you’ve been asking
by Rach
Stellendam, Holland
Our email inbox is full of “when are you coming home?” messages.
Today I’m supposed to be able to tell you the answer.
But I can’t.
Sorry.
We tried to book online, but couldn’t, because groups cannot exceed nine people and we can’t decide which child to leave behind.
Then we rang (that will be the “Royal Robert We” seeing as I don’t like phones at the best of times and especially not across the continent to a non-English-speaking-official)…as I was saying, Rob rang the customer call centre in Spain, but they could not help at all, except to tell us to make two bookings and yes there should be enough seats on the plane we wanted to travel on.
So, buoyed on by their promises, we tried the internet booking system again. After a few hiccups, we pushed the button for the first set of seats, sat back and waited… and then panicked! A little box told us there was a problem with our bank and that we could not proceed with any further bookings until the issue was resolved. We ignored The Box and quickly hit the button again to get our last two children home with us! The same message was echoed (probably because it’s the same bank paying for all the seats) and now we sit back and wait. Coz we can’t do anything else. Whether all or any of us get on that plane remains a mystery.
Which plane?
Well, it’s an Emirates one.
It leaves from Istanbul, which means (God-willing) we will be going to Turkey.
It takes over 30 hours to get home. (Eight months ago that would have sounded like a long trip – now we ask “Can we really get all the way round the world in that short a time? It took us longer to crawl up Vietnam!”)
It stops in Dubai from midnight to 10am! (Last time we were in Dubai, I watched the sun rise and Rob threw up in the toilets for so long that a flight attendant forced the door open to check he was OK – he had already used up ALL the airsick bags on the flight. I hope it’s a better stop this time! And that at the end of the flight I won’t be starting to throw up too and be taken out to a seafood restaurant – oh that’s right, we’re going back to Auckland, not Malaysia this time).
If successful, we will be home in plenty of time for Rob to paint the house relax before Going Back To Work, but not quite in time for the Christmas Madness.
But until our bank sorts out whatever issue is preventing us from paying for tickets, we are not actually booked onto a flight, and so the date remains a secret.
Tags: children, postcard: Holland, postcard: Turkey, postcard: Vietnam, transport
rayres
no more will I complain about rush hour traffic. Good luck and God Speed with the homeward bound journey
can you believe you’re nearly homeward bound?
unreal.
can’t wait to SEE you sometime soon we hope.
kiss kiss X