The Beijing Friendship Hotel

The hotel according to their website:  http://grandbuilding.beijingfriendshiphotel.com/info/

The Friendship Hotel was built in 1954 to house foreigners; refurbished in 2002, and these days it relies more on tour groups.  Many of its rooms, done in a traditional Chinese style, are in need of renovation and more up-to-date furnishings.

The Beijing Friendship Hotel Grand Building is located in China's Silicon Valley-Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park, close to the major universities and research institutions in Beijing. Jinyuan Lufthansa Shopping Center, Contemporary Shopping Center, Shuangan Shopping Center are within easy reach, and the transportation is convenient.  

Each room is equipped with an LCD TV, broadband Internet access, a minibar, and more. The Deluxe Executive Room is equipped with a personal multifunction fax machine.

We did not get a Deluxe Executive Room.

And, unfortunately, there were no photographs on their site that matched the room we were given.  They were only of deluxe and business rooms only.

 The Friendship Hotel of Beijing is one of the largest garden-style hotels in Asia. The Friendship Hotel neighbors many world-famous tourist sites and universities such as Tsinghua and Peking University, the Summer Palace.   

It covers a total area of 335,000 square meters of land in the capital city, of which 200,000 square meters are landscaped gardening in the traditional Chinese garden style. The Friendship Hotel of Beijing represents classic Chinese architectural elegance and presents the most pleasurable views.  

There are more than 1,757 guestrooms, apartments, and office rooms, 28 restaurants, and banquet halls of different styles and capable of catering for 2,600 guests at the same time.
          
This is a plan of the location:



In another post, I'll show some photos of the buildings and gardens.

I don't think by the end of the stay the hotel finished up with any friends.  But it was probably good that we started with the oldest and most quirky of hotels, setting the tone of what we can expect, and hoping it could only get better.
      
The whole setting for the hotel is amazing, with buildings set in beautiful gardens.  The foyer was polished marble, cavernous, and implied a luxury we expected.

By the time we got to our rooms, all those expectations were shattered.  All show and no substance, it is an omen.  Even the passageways belied what was behind the doors.

 Perhaps it would be better to label it as an army barracks because that's what some people said it reminded them of.

And the bed?

A 6 by 3-foot lump of five-ply board would have more give in it.  Don't try jumping up and down on these beds or you'll break a leg.

Our guide tells us that these sorts of beds are good for us.  Maybe if we had been using them since birth, but not when you're pushing 70.  So much for that Feng Shiu north-south thing which I find somewhat hard to understand. 

Breakfast is in the Friendship Palace a room set aside that is rather like a barn with all the breakfast food arranged down the middle and tables scattered either side. 

One small observation which I thankfully noticed at the end of the stay was the carpet stains that emanated from under the food and spreading out towards the tables, no doubt made by food sliding off serving utensils and plates, and not being adequately cleaned after the hoards of 'trip a deal' visitors were finished.

Perhaps whoever organizes the accommodation might consider a better introduction to China that to have everyone starting with the impression Chinese hotels are small, cramped, and suffer from a basic lack of cleanliness.

After breakfast we assemble in the foyer ready to be taken on our first adventure, to negotiate Beijing traffic. 

Here is where we first learn about scooters, and the fact anyone can buy one, no license needed, and for anyone else on the road, beware.  We soon learn why we are being cautioned to look in every direction before stepping onto a road.


And we get to see the infamous Building No 4 in daylight:

We've just arrived in Beijing International Airport, China

Instead of making a grand entrance, arriving in style and being greeted by important dignitaries, we are slinking in via an airplane, late at night.

It's hardly the entrance I'd envisaged. 

At 9:56 the plane touches down on the runway.  Outside the plane, it is dark and gloomy and from what I could see, it had been raining.  That could, of course, simply be condensation.

Once on the ground, everyone was frantically gathering together everything from seat pockets and sending pillows and blankets to the floor.  A few were turning their mobile phones back on, and checking for a signal, and, perhaps, looking for messages sent to them during the last 12 hours. 

Or perhaps they were just suffering from mobile phone deprivation.

It took 10 minutes for the plane to arrive at the gate.

That's when everyone moves into overdrive, unbuckling belts, some before the seatbelt sign goes off, and are first out of their seats and into the overhead lockers.  Most are not taking care that their luggage may have moved, but fortunately, no bags fall out onto someone's head.

