That Was Not One Of My Better Landings

Our 4 nights in Singapore hit the spot with the right mix of Asia's hustle & bustle (thanks mainly to Chinatown) and some relaxation. Our flight home doesn't leave until 11.30pm so we paid half room rate for a late check out of 6pm ($120 so shows how good the Amex reward points were that paid for the 4 nights) and we head to Sentosa for the morning (photos in previous post). Great way to finish.

Back at the hotel we play suitcase equilibrium to try and get 3 x 23kg to check and 3 x 7kg to carry on (90kg total). To put that in perspective when we left England with the generous 30kg Emirates allowance our weights were something like 25, 23, 18 (66kg) & 8.8, 8.7, 7.7 (25.2kg) for a total of 91.2kg meaning we would have to lose a kg and spread it perfectly across the 6 pieces of luggage to keep Qantas happy. Factor in we bought stuff in Singapore and left England wearing winter clothes in a snow storm and we are flying out of Changi Airport in summer clothes. Just throw heavy stuff in the hand luggage I hear you say. Well that used to work but this year we have had our hand luggage weighed and certified with a tag at every check in. Emirates did turn a blind eye to us being over the 7kg (she wrote 7kg on each piece) but commented we might get weighed again at the gates! And one more example of how strict they are, Qantas made us take a jumper out of 1 suitcase and put it in another on the way out of Brisbane! And for those gasping that we were over limit leaving Brisbane, we went out with only 2 checked suitcases with the 3rd being my large backpack empty inside one of the others and 2 carry ons (3 but one was brand new and empty bought at the airport for Ben).

So we chucked out any non essentials and somehow managed to hit the jackpot aforementioned suitcase equilibrium.

The Singapore Brisbane leg is 2 x 5 hour flights with 3 hours in Perth. Given we leave near midnight Ben goes straight to sleep which is great. He's tired and a bit unwell. Perth flight is no dramas. However Brisbane is another story when it comes time to land. 90km/h winds and torrential rain. Jebus. The pilot is a bit of a comedian (well we hope he's joking) when he says I should be able to get it down but we circle a couple of times while he gets up the courage. As we are just about to touch down the plane rolls violently side to side to the point I can't believe one of the wings don't touch the runway. Touchdown is an almighty double jolt as the wheels make contact separately. The pilot comes on and apologises quipping that was definitely not one of my better landings but at least we made it down! We find out lots of other flights were diverted to Sydney.

Anyway we're home. Hopefully there were one or two people out there reading along and found it mildly interesting :)