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Just a quick blog to talk about the Flight over..(wrote this heading as I started - nek minnit - its huge. warning - salut to you if you read it all!)

Au revoir Australie 29th October 9:35 am - Leave Australia. Gold Coast airport bound for Singapore. Our trip was pretty well organised, fly to Singapore - wait a few hours there, with plenty of time to get to our connecting flight. Then fly to Paris with Emirates with a stop over in Dubai (if you check out a map, its a pretty direct route. Including a 14 hour stop in Dubai at the airline hotel.

After our 8.5 hour flight from Gold Coast where it felt like it took a month just to leave Australia. We arrive in Singapore - wow thats a big airport, nice looking too. We get through customs remarkably quick - just after we cue'd up there must have been a dozen other flights arriving - the cue behind us grew monstrous quickly - eehan timing there!



After checking out the Airport in Singapore - which included me walking out the front door to check the scenery and being appalled by the humidity! (its freaking hot in Singapore!!). We realise that the terminal we are waiting at thats shown the Emirates flight to Dubai suddenly disappears from the list of flights leaving that terminal. Not to worry tho, I ask around and find out it was just an error earlier, the flight leaves from another terminal and there are convenient 'skytrains' that take you from each of the three terminals (skytrains are actually weird un-manned buses, they have wheels and travel around elevated tracks from terminal to terminal).

We walk up to the check-in desk at Emirates - after cueing for a while to get to the desk, the nice lady behind the desk takes our passports, taps away and the computer... then looks at us with a worried look. Nek minnit - she's walked off to talk to a supervisor - then comes back and says our tickets are not confirmed and recommends we go make some phone calls - oh sheeiit. After talking with Emirates, we give WebJet a call - the company the tickets were booked through. But no, WebJet's help desk works on US time only and it is the middle of the night in the US and their 'help centre' is closed. What a bunch of beta's. All this has chewed up about an hour of our two hours before check-in closed for our flight to Dubai.

Time to call Pandan (an absolute boss, if you don't know him - he's a sikent from Plantronics that organised all this and is responsible for sponsoring Nv). Pandan rings WebJet, no luck for him either. While he's calling WebJet every 10 mins till their office opens we are at the Emirates desk trying to get them to contact WebJet or someone from their accounts to sort it all out. As the issue all along was, Booking was paid to WebJet - booking was made with Emirates, booking was not paid for by WebJet to Emirates. The clock is ticking as we sit near the Emirates desk waiting for something, while on skype with our slowly running out of battery phones! Still nothing - 10 mins to go.. Pandan checks his accounts - the booking was refunded an hour or so earlier - ohh sheeeiiit. After painfully watching our flight check-in desk close and the timer run out to make our flight its 9:35pm (Singapore time) by now and we're getting pretty tired. We realise that a new booking is needed, and we will be waiting quite a bit more.

Pandan (The mofo'n Boss) quickly organises new flights - All this is after 1am Australian time after finding out the WebJet cancelled the booking because they apparently emailed Pandan and myself asking for a photo copy of the paying CreditCard and some for of verification - I guess because someone else other that the people flying paid for the trip? - However neither of us received this email. -_- gg WebJet - Ya Beta's.

New flights booked! - however, they are with China Eastern Airlines, via Shanghai - for those that are gosu with their geography, while Singapore to Paris via Shanghai gets you all the northerly that you need for the trip, it does go East - the wrong direction to Paris T_T. All good, at least we on a plane, and this time we have ticket confirmation from WebJet - Yeah, Pandan finally got on the them when they thought it'd be a good time to open their help desk to serve their international clientele - again, bunch of beta's. Another interesting note - this new flight was leaving at 4:35pm the next day - its about 10 maybe 11pm by now - could have been later, I have no idea. so we have a sweet 18 hour wait... T_T

The Hero of the day!
(after of course Pandan - who was with us all the way making sure everything went well)
After realising we have such a long wait in the airport - I jump on SC2SEA and Skype and try and find someone in Singapore we can crash with. Froggy to the rescue! - he takes a Taxi to the Airport to find us, then takes us back to his house - again, outside the air-conditioned airport - even at 11pm at night is freaking hot and humid! - Add to that we are travelling to France and have only packed cold weather clothes, we melt! As we get back to Froggy's - we pick up some cold beers and chill with Frogmite - what a boss he is, even lets us stay in his house the next day when he goes to work and Petraeus gets in some good practice on Froggy's PC!