The flight had been relatively turbulent free.

When as many people and bags have squeezed into that impossibly small aisle space, we wait for the door to open, and then the privileged few business and first-class passengers to depart before we can begin to leave.

As we are somewhere near the middle of the plane, our wait will not be as long as it usually is.  This time we avoided being at the back of the plane.  Perhaps that privilege awaits us on the return trip.

Once off the plane, it is a matter of following the signs, some of which are not as clear as they could be.  It's why it took another 30 odd minutes to get through immigration, but that was not necessarily without a few hiccups along the way. 

We got sidetracked at the fingerprint machines, which seemed to have a problem if your fingers were not straight, not in the center of the glass, and then if it was generally cranky, which ours were, continue to tell you to try again, and again, and again, and again...

That took 10 to 15 minutes before we joined an incredibly long queue of other arrivals,

A glance at the time, and suddenly it's nearly an hour from the moment we left the plane.

And...

That's when we got to the immigration officer, and it became apparent we were going to have to do the fingerprints yet again.  Fortunately this time, it didn't take as long.  Once that done, we collected our bags, cleared customs by putting our bags through a huge x-ray machine, and it was off to find our tour guide.

We found several tour guides with their trip-a-deal flags waiting for us to come out of the arrivals hall.  It wasn't a difficult process in the end.  We were in the blue group.  Other people we had met on the plane were in the red group or the yellow group.  The tour guide found, or as it turned out she found us, it was simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the group, of which there were eventually 28.

Gathered together we were told we would be taking the bags to one place and then ourselves to the bus in another.  A glance in the direction of the bus park, there were a lot of busses.

Here's a thought, imagine being told your bus is the white one with blue writing on the side.

Yes, yours is, and 25 others because all of the tourist coaches are the same.  

An early reminder, so that you do not get lost, or, God forbid, get on the wrong bus, for the three days in Beijing, is to get the last five numbers of the bus registration plate and commit them to memory.  It's important.  Failing that, the guide's name is in the front passenger window.

Also, don't be alarmed if your baggage goes in one direction, and you go in another. In a rather peculiar set up the bags are taken to the hotel by what the guide called the baggage porter.  

It is an opportunity to see how baggage handlers treat your luggage; much better than the airlines it appears.

That said, if you're staying at the Beijing Friendship Hotel, be prepared for a long drive from the airport.  It took us nearly an hour, and bear in mind that it was very late on a Sunday night.

Climbing out of the bus after what seemed a convoluted drive through a park with buildings, we arrive at the building that will be our hotel for the next three days.  From the outside, it looks quite good, and once inside the foyer, that first impression is good.  Lots of space, marble, and glass.  

If you are not already exhausted by the time you arrive, the next task is to get your room key, find your bags, get to your room, and try to get to be ready the next morning at a reasonable hour.

Sorry, that boat has sailed.

We were lucky, we were told, that our plane arrived on time, and we still arrived at the hotel at 12:52.  Imagine if the incoming plane is late.

This was taken the following morning.  It didn't look half as bland late at night.

This is the back entrance to Building No 4 but is quite representative of the whole foyer, made completely of marble and glass.  It all looked very impressive under the artificial lights, but not so much in the cold hard light of early morning.

This the foyer of the floor our room was on.  Marble with interesting carpet designs.  Those first impressions of it being a plush hotel were slowly dissipating as we got nearer and nearer to the room.  From the elevator, it was a long, long walk.

So...

Did I tell you about the bathroom in our room?

The shower and the toilet both share the same space with no divide and the shower curtain doesn't reach to the floor.  Water pressure is phenomenal.  Having a shower floods the whole shower plus toilet area so when you go to the toilet you're basically underwater.

Don't leave your book or magazine on the floor or it will end up a watery mess.

And the water pressure is so hard that it could cut you in half.  Only a small turn of the tap is required to get that tingling sensation going.

It's after 1:30 before we finally get to sleep.

As for the bed, well, that's a whole other story.

Every flight is different - Sydney to Bejing

Sydney to Beijing - Qantas A330-200

Boarding 11:45, everyone on board by 12:02, for a 12:10 departure.

