Our five-hour stopover (actually, I think that it might have ended up being closer to four because of the delay at Paris Airport) at Dubai Airport was rather uneventful. We were provided free food by Emirates because it was such a long stopover, so first we searched for the location of the free food. We had to ask for directions, but the directions were very helpful.
The food wasn’t too much- mainly sandwiches and fruit- but we could take however much we wanted. I think I just took a fruit or two. While we were in the queue, Katie asked the people working there if they were working all night, as it was midnight in Dubai at that time. She was so insistent with this odd question that Karri had to tell her repeatedly to stop it.
Later on, I had a yoghurt snack from Pinkberry. I’m not sure what else I ended up doing for the remainder of the stopover. By the time we had to meet back at the departure gate, everyone was exhausted and most of us were sleeping on chairs or on the floor, apart from Angus who went to buy himself an iPod Touch. Next to the wall, a random traveller was sleeping on a mat that he had brought himself- well prepared!
The whole idea of having to endure another 11 hours of flying after a 5 hour flight and a 5 hour stopover was just... awful, to say the least. In a tired voice, Karri spoke the three words that were probably going through everyone’s minds at that moment:
“I... hate... flying...”
When we had gotten our boarding passes checked, we went down the escalator, and proceeded to sleep on the floor of the lower floor of the gate, until Mrs F yelled at us to “start acting civilised.” Eventually, we got on the plane, which was thankfully on time. I had a window seat again (I hate window seats). Max, who had aisle seat, fell asleep almost immediately.
As soon I had thought that the seatbelt light had gone off, I rushed down to the toilet to brush my teeth using the amenity kit I had been given (I had been waiting for this opportunity during the five-hour stopover!). I only realised the seatbelt light hadn’t gone off because there was an illuminated sign in there telling me to go back to my seat, but the flight attendants didn’t seem to care.
Later, we were served breakfast. It was hilarious when the flight attendants tried to serve Max breakfast because he was just like, “No, I’ll be fine, I’m not hungry.” I asked him if he wanted to swap seats but he said no. I think he was too tired to do that as well.
After a while the cabin lights were dimmed and it became quite dark. I decided to take the hint and use my eyepatch and recline my seat to get some sleep. I think I might have actually succeeded, but to what extent I am not certain.
When it was soon time to land in Australia, we were shown a video about quarantine rules. We had to see the same video twice because we were flying Emirates: first in Arabic with English subtitles, then in English with English subtitles.
The first thing that we had to do once we had gotten off the plane was to queue up for immigration. Someone said something about the airport having boarder security, to which we replied, “Yes, every airport has border security!” They then said that they were talking about the TV show called “Border Security.” Mrs F said, “Well, let’s just make sure that we’re not on it!”
After passing through passport control, I took my luggage off the conveyor belt and could leave instantly as I didn’t have to wait for the instruments to come out of the hold or carry a percussion instrument. I proceeded through quarantine, in which it looked like I had a bit of everything because I was being my usual overcautious self, but everything went through without any problems. On the other side of the door, I found a whole bunch of parents clapping and cheering, and I just stood there for a couple of seconds, a little overwhelmed, not knowing in which direction to walk next. Soon, I saw my sister running towards me and thus I escaped being in the limelight, the subject of the applause of a bunch of overenthusiastic parents.
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