The Mammoth Journey!

A welcome lie in on our last morning in SE Asia and we packed ourselves up for our Odyssey back to Brisbane. We had time for a bit of shopping and haggling around Ben Thanh market and more DVD purchasing. Bumped into the Irish teachers again and arranged to meet up with them for lunch. Comedy moment when a small Vietnamese boy escaped from his mother and grabbed hold of Bronna's bottle of water giving her a major shock and much apologies from the mum!

We got ourselves a taxi to the airport for $4 (Hotel offered to do it for $12!). Saigon airport is a bit strange - old and decrepit and certainly won the award for most uncomfortable seats.

The flight to KL was fairly boring and only took just under two hours. We got off at KL airport and prepared ourselves for our 14 hour wait for the Perth flight. Bought myself a replacement digital camera and got the next model up. Then we killed the next 14 hours drinking, eating and playing pool. We caught the Germany v Sweden 2nd round match too. About 2am we both tried to get some sleep by curling up on some seats (after having locked our valuables away in a left luggage locker). I had my carry on bag as a pillow and put my travel towel over my head and managed to get a few hours of kip. I don't think Dave got much at all unfortunately. I was woken up by a group of Indian man holding a conversation right by my head.

We had breakfast and a few more games of pool and eventually it was time to board our flight to Perth. It was a bit of an improvement from the Saigon - KL flight: we had movies and better food. Five hours to Perth and then another hour through customs and quarantine. We got grilled by customs agents on why we flew from KL to Brisbane via Perth. Apparently saving $500 isn't a good enough reason! My official wasn't too bad but Dave's was evil.

We declared all of our wooden goods and had to queue through quarantine but there was no problem once we had our inspection. Only took a few minutes, which was a nice change! Unfortunately it got worse as we had to wait nearly forty minutes for a bus to take us to the Domestic terminal, and it still managed to drop us off at the wrong end (right end for Qantas passengers though!).

We checked in for our flight and had about a six hour wait so we grabbed dinner and I called Mum & Dad before settling down to read. At one point, due to a three hour gap between flights we were the only people in the terminal. Eventually left for Brisbane just before midnight and managed to catch a bit of sleep on the flight.

Brisbane was a breeze compared to Perth as we didn't have to clear customs. We landed at half five and were at Jamie and Colleen's by sixish just in time to see Coll before she went to this place called w-o-r-k. Not sure what it is. Jamie, being a saint, had recorded England v Ecuador which had happened while we were in the air. Like all the other England games we'd seen it was very dull but at least England won.

Both of us put our heads down for a bit to get some sleep and then had a relaxing afternoon emailing and doing washing.

In the evening we went out for dinner with Jamie, Coll, Chalky, Rowan and Lieze. Really nice to catch up with everyone especially Lieze who was beginning to show a little! (i.e. she's pregnant for those of you who are a little slow...!)

We tried to stay up for the Australia v Italy game and just about managed it but I did fall asleep when the penalty decision happened (as did Jamie so only Dave was awake to see it!!).

The following day Dave and I headed off to the Whitsundays!