Pushing back 12:12

Take off 12:27

Lunch

Airline food is getting better but the fact they serve it up to you in a metal tray with a thick aluminum lid does nothing for the quality of the food inside.  I get what the chef is trying to do but often there is too little of one thing and too much of another and what you finish up with is slop in a tray.  Sometimes it's edible sometimes it's not.  

Sometimes the meat is tender and other times it's like boot leather.  As it is today.

I think it's pork, I should have had the chicken.  Or perhaps it was chicken.  I hate it when you can't tell what it is that you're eating.

But, the drinks were good.

Rest or Sleep, maybe

It's going to take 11 hours and 20 minutes from Sydney to Beijing, a long time to sit in a plane with nothing much to do other than crosswords, read a book or newspaper or magazine, listen to music on your own device, or the in-flight entertainment, watch a movie again by the in-flight entertainment - if it works - or try to get some sleep.

I started with the crosswords but got bored quickly.

I fiddled with the in-flight entertainment, looked at the movies and tv shows but none really interested me, not then at least, so I set it to the flight path.

Not exactly stellar entertainment, but it's always interesting to know where the plane is.

Or is it?

If we crash, what good would it do me to know it's somewhere over the ocean, not far from Manila, or somewhere else.  It's not as if I could phone someone up, on the way down, to let them know where we are.

But, just after dinner, we still haven't left Australia

However, by the time I've finished fiddling with and dismissing all of the entertainment alternatives, it's back to the flight path and now we are...

Somewhere approaching the Sulu Sea, which I've never heard of before, so it looks like I'll have to study up on my geography when I get home.

OK, Manila looks like somewhere I've heard of, so we have to be flying over the Philippines.  Not far left of that is Vietnam.  Neither of those places is on my travel bucket list, so I'll just look from up here and be satisfied with that.

Working, or not

Chronic boredom is setting in by the time we are just past halfway to our destination. We are over 6 hours into the flight and there no possible way I'm going to get any sleep.

I brought my GHalaxy Tab loaded with a few of my novel outlines, and planning for missing chapters, thinking I might get a little thinking time in.  Plane rides, I find, are excellent for getting an opportunity to write virtually unhindered by outside interruptions, if, of course, you discount the number of times people brush past, knocking your seat, the person in front lowering the seat into your face, or people around you continually asking you to turn off your light because they're trying to sleep.

Sorry, I say, but you can suffer my pain with me.  It's one of the joys of flying with over two hundred others in a claustrophobic environment.  Besides, aren't the lights supposed to be slanted so only I get the rays of light?  Except, I guess when the fixed light doesn't line up with where the airline has fixed the seat (usually so they can squash more people in).

So, sorry, not sorry, take it up with the airline.

Back to work, and I put in some quality time on a part of the story that had been eluding me for a while.  I knew what I wanted to write, but not how I was going to approach it, so that blissfully quiet and intense time worked in my favor, something that would not have happened back hope.

I won't bore you with the synopsis, just suffice to say it's finally down on paper, digitally that is, and it's a huge step forward towards finishing it.

There is, of course, the end play, the reading of the will but not before there's a few thrusts and parry’s by some of the players, but all in all the objective was to showcase a group of people with their strengths and weaknesses pushing their characters in various directions, some at odds with what is expected of them.

But enough of that.   A quick check of our position shows we’re still over water but closer to our destination, so much so, we might start the pre-landing rituals, starting with food.

Dinner

7:00 - Dinner is served, well, the lights go on and a lot of tired people try to shake the sleep, and sleeplessness, out of their systems.

Then flight attendants that are far too cheerful, and must have beamed in from somewhere else, serve another interesting concoction that says what's in it but you can't really be sure of the ingredients.  It comes and it goes.

9:10 - We begin our descent into Beijing, you know, that moment when the engines almost stop and there's a sickening lurch and the plane heads downward.

9:56 - We touch down on the runway, in the dark and apparently it has been raining though from inside the plane you'd never know.

10:10 - the plane arrives at the gate,  the usual few minutes to open the door, and, being closer to the front of the plane this time, it doesn't take that long before the queue is moving.

Early or late, it doesn't matter.  After clearing customs and immigration, we have to go in search of our tour guide, waiting for us somewhere outside the arrivals terminal.

Every flight is different - Today, it's Melbourne to Brisbane

Today we are traveling Qantas via Melbourne airport, on our way from Melbourne to Brisbane, using the domestic service, and a Boeing 737-800.

