Day 64, Long Ride Home, Melbourne, Australia

Arts student studying the Arts

Left Kuta the night before at 11pm, arrived Melbourne 7am (local time), went to art galleries to escape the cold, ate lunch with bro, back to airport, left Melbourne 5.50pm, arrived Christchurch 11pm (local time).

After a lengthy bit of sitting in airports/planes you would really just like to go home because you feel rather wasted. But I must have looked a bit wasted as I got pulled up by customs and had all my bags emptied and searched, and swabbed and tested for drugs. Gutted for them they couldn't find any, because I'm not stupid and stuffed them up my butt.

Thank You, and see you next travels
Shades of Invisible...

Day 13, Melbourne Storm, Melbourne, Australia

Windy Pier at St Kildas

There was a very wild storm in Melbourne today. The forecast was for lightning and lots of rain, but it was mostly wind and a short one hour blast of rain. I tried to walk down the above pier and nearly got blown off. Luckily nothing went wrong with my flight out to KL.

Day 12, Riding the Free Trams, Melbourne, Australia

Melbourne Tram Interior Example

When it rains in Melbourne, cause sometimes it ain't blisteringly hot, a fine and dandy activity is to take the free tram around town. A pleasant city loop gives you a quick overview of the CBD with a bit of commentary thrown in for an informative ride.

Day 11, Dirty Lying Airlines, Melbourne, Australia

The sun sets over my first day in Melbourne

So I'm pretty sure I was told a lie...

The phone rings at 8.30pm the night before my Melbourne flight. "Hello, your Pacific Blue flight to Melbourne has been cancelled due to engineering problems."

Arrangements are made to put me on a very indirect route through Brisbane leaving two hours earlier than the original. This means a drive from Tauranga to Auckland at 3am, having to battle not being able to sleep in airports and on aeroplanes for 12 hours, and not enjoying the fact my carbon offsets are probably irrelevant now that I'm flying twice as far.

But here is my conspiracy theory: The flight I was actually booked on was cancelled because it was empty. Fact: the flight I was rescheduled on for was only 2/3's full. If I was the only person rescheduled on this flight then it means I was probably the only one on the original flight, or if there were lots of people on it from the other flight then it was obviously filling up one plane instead of taking two empty planes.

Question is though, if the plane wasn't just empty, then what was wrong with it, and what's wrong with the rest of Pacific Blue's planes????