Melbourne to Singapore, with 'extras'.

Little bit of back-tracking here.  This is something I wrote en route to Vietnam.  Should have seen it as a sign of things to come, perhaps?

I'm only writing this because we're in the middle of a four hour stop over at Changi airport and this kills time. Gets a bit tedious dawdling up and down. I've had 500 ml of Earl Grey tea from Starbucks - well, half an hour ago. But I've just had another to stave off boredom, and flush the system, I suppose.


We're due to catch our flight in 75 minutes. Should be in Hanoi noonish.

So, the flight.


Al booked two seats together on our flights to avoid the third wheel clambering over one. As a result, we were practically sitting in the loo - only a wall and the backs of our seats protecting us from the constant flushing. Glad about earplugs. But that was okay, really.

What was terrible was the vomiting woman - 20 or 30 something and travelling solo. Probably because no one will travel with her. She started retching, immediately after take off. I turned to see what the noise, immediately across the aisle, was, and saw this ET type, hunched looking straight at me, poking two fingers down her throat and holding her mouth over her 'hot towel'. She'd considerately turned away from the passenger immediately next to her. At least we had a half metre aisle between us. But I got the full force of it. My gorge rose, of course, given I'm a sympathy vomiter. Perhaps worse than her very public retching was the accompanying loud braying that punctuated the entire 7 hour flight. And being ill, every time food was served she started up again, so all of us sitting around her had to try to eat with that going on.

Look, poor thing. There's nothing worse than travel sickness. But couldn't she use the sick bag? Or the toilet, immediately next to her? And what's with the need to make that noise?

So that was the first part of our $1700 flight over.