Thankfully Qantas doesn't have any of the 737 MAX aircraft, and if they did I would certainly think twice before I flew in one.  Like many others, my trust in Boeing has been considerably diminished by what has happened.

Even flying domestically, we are told to get to the airport early, which is sound advice.  Melbourne traffic has worsened considerably since the last time we visited, nearly a year ago.

Perhaps coincidentally, the night after we arrived, one of the tv stations ran a story on how the roads in Melbourne were no longer coping with the number of vehicles using them.

In fact, many of those using the inner city and major arterial routes are encountering heavy traffic mare often, and at all hours of the day, and it's not unusual to stop, and remain in what I'd call car park mode for long periods.

I experienced a typical stop-start delay where the eastern freeway ran off into Hoddle street, where the traffic was banked back two kilometers, and that was after 10 am.

What must it be like in peak hour?  I was told it was basically like that all day.

But, enough about traffic...

We leave with ample time to get to the airport, hoping the two hours spare will be enough to return a hire car, as simple as that sounds.  It can be complicated.  Today it wasn't.

But there is the walk to the departures area, which can be a long walk, or in some cases finding a pick-up bus back to the terminal, and then the wrestle with the check-in machines, quite often tricky at best, of course, if you can find one that's working.

For some reason, there's always a few that are not, particularly when there is a large number of passengers trying to check-in.  Once again it seems we picked the right day and time to fly.  Plenty of check-in stations and all of them working.

Then we have to run the gamut of self-handling baggage, hoping we match the right boarding pass with the right bag, then put the bag on the belt at the right time, and pray that it weighs and scans

And that we are not over the limit of 23 kg, which we were by .4 kg and by .8 which then requires us to find a staff member to sort out the problem.

Usually, 10 others have scanning problems simultaneously, and one assistant is both harried and overworked.  How they keep cool when 9 passengers are vying for attention at the same time is beyond me.

Then we have to go through the scanners and the x-ray machine.  At peak hours this can be a long queue and a nightmare, but today there's no one about.  It might have something to do with the coronavirus, or it might not.

We have the added problem of needing special attention because of an artificial knee, and this can sometimes take a while to find a spare officer to conduct the personal scan.

Then if you are truly unlucky you get pulled aside for the explosive trace scan.  We are blessed.  Out of the last twenty times, we have been selected 19 times.  I often wondered if we look like people who deal with explosive material.

But this too is quick and easy.

It looks like we'll be flying Tuesday at 2:10 pm more often.

So, we manage to get everything done and we have about 40 free minutes to get a coffee and perhaps something to eat.  Wise, because these days airlines don't give you anything substantial unless it's a meal flight like breakfast or dinner.

The rest of the time it's a snack, usually a fancy biscuit or muffin, and a soft drink if you're lucky.

We get a coffee and a toasted sandwich.  Don't get me started on the prices of simple food often a lot less anywhere other than an airport.  You're stuck there, you pay it, or go without.

I went without, food, and had a coffee.  At least it was a good cup of coffee.

After this, it was a quick visit to the chocolate shop.  We've been there before and the chocolates are exquisite and you don't mind paying the huge price tag because it would be the same outside the airport and in fact probably cheaper than buying comparable chocolates overseas.

That done we go to the gate.

Of course, smooth boarding is not an option, as we are going to be delayed, this time by a passing electrical storm.  This delay I don't mind.  Planes might be built to withstand lightning strikes but I don't want to test the theory.

As for the flight:  (Brisbane local time - 1 hour less than Melbourne local time)

1410 Advertised departure time
1425 Advised by Captain to change our clocks back one hour (from EDST to EST)

1331 push back
1340 taxi to the runway - 20 min late so far
1345 take-off
1355 hit turbulence but flying through clouds on our way to 11,000 meters
1405 advised we will be arriving 15 minutes late, take the time to look at some of the clouds

Snack time was either hommas, with crackers and nuts, or a macadamia fruit and nut slice i.e. a fancy piece of cake, which was quite delicious.  It was served with a soft drink, water or juice.

The clouds were more sporadic the closer we got to Brisbane, and yes there is a reflection of my shirt coming through

I guess tea and coffee were available but the less said about airline versions of these drinks the better.

