Hong Kong to Melbourne

Friday December 24, 2010

Hong Kong International Airport.

Definitely on the home stretch now, and my four month trip was about to draw to a close with just one more flight back to Melbourne. I boarded the plane at Hong Kong without any dramas. Lunch was served at lunch time (pork stir-fry, salad, chocolate and another can of James Squire ale). I mostly just listened to music from the on-board entertainment system and drifted in and out of sleep.

Because I knew the quantity of food provided on flights was insufficient for my high consumption needs, and because I'd had some food left over from London, I'd taken some with me on the flight. So I ate my last two salami, cheese and tomato rolls, then ate the aeroplane tea consisting of salmon, rice, salad, and chocolate and ice-cream for dessert.

A few hours later, the plane was touching down at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne. In terms of getting back home from the airport, things had worked out quite conveniently because my sister Leah was also flying home for Christmas from Darwin where she moved to a few years back, and our flights arrived at Tullamarine within a few hours of each other, so Mum could pick us both up at the same time.

I departed the plane, safe and sound in Melbourne. My passport, being one of the more modern ones, had a chip inside it so I could use the new electronic passport checkers and avoid the queue. I then collected my bike box and tried to get it through customs. The bloke reeled off all the forbidden items and asked if I had any of those things, which I said I didn't. He asked what kind of bike I had, and how much tread was on the tyres (because a tyre with tread could be carrying foreign dirt which could contain unwanted bacteria/diseases/etc. Reluctantly I admitted they had a bit of tread, but claimed the tyres were clean, because I didn't want the hassle of opening the box up. Nevertheless, the bloke wanted to check them, so he opened the box up and inspected them, and gave me the go-ahead.

It wasn't hard to find Mum, Tex and my sisters Rachel and Silkom - my youngest sister Silkom had made a huge sign for me, in contrast to the surrounding standard sized names; it was quite an amusing sight. 

Finding my little sister at the airport was easy.

My family was indeed happy to have me home and see me again - as I was to see them!

Coincidentally I also ran into some other friends at the airport - Rob and Liz - and said a quick g'day. They were waiting for one of Liz's kiwi friends to arrive I think.

We dropped my luggage off in the car and then waited for my sister Leah to arrive, which didn't take too much longer. 

Silkom had a similar sign for my sister Leah to find her at the airport.

Three of my sisters, Rachel and Silkom with Leah

On my trusty iPhone which made it through 9000 km of bicycle touring unscathed.

Silkom casually hanging out with some statues at the airport.

The only sister missing was Rosanna - she was still living in Europe and wouldn't be joining us for Christmas - she'd be spending Christmas with her in Antwerp, Belgium with her boyfriend Sam Conix's family. 

We drove back to Mt Franklin where Mum dropped us off at Dad's place at about mid-night (we would be heading to Mums place for Christmas lunch the next day). The first thing I did when I got home was say hi to Dad and the very excited dogs, Siena and Jet.

It was good to be home!

London to Hong Kong

Thursday December 23, 2010

So I headed off in the dark from the Phoenxi Hostel just before 6 am and found my way to Heathrow Airport. There was no hurry so I was just idling and trying to avoid crashing with all the ice and snow around.

I made it to Heathrow without incident, and wheeled my bike into the terminal. The first thing I needed to do was find a bike box to pack my bike away. After asking a few airport staff here and there "do you know where I can find a bike box?" and receiving puzzled looks in response, I eventually found someone who knew what I was talking about and pointed me in the direction of a luggage/packing shop. So I went there and found a bike box, which cost £17, and proceeded to pack my bike into it. This required loosening the headset bolt to turn the handlebars 90 degrees, taking both the pedals off, taking the front wheel off and letting the tyres down. Then I packed in my panniers and everything except my carry-on luggage around the bike in the box, and borrowed their tape to tape it all up, ready to go. 

Packing my luggage, bike partly disassembled, inside Heathrow Airport.

My bike and luggage packed in a box inside Heathrow Airport, ready to fly back to Melbourne.

The only issue was that I was quite sure it was heavier than the maximum weight allowance of 23 kg (I later weighted my box when I got home and it was 32 kg!). I hoped I'd be able to get away with it though, because at $50 per kilogram of excess luggage, it'd be cheaper to throw my gear away and buy the same things again in Melbourne than it would be to pay the excess baggage costs.

I then found a trolley to wheel the box around on, since it was quite awkward and heavy to carry. I found a place to sit down and then ate breakfast consisting of some Weet-Bix and muesli I had with me, with some long-life milk, and I used the bike box as a table.

