Perth 2015 Day 5 – Home Sweet Home

Alarm sounded at 7am to trigger a rush to pack and get ready. There was still breakfast to eat, food to clear, bottles to wash, baby to clean up, car to repark and pay and things to pack.

The weather wasn’t good, with some sun early in the morning which was quickly replaced with dark clouds and frequent on off showers. By the time we left the room at 10mins past nine, it was trickling.

Parked at the front of the hotel while I settled the remaining bills due to the in room dinner before moving the fatter luggage into the car. The road to the airport was easy most of the time except that there could be some new roads that weren’t updated on the GPS and that caused the GPS to go crazy for a bit.

I dropped off my wife and son together with the luggage at the new drop off point because there was some construction going on. As I wanted to push all the luggage to the airport first, I was informed by one of the ground staff that I couldn’t leave the car unattended or else risk towing off. I couldn’t leave my wife to push the heavy luggage while carrying my son either. So I pushed the luggage to the front of the departure hall and asked one of the security to help look after it before going back to get my wife who was waiting at the car.

This was kind of frustrating since we were on our own with no empathetic help. There was also an instruction on how to return the car and I was trying to key into the GPS the location but was again chased off by the same staff. No choice, I drove on with only the uploaded map on my phone, which thankfully worked.

The nearest carpark was carpark H and luckily enough, there was already one spot empty beside the opening to the walkway back to T1. Left the key, carpark ticket and the GPS in the hand glove compartment, manually locked the door and took a picture of the car before taking the 5mins quick walk to the terminal, which was really really far. Thankfully the rain wasn’t there to make matters worse.

Checked in was done rather quickly even at 1hr 45 mins before fly time as the queue was short. Went to the departure gate quickly and before entering, spent some time on filling up departure cards. Then as we proceeded to the immigrations, there was just a short queue too, which was done rather smoothly.

Immediately after that was the TRS where there wasn’t a queue at all. I got my refund on the credit card itself by showing the MacBook and the receipt, which should end up at least 5% cheaper than in Singapore, if not more.

The final hurdle was the scan and as usual, I was required to go through the X-ray scan. 2 tries and there was unusual stuff detected on my right foot. I gave up my right show for the Xray scanner. There were some issues with the ice packs for chilling the milk that we brought as well, which we only had one pack returned to us.

Then it was the gates, shopped some souvenirs and bought some food back, got ourselves a Morish macadamia nuts as it seemed like a popular brand in Perth.

The plane came in late and the boarding was pushed back by at least 30mins. As they called for passengers with children to board first, we went ahead but in the end had to wait in the tunnel to the plane.

This Qantas flight was a much smaller plane 737 compared to the Scoot that brought us there. As we were also given the window seats, it felt a lot more crammed up with the 3rd

passenger locking us in.

When the plane took off, baby K who was watching out of the window then fell asleep and it was a deep sleep amazingly. We thought all was good for at least an hour but after he awoke, it wasn’t that good anymore. There was at least another 3hrs of flight to take and he was cranky when he got bored. That became quite challenging especially we weren’t readily available to move onto the aisle which was perpetually full of people queuing to use the toilet and we were seated near the tail end of the plane with the toilets there.

The baby food that was given consisted of 2 packs of puree, a pair of teething biscuits and a packet of juice. Baby K didn’t like it so we had to feed him with milk and even a little portion of banana that we brought on the plane.

Nearing the end of the flight, baby K was cranky and my wife carried him to sleep in the Ergobaby, which he did very quickly. But as she sat back at the seat, the air stewardess informed that baby K had to buckle up and could not be in the Ergobaby. That was again quite frustrating as it seemed like the infant seat belt was more reliable than the infant carrier which was clearly not the case. Anyhow, that movement out woke him up and made him cry a little. The. It was all about entertaining him before we landed safely in Changi.

Nothing more interesting as we got out luggage and exit.

This was a getaway that was meant to be easy for us as we had learnt from our Europe experience 2 months back. We had more time in the room but due to a change in appetite for baby K, there was also a need for more time for food preparation. Still it felt easier and less tiring and therefore more enjoyable. The next trip could be even more challenging but still we looked forward to that.