1510 start descent into Brisbane, and see some of the noticable signs of recent heavy rain fall

Crossing the Brisbane River, seeing two cruise ships were in port

1545 at gate

We ended up being 25 minutes late, but that wasn't the worst effort for an airline.  I guess they cannot be held responsible for bad weather delays.

Every flight is different - Brisbane to Sydney

            Flying Qantas, Brisbane to Sydney, in a Boeing 737-800

Like any trip by plane, there is this requirement to make sure you arrive at the airport several hours earlier than the advertised departure time.

And, for some reason unknown to any of us, there’s always a nervousness about when to get up, when to leave, and what precautions you have to make to get to the airport on time.

Today, it’s even more critical than usual.  We have a connecting flight in Sydney, heading for our final destination, Beijing, China.

It’s the one day when we can’t be late.

It’s astonishing just how many things can go wrong on any road that leads to an airport, with the probability increasing exponentially if you’re running late.

This morning, everything goes according to plan.

At the airport, we must leave everything to do with our air travel to chance as it is a group booking and for some reason, we can’t check-in online.  Instead, and one of the main reasons to get to the airport early, in this instance, is to tackle the service line with time to spare

Our early arrival made this less of a queuing nightmare.

But, we are waiting with bated breath to find out exactly where we are on the airplane.

Are we sitting together, yes

The check-in staff is familiar with the Trip a Deal modus operandi, and our baggage is seamlessly checked through to Beijing.

The only disappointment; we are in the middle group of four seats on the A330-200 to Beijing, on a plane that is a 2-4-2 configuration.  We seem destined never to get those elusive two window side seats.

Oh, well, back to being a sardine again, only this time for the ten-hour flight.  It's going to be a new sort of hell; it just depends on how old the plane is.

The flight to Sydney is due to depart at 8:10.

Loading started five minutes early.  Everyone is on board and the door closed at 7:58, making for an early departure, maybe.

Pushing back at 8:00, take off: 8:08, and when the pilot speaks to us at 8:28 it’s estimated we’ll be landing in Sydney at 9:17

Before that breakfast will no doubt be served in a hurry. 

Breakfast cereal, just right and a muesli bar, who said Qantas wasn't trying to keep it's passengers healthy.

Start descent at 8:56, not far from Newcastle.

 On the ground at 9:18, and at the gate at 9:30. 

This means we have just over two and a half hours before the next plane departs.

Traveling from domestic to international at Sydney requires a bus transfer from a station near gate 15.  All you need is an international boarding pass and the wherewithal to stand if the bus is full.

It might only be a short journey but very stop-start and jerky. 

It's much better if you can get a seat, but...

The seats are so small they are not designed to sit you and your cabin bag without being thoroughly squashed.  And if your carry-on bag is sitting on the max 7 kg, ten minutes might be just long enough for the circulation in your legs to shut down

Mine nearly did, and that last step off the bus was nearly my undoing, not particularly useful before your holiday starts. 

Someone needs to rethink the means of transport between terminals.

Once inside the international departures area, you can be overwhelmed by the vast duty-free store, swamping all the other stores.

It then becomes a mission to find a bargain, and all I can say is don't bother.  Some stuff is cheaper than outside retail, but not by much.  I would recommend that you do some homework on the prices of those items you are thinking of getting, before hitting the duty-free stores.

Probably what is different is the range of products that you might not necessarily get outside, but you will be paying a premium for them.

And, just to underline the great duty-free myth being just that, the bookshop inside the duty-free zone sells their books duty and tax included. 

Make sure you buy any reading material, particularly books, at your nearest Big W store.  There they are half the price of what they are at the airport.

Soon, we'll be moving to the gate lounge in preparation for boarding.  I guess a middle seat is the same as any seat, with little width and less leg room wherever you sit, but somehow the stigma of a middle seat makes it seem worse.  And, it’s not something I do every day.

I wonder what it's like in a Chinese asylum.

The Mary Valley Rattler, Gympie, Queensland, Australia

I have a passion for visiting transport museums, to see old trains, planes, buses, cars, even ships if it's possible.

This has led to taking a number of voyages on the TSS Earnslaw in Queenstown, New Zealand.

Many, many, many years ago on Puffing Billy, a steam train in the Dandenongs, Victoria, Australia.

