Day 1 - Travel - Colombo via Singapore

We kind of knew it was going to be a big day of travel but I don’t think you can really prepare for it! That was our opening line last year when we trekked to Dubai but this was much tougher. Alarms set for 3.40am we wanted to leave by 4am to be at the airport by 4.30am, last check in was at 5am for our 6.05am flight to Auckland. When you have to get up that early you kind of just don’t sleep, in case you sleep in, so that was how we started.

Flight to Auckland was on time, all good. 7.10am we are in Auckland. Next flight is 11am to Singapore. 4 hours of waiting around at an airport usually means McDonalds! Lara had 3 hash browns, Stanley had 1 along with half of Dad’s monster sausage roll. Mum has a cheese scone. All is good!

10 hours of flight means we will land in Singapore at 9pm NZ time, not the right timing to get any sleep. Dad watched Barbie (at Mum’s insistence) and was very ‘meh’ – disappointed Oppenheimer wasn’t showing. The New Boy was a good movie though. With internet on board Dad set about trying to finish last year’s travel stories on FindPenguins – better late than never!

Stanley watched Barbie and Mean Girls (at Lara’s insistence!) and listened to music. No kids meals for this flight much to the kids disappointment! Air NZ in-flight movie selection was appalling, nothing to watch. Hopefully they’ll have a better selection come January for the return flights home.

4 hours in Singapore makes us 1am NZ time but we are running late by an hour. Plenty of time to check out the butterfly garden and cactus garden and water lily garden, lots of gardens (though the last 2 were really just smoking areas!).

We managed to stay awake and not miss the flight. Is 3.5 hours to Colombo, what are we up to – 6am NZ time? An hour to get our bags – they had to be the last ones off the plane! Sort out a SIM card, get some money, our poor driver had been waiting for close to 2 hours! His patience was admirable! Was a quick 15 minute journey to the Hotel we think it was maybe 27 hours of travel time – pretty shattered! Hotel was just fine for a place to sleep. We made it!!Read more