After whiling away our last day nursing hangovers in the restaurant of our hotel, we got a tuk tuk out to Siem Reap airport for the first of four flights over 24 hours to get home.
All went according to plan for this flight until we were approaching Ho Chi Minh City, when the plane was caught in a storm. The sun had pretty much set, and when the sun sets in Asia darkness pretty much plummets, and the storm occurred right as the darkness was plummeting. We could see lightning ahead and a big, thick black cloud, and we plunged straight into this cloud and could see nothing around us. And then the turbulence started.
I'm not really a fan of flying at the best of times, and I've never liked turbulence, but this was insane. The plane was bucking up in the air, and then plunging down what seemed like a long way. There was lightning all around us and it seemed awfully close. Whenever a plane goes through turbulence I always look at the cabin staff to be reassured by their calm expressions, but all the staff on this flight pretty much disappeared and all the lights were turned off in the cabin, so we were just sitting in darkness holding hands and thinking the plane was about to crash.
As if flying isn't scary enough already, but when the wind is just tossing around this huge machine with casual abandon, and you know that if you crash you're certain to die, it's kind of terrifying.
Luckily, after about five minutes of this it calmed down a bit and the captain, who thankfully spoke good English, announced that he'd been ordered to keep a holding pattern in a clear spot until the storm moved away from the airport. This ended up lasting for about half an hour and there was still a bit of turbulence, and I don't think I breathed properly until we safely landed.
Luckily the weather had calmed down by the time we'd gone through customs to get into Vietnam, checked in for our next flight and then turned around and went back through customs to get out again, and waited the three hours for the next flight. An added comfort, as lame as it sounds, was the entirely Australian staff, which made us feel almost like we were in Australia again.
The next stop was Darwin, and again there was some bad weather going on there so we had yet more turbulence to deal with, although nothing like the last lot. After flying through the night and not getting any sleep we were completely buggered and almost blew off getting duty free stuff, but since we would have had a half hour wait to get through customs anyway, we braved the crowd in the tiny shop and came out with the allowed four litres of booze.
We had to declare some placemats we'd bought in Cambodia, and unfortunately they were deemed unsuitable for entry into Australia without treatment that would've cost three times what we paid for them, so they went in the bin.
Although we were back in Australia we were still only halfway home, but we'd dealt with customs for the last time at least. We had another four and a half hour flight to Sydney despite the fact that there were direct flights to Adelaide that would've got us home earlier. The flight was delayed, which was a bit of a worry since we'd allowed one and a half hours between landing in Sydney and getting on our next flight to Adelaide, but we ended up getting there in plenty of time for our last very uneventful flight (apart from, you guessed it, more turbulence).
Finally home, we were greeted by our rapturous dog and it couldn't have been a better night. We had showers for the first time in two days and in the first real shower in two weeks, we cooked a simple dinner, had a bottle of red and watched crap on telly. We put on a bread to be ready for breakfast this morning and we slept for 11 lovely hours in our own bed.
All we've really achieved other than doing our washing and our shopping is uploading all our photos. So if you've got the time and the patience, you can check them out here. They're in reverse order, so start with Sydney and work your way back. Beware that the Siem Reap album has shitloads of photos of temples which probably all look the same!
Overall, we're delighted to be home again and we had a great holiday. As George said in our last post, I'd recommend Cambodia to anyone as a holiday destination. The people were awesome, especially the kids. I wanted to take one home with me. The food is great and it's generally dirt cheap (you'd struggle to pay more than $US6 for a meal, and that'd be a very fancy number indeed). The currency is a bit confusing, as they deal in $US as well as the local riel, and you'll usually get change with a bit of both, since $US1 = 4000 riel. And you can't deal only in riel either since the ATMs only dispense $US. But it's easy to get used to after a while, unless you've run your change down and you've only got a 50 dollar note, then you might be in trouble unless you're in a restaurant that's likely to have large denomination notes!
The only real downside of Cambodia is that there are only a couple of main highways in the country, so getting around is a bit of a problem. You can't really get from one main area to another without having to go back to Phnom Penh to get another bus out, so unless you've got a month to see it all, you'll end up spending half your holiday travelling between places, or spend a lot of money getting taxis across the country. But even this is changing. While most of the roads are dirt roads in terrible condition, there will be an effort in the near future to completely upgrade the only railway in the country so that fast trains can travel on them, and with the increase in tourism, eventually the roads will be paved and travel will be faster.
Anyway, I've gone on for long enough, so here endeth our travel tales for this year. I'm not sure where or when we'll go next, but I'm sure it won't be long before we start thinking about it again!
No comments:
Post a Comment