The steam train in Kingston, New Zealand, before it was closed down, but hopefully it will reopen sometime in the future.

The London Transport Museum in London England, which had a lot of buses.

The Workshops Railway Museum in Ipswich, Queensland, where once the many steam engines were built and maintained, and now had only a handful of engines remaining.

However, in the quest for finding and experiencing old transportation methods, we came across the Mary Valley Rattler, which runs out of Gympie, Queensland, Australia.

The ride begins in Gympie at the old Gympie Railway station, and as can be seen below, is one of the relics of the past, and, nothing like the new more modern stations.  Thankfully.



If you're going to have a vintage train, then you have to have a vintage station.



The Class of engine, seen below, is the C17, a superheated upgrade to the C16 it was based on, and first run in 1903.  This particular engine was built in 1951, although the first of its type was seen in  1920 and the last of 227 made in 1953.  It was the most popular of the steam engines used by Queensland Railways.

The C designation meant it had four driving axels and 17 was the diameter of the cylinder, 17 inches.  It is also known as a 4-8-0 steam locomotive
 and nicknamed one of the "Brown Bombers" because of its livery, brown with green and red trimming.

Also, this engine was built in Maryborough, not far from Gympie by Walkers Limited, one of 138.



This photo was taken as the train returned from Amamoor, a trip that takes up to an hour.



The locomotive is detached from the carriages, then driven to the huge turntable to turn around for the return journey to Amamoor.

This is the locomotive heading down to the water station, and then taking on water.  After that, it will switch lines, and reverse back to reconnect the carriages for the trip to Amamoor.



The carriages are completely restored and are extremely comfortable.  It brings back, for me, many memories of riding in older trains in Melbourne when I was a child.

The trains, then, were called Red Rattlers.



This is the locomotive climbing one of the hilly parts of the line before crossing over the Mary River on a trestle bridge.



This is the engine at Amamoor near the picnic area where young children and excited parents and grandparents can get on the locomotive itself and look inside where the driver sits.

And, no, I didn't volunteer to shovel coal.

This particular locomotive spent most of its working life between Townsville and Mount Isa and was based in Cloncurry, Charters Towers, and Townsville, before being sent, at the end of its useful days in the late 1960s, to the Ipswich Railway Workshops.

A trip to China - Day 12 - The long road home

Time to leave China and Shanghai. Every other time we have arrived or departed Shanghai, we've had to catch a bus to the plane.  Today, for the first time, we boarded the plane from a gate.
It's too good to be true...

So, here we are going for that on-time departure, and...

There has been an official "muck up" between the agents and the control tower staff in relation to a missing flight plan, so we now look like we're going to be sitting on the ground, in the plane, for at least an hour and a half.

Yes, things like this can happen to foreign airlines in China and there's little hope that the situation will change.  Beaurocacry is Beaurocacry and there's an end to it.

Now, we have the knock-on effect of catching connecting flights out of Sydney with the problems created if we arrive late, having to go through immigration, wait for baggage, collect the baggage, run the gamut of customs because I'm sure there's something we've bought in China that will grab their attention, get to the transfer bus with baggage, get to the domestic terminal and then try to find our connecting flight.  Sound like the definition of madness?  It is.

Update...

After some negotiation, well I won't say what I'm thinking, our departure had been moved up to 15 minutes from now, which means pushing back at 20:15, rather than the original departure time of 19:50.

So...

20:15 is here and we're still not moving, but the door is now closed, and I suspect, we're about to start pushing back...

Stand by...

20:30 and we're now pushing back in preparation to leave, 40 minutes late.  It's going to be interesting to see if they can make up any time in the air.  It isn't exactly the smoothest run from the gate to the runway, and it highlights a few of the creaks, groans, and rattles the plane has.

So much for a quick getaway...

20:51, we take off, exactly one hour and one minute late.  There are a few moments when the engines are throttled back for some reason, the retraction of the flaps not quite as noisy as some other old planes, and the familiar clunk as the undercarriage finally rests in its slot, but at least we're in the air, and heading home.

Now it's a matter of getting up, through a little turbulence and turning slowly to acquire our heading for Sydney.  As it is 6 minutes into the flight, we're heading towards Japan.  Perhaps they shouldn't allow us to see the flight path, and worry about whether the pilot really does know where he's supposed to be going.

But...

