Hangover to Travel Headspace in Bali

I’m going to call it: the service in Qantas’ Melbourne First Lounge is far superior to the Sydney First Lounge. Melbourne may be small, but it’s intimate and you’re well looked after. Sydney is bigger and stylish but the service is slow and you have to chase it down. Having to ask for a glass of champagne twice before it arrives is peak first-world problems. Still, that was my only real complaint. After taking the bus and transferring across to the international terminal, the trip has been pretty stress-free so far. The Sydney skyline and the constant parade of A380s do beat Melbourne’s view of a paddock, though. But enough comparisons and complaints.

I know it’s a luxury to be sitting up here in the lounge, drinking champagne for free and ordering from an à la carte menu. For the past decade or so I’ve kept Platinum status with Qantas, and First Lounge access is one of the main perks. Alas, this year I’ve been too much of an airline whore—cheating around behind Qantas’ back—and I’ll almost certainly lose Platinum next year. Better enjoy it while it lasts. I started off healthy(ish) with a mozzarella, asparagus and roasted beetroot salad. Nice, but it didn’t really hit the hangover that was desperate for carbs and fat. I broke from my mostly vego diet and went for the classic club sandwich with chips.

With fatty, carb-heavy food in my now-engorged belly, I retired to a recliner by the window to soak in that avgeek-gold view. My hangover had moved past seedy headache into the post-alcohol comedown. I don’t know if it’s officially a thing, but after a big night I sometimes find old depression and anxiety trying to claw their way back. Not how I wanted to start a three-week holiday, so I decided to shut that down fast. Already sleepy, I reclined the seat, popped in my new AirPods Pro 3 and blocked out the background noise. These headphones are amazing—a huge improvement on the old model.

I’ve been getting into restorative yoga lately, which has done wonders for my mind. While I couldn’t roll out a mat here, I slipped into a short meditation instead. I’ve practiced for a few years now. At first it felt a bit airy-fairy, but doing it when I don’t urgently need it makes it far more effective when I do. As the session went on I felt the tension slip away, replaced by calm and a sense of being back in the present—with that perfect view of planes landing. There are plenty of apps to guide meditation, but I use Calm, lucky enough to have snagged a lifetime membership years ago.

Refreshed, I felt like the hangover was gone and I was ready to get this journey moving. Qantas had other plans, delaying the flight about an hour for late-connecting passengers. Once we boarded, the guy across the aisle broke his seat recline. “His seat keeps falling back onto me—it won’t stay up,” complained the woman behind him. “Can I just move to sit with my wife? This seat is broken,” he asked the flustered crew member.

A ping on my phone announced another ten-minute delay. The crew also mentioned a “very minor engineering issue,” greeted with a collective groan as the seat drama played out. Engineers arrived surprisingly quickly, fixed it, and the man tested it to everyone’s satisfaction. He sat back down, the engineers left, and a new crew member came to tell him he could move to sit with his wife after all. The seat stayed empty the rest of the flight—fixed for next time, I guess.

I caught a great view of arriving planes before we finally launched off the runway over Botany Bay and headed northwest across Australia. Six hours to Bali ahead. Seatbelt sign off, meal service began promptly. To the disbelief of a few friends and Insta followers, I’m down the back of the bus today in economy. (Okay, third row of economy with a pair of window seats to myself, but still not the la-di-da of business class.)

Drinks trolley first—I grabbed a beer. The meal followed: spinach and ricotta pasta. I still remember when Qantas ditched the meal trays for these single-serve dishes with a piece of bread perched on top. I wasn’t a fan then and I’m not now. The pasta was ordinary, which matched the song I was listening to—also called Ordinary.

The Jacob’s Creek sparkling Chardonnay was a big step down from the lounge champagne, but I survived. My wine palate has expanded a lot lately—those mini bottles are no match for the Chablis I was sipping in Warburton earlier this week. I skipped the ice cream for dessert and put on K-Pop Demon Hunters, a fun flick with catchy tunes already added to my Spotify.

The first 3,300 km or so passed over the Australian mainland, leaving about 1,300 km across the Timor Sea before landing in Bali around the six-hour mark. Wi-Fi worked well until Alice Springs, then conked out. It was nice to text friends while it lasted. I’ve been booking a lot of premium-cabin flights lately, where you’re constantly fed and plied with drinks until you’re either asleep or sloshed. I’d forgotten that a standard economy flight solo can feel a little… dull. Who have I become?

I did a quick post-movie meditation to wash that thought away and slip back into avgeek mode, then returned to what I normally do on these flights—writing these blogs. I started in 2010, which makes this 15 years of on-and-off travel writing. My early posts were like this, then I shifted to airline reviews, and now I’m back to more narrative stories.

History lesson aside, it’s time to finish this post and grab a quick nap. I log off as we cross Australia’s coastline, some 4.5 hours after leaving Sydney. I’ll cross it again in about three weeks when I return from this latest adventure. Gosh, Australia is big.Læs mere