Next on the agenda was to check in. I wheeled my box up into the baggage check-in area and gave my boarding pass or whatever it was to the attendant. He looked at me, then at my bike box and back at me with a slightly distasteful expression. Obviously because of the size, my bike box couldn't fit onto the standard luggage conveyor belt which is where they weigh the luggage, so the bloke asked me "how much does your box weigh?" Well...good question I suppose, I thought to myself. I honestly didn't know how much it weighed, so I said "ah...I dunno...but it'd be less than 23 kilograms anyway..." He looked at me suspiciously, apparently not convinced but eventually said "...okay", and let me take it through. He instructed me to wait with the box over to the side and someone would come and collect it from me.
I said goodbye to the box and went to line up to go through the security scan. For this (in case you haven't been on a plane before) one has to remove anything metallic from themselves and lay it on a tray with their carry-on luggage, which then goes through a security scanner on a conveyor belt. I got through the metal detector no worries, but it appeared my carry-on luggage wasn't so lucky. I stood there waiting while the attendant studied the x-ray image on her screen. She called one of her colleagues over to have a look at the image, and then another and they said a few things to each other which I couldn't hear. One of the blokes asked me what I had in my carry-on luggage (which included one rear pannier packed full, and my handlebar bag. I named everything in there I could think of, I couldn't think of what could be causing the issue. It seemed something in the handlebar bag was the issue in particular, and they decided to put it through again. They still weren't satisfied, so they asked me to open the bag and take out everything in there. 

There was a can of deodorant and a 500 ml bottle of sunscreen which I'd been hoping to take back to Australia for summer, and they confiscated both of them. I was quite disappointed because I'd carried that 0.5 kg of sunscreen for over 9000 km, and all for nothing! 

Lying at the bottom of the handlebar bag was my E-werk and cache battery, which I'd been using throughout the trip to charge my iPhone from the dynahub on the bike. The E-werk was connected to the cache battery by a wire, with the battery in a little rectangular bag, and I quickly realised this was the offending item - it looked like it could be some kind of bomb device. 

My E-werk and cache battery caused a security concern at the airport.

I hadn't thought of that earlier... I explained to the airport security attendant what it was and he advised me to avoid taking it through the scanner again at the airport at Hong Kong when I changed planes. Mmm, fair enough, I thought.

Anyway, I made it through, got my passport checked, and then waited to board the plane, sitting looking out the window onto the runway. 

Heathrow Airport runways.

I'd put about seven layers of clothes on to save weight in my luggage because I knew it was too heavy, and I was presently so hot that I stripped off about five layers and stuffed them away in my pannier. I was so exhausted after staying up all night, not knowing whether my flight was going ahead, then riding to the airport and having to get through all the security, I was a bit out of it. I was actually struggling to stay awake! 

Me looking very tired, dehydrated and pale.

Eventually they started calling people up to board the plane, but to avoid a massive rush they called everyone up according to their boarding pass numbers, in 20-number blocks. So for example, numbers 600 to 619 were called up, then 620 to 639, etc. Seems pretty simple, but twice I lined up to go through, and twice I got turned back when they told me my boarding pass number wasn't in the range they'd asked for. How embarrassing, I felt so stupid! I'd been so sure my number had been in the range they called up and it wasn't. Eventually I got through in about the last group of people to be called up - third time lucky!

So I was finally in the plane, an A380 Airbus no less and I must say it was quite impressive - better than the Boeing 747's. There appeared to be lots of Englishmen on the plane flying over to watch the Ashes (cricket). I also overhead someone else say that she'd been waiting almost a week to get board a flight since her original flight had been cancelled due to the snow.

The captain's voice came over the speakers to welcome us on-board. He was obviously Australian, and added at the end of his little welcome: "and for all those Englishmen on board who have come to watch the Ashes, I'd just like to say we admire your optimism." Haha, good one, captain!

The plane fired up and lifted off, which was again quite exciting. Lunch was served before long which wasn't bad, although the James Squire can of beer I had was about the same temperature as the tea!

My seat neighbour on the left was a plump young blonde-haired girl who was a wedding photographer from Sydney. She told me a bit about her job and wedding photography. My neighbour on the right was also an Australian, in his thirties by my guess. He'd been working as a golf curator in Sweden for the past few years and I chatted to him about that for a while. Seemed like a decent job, he reckoned it was pretty cruisy for half the year when it was too cold and snowy to play golf. He was on his way home to see his family for Christmas.

After lunch, it didn't take me long to nod off, and I slept much of the first leg of the flight until breakfast. It seemed we skipped dinner all-together, presumably due to the changing time zones. I watched the new Tomorrow, When the War Began movie and was quite impressed. I loved the books too - one of my favourite series, I'm quite a fan of John Marsden. And I've met John Marsden because he came to my school one time when I was in about grade 2, but that's another story.

So we landed at the Hong Kong International Airport at about 8:45 pm local time, and departed the plane to board another plane to Melbourne - nearly home!

The days riding, Marylebone to Heathrow Airport.

Overview of my route from Rome to London.

Ride stats:

Distance: 24.1 km
Average: 16.6 km/h
Max: 32 km/h
Time: 1:27:10

Total ascent: 123 m

Total descent: 127 m