It's 01:27 Sydney time and the flight path programme indicates we will be arriving in Sydney at 09:39.  Not long ago we were travelling at just over 1,000 kph, but that has now been wound back to 879 kph, as we straighten our course.  It seemed we were almost going almost in the wrong direction to catch the tailwinds so we could make up time, but that could only last for so long before we had to correct the heading.

Let's see how it works out.

After standing, sitting, standing again, and then going back to my seat for several hours of fitful sleep it's time for breakfast, and it's then I notice that the arrival time in Sydney is now expected to be around 08:37 which will make it more or less on time.

That impression remains until half an hour before, which is when the plane usually starts its descent, and it hasn't.  That's a telltale sign we are not going to land at the time indicated.

However, a few minutes later, we started the descent at 08:10 but still showed the same arrival time.  At this rate, we should be going down like a lead balloon.  Either that or we're going to be late.
For those of us panicking about missing our connecting flights, the cabin manager reads out a list of changes, and our flight to Brisbane has been changed. We are now on QF520.

So far, so good...

Hang on. Now we're being told that there's a delay because of congestion, and we will not be landing until 08:45. Just because they managed to make up some time, it's a case of no good deed going unpunished.

This is followed by another announcement because we're late we've been allocated an outer bay that requires us to take buses to the terminal.  Just what you want after 10 hours in a red-eye special.  

And it just gets better...

We're on the ground, at the time specified 08:45, and rolling towards our allotted bay when we get another announcement.  There's a broken plane in our bay so we have to sit out on the tarmac and wait for another 10 minutes.

What else can happen?

Nothing thankfully, and we finally get to the bay and exit the plan by the stairs at one exit.  That's when the euphoria stops.  Halfway down the stairs we suddenly stop.

There's only one bus and it's full.  Worse, in some cases families have been separated, some are on the bus, and the rest of us are still on the stairs.  It's like a Charlie Chaplin comedy movie.

Where's the next bus?  Don't they have more than one bus waiting for a plane with over 200 passengers?  After languishing on the stairs for about ten minutes we hear the Qantas staff member on the ground say there are no buses immediately available.  Obviously, this was to a restless passenger, further down the stairs.  Good thing, then, it's not raining.

Time is ticking away for us to make the connecting flight and we haven't got as far as the terminal to get started on immigration.

It takes a rather long 15 minutes before the next bus arrives, and, as an interesting diversion, what we soon discover to be a double-ended bus that can be driven from either end.  Never seen one of those before.

We get to the terminal, get reunited with other family members, go through the preliminary immigration procedures, down to have our photo taken, and then into the baggage hall.  You would think with all the delays that our bags would be waiting for us.

No.

It takes another fifteen minutes before they come out of what must have been the last baggage container.  With time just about up for making it to the connecting flight, we still have to go through customs, and the line is very long, but fortunately moving quickly.  We declare our stuff as a precaution, and all is well, we can go.

The time is now 10:05.

Our connecting flight to Brisbane leaves at 11:00.
We head for Qantas domestic transfer and when we get there the check-in clerk says we have plenty of time, the bags disappear, and we are virtually the last ones on the bus before it leaves.

Only to be stuck in a traffic jam while two planes are being ferried to another part of the airport.  It's now 10:30 and boarding for the Brisbane plane starts in 10 minutes.

Guess what?  We make it with a minute, yes that's what I said, 1 minute to spare.

However, the bad luck continued and just after the plane had loaded and the main door shut with the possibility of an on-time departure, another calamity.

The air conditioner is broken and it's about 40 degrees Celsius in the main cabin.  That's almost unbearable conditions.  A call is out to the engineers and as at 11:20 they are still working on it.  But, mercifully, it is a little cooler.  Perhaps it's working again.

Yes...

An announcement is made, the door is closed, and we're pushing back at 11:37.  Qantas is not having a good day in Sydney.

I think we won the raffle with this plane, it appears to be very old, with no screens in the seatbacks, but perhaps the onboard wifi could take its place.  The engines start up with a loud whine, unlike most that just start and are virtually silent.  

Did I just get a hint of mothballs?

11:50 take off and this is where the shuddering starts and persists until the landing gear is retracted.  Then it just creaks and groans from a tired airframe that's been through a lot of cycles.

Obviously, we made it home because you are reading this!