about the journey from London to Beijing, Beijing to Sydney and Sydney to Cairns, anyway equipped with my backpack off I trundled – my journey started in Heathrow Terminal 2.

Once in the airport I was on a mission to find presents for the people I was staying with. Now usually you would imagine the airport to be stuffed full of British memorabilia – oh my friend how wrong you are! Apart from a measly fridge magnet or two there was nothing, nada, zilch! I had no choice but to stand up straight and strut past the big teddy bear currently going for £1,650 and walk into Harrods to pursue my search. I know – I can't believe it either! A backpacker shopping in Harrods – as if! It wasn't in vain though as I managed to find some Paddington bears for the kids.

Flying Air China was always a bit of a worry for me as the reviews weren't great but it was cheap at least, so I powered through enjoying the panda giving me in flight safety instructions and nibbled my way through the food.

The first 24 hours of travelling were pretty uneventful, all the movies were in Chinese so that ruled that out - I opted for sleep instead. Finally after what seemed like a lifetime cooped up (20 hours to be precise) we landed in Sydney. And then I started living every travellers worst nightmare...

Once through immigration (this takes about 2 hours by the way) I found a little spot and turned my phone on, happy to see there was finally free wifi so I could contact everyone (you have to be a fluent in Chinese symbols to navigate the wifi in Beijing airport). I turned my phone on and suddenly message after message started coming through. 'Amy where are you?' 'Why aren't you here? Pick up your f*cking phone' 'has something happened' 'so I'm at the airport and I don't see you...' and my favourite one 'Aaaammmmmyyyyyy!!!!!'. Turns out there had been a problem with my dates and lovely Air China had told me I was arriving on the 17th sep so I booked my ongoing flight to Cairns for later that day, only problem was that today it happened to be the 18th sep.

I was so tried I full on burst into tears at the checkin desk (which to be fair really helped my case) and managed to get booked onto a flight later on in the afternoon. And cheeky Air China have a clause in the terms and conditions about time zones and dates and them not being responsible for passengers forward travel - so no refund for me. Regardless the main thing is I am currently in Sydney plying myself with coffee after coffee in an attempt to stay awake and beat the jet lag.

The sad thing is I'm not even done travelling - I have at least another 8 hours to go before I reach my final destination. Bring on more coffee and a hell of a lot of willpower!!

Global PawPrints xx

Posted with Blogsy