Our flight to Shanghai
We get to the Airport - much earlier than we need to, wary of further flight **** ups. We check in early, get our tickets (wooo!) and get window seats all the way to Paris - boss! While waiting in the terminal we get some food, catch up with people on the airport wifi and check out Changi Airport - its amazing, huge and well decorated. After all this we chill near the terminal for our flights and utilise the free Airport foot massages for a good 30 mins - our feet felt amazing afterwards. These massages are amazing, they have three settings: Begginer, Intermediate, Advanced. As internationally jet-setting progamers we go straight to Advanced - and I'm proud to say I finished the entire level, twice. ezpz noob get shat on.

The flight itself....Well. What can be said about the plane bound to Shanghai... it should have been decommissioned in the eighties. The thing had no TVs or entertainment - except for a ridiculously old projector in the front middle of our section of the plane playing strange old Chinese action movies and a few kids cartoons - all in Mandarin. There was an option to use your headphones to listen to the radio - but I have no idea what was going on some of those channels... like.. seriously... it was weird wailing and strange noises, I don't even know if it was Human...



We Arrive in Shanghai after a short 5.5 hour flight from Singapore - a quick 2 hour stop over then 12 hour flight to Paris. We walk up to the transfers desk at Shanghai's PuDong airport (yes, its called PuDong, I know.. we laughed too). It's pretty quiet there - a guy takes us through a few check points - everything in the transfers section seems to be closed (it was reasonably late at night). He walks us trough random back doors with another traveller with us - we go past a few custom check points and then through some side passages for about 10 mins - after which Petraeus and I being to think we are being led down to some back alley basement to be either shot or raped - maybe both, not sure of the order. Finally, a check point with people - we head through and are now at our outward bound terminal. Time to get some nice non-airline food and chill before our flight. Chinese food is pretty good - and using our noses we find somewhere pretty legit. Pet gets Kimchi noodles (only vegetarian option) and I'm happy with some crispy chicken and assorted Chinese sides. Time for some drinks - I order an orange juice - not really knowing the value of the Chinese Rembrandi and I'm paying in Euro's (as I had no Chinese currency - wasn't planning on coming to China). I get my Juice - then am asked for 9 Euro's for it.... 9 Euro Juice?.. wow, rip off - it was tastey as hell.. but expensive!!!!!

Flight to Paris!!
We board our flight to Paris - all the while Pet and I have been playing down the plane - thinking it will be even worse than the first, so we are not disappointed when we get on-board. However, to our surprise its a modern new plane with all the mod-con's you could ask for from an airline! We watch a movie while trying to fall asleep - its getting pretty late for us - even in China it was pretty late. We both get in a few hours sleep. Wake up and utilise the inflight entertainment - I play a 2 hour game of poker vs a silly AI - but I'm sleep deprived and delirious, I'll be damned if I'm letting the AI win. The watch a movie (Clash of the Titans, not great but I hadn't seen it) - which when up to the final scene - the flight was almost over and the PA announcement cut the end of the film short. However, what a fun experience we were in for - the TV's showed some amazing Chinese exercise routine to invigorating their weary travellers.

Bonjour, Bienvenue à Paris
We land in Paris - local time about 5:30am on the morning of the 31st (3:30pm Australian time). We head through customs, collect our bags and head for the train, change trains twice, then walk to our hotel - Arriving at about 8:30am local time (6:30pm Australian time) Check in with the receptionist that informs us through mime (I speak very little French and she had zero English) that the man with the key in his pocket will be here at 9 and we can check in then! A few more errors with online booking agencies - and we are in! A solid total of 57 hours travel time (add in a 3 hour flight for Pet Auckland > Gold Coast and a 16.5 hour chill in Australia before flying out) and we are exhausted!

Massive massive props and thanks to Pandan for all his help along the way! and a huge shout out to GAMECOM Plantronics for making this trip possible!! (give them a follow and tweet that they are huge bosses - @GAMECOMau)

Thanks for reading, I'll have another wall of text for you shortly with Part 2 - exploring Paris and attempted husslers. But for now, I'll leave you with a list of some of the funny named places we've encountered so far!