Day 1 - Tuesday 14 March - Canberra to Macau

Had a fairly civilised first flight of the day - 09:00. So we woke up at 6am and got ready, and Chrissie arrived at 07:00 and we were out the door by 07:10.

Had a spot of breakfast in the Qantas club before boarding. And saw "Airforce 2" on the taxiway as we were boarding.

Stu and Karen on the plane at Canberra Airport

Sadly planes were taking off to the south, so our seat on the left side of the plane didn't give us a view of Canberra city.

Looking towards Melbourne CBD

We arrived at the gate in Melbourne exactly one our after leaving the gate in Canberra.

In Melbourne, security was pretty quick, although Melbourne should follow Canberra's lead and have lots of convenient benches before and after security to organise all your stuff. The space after security in Melbourne is very pretty much non-existent which makes it a bit awkward to repack your bags.

Immigration was completely boring - you just stick your passport in the machine, have your photo taken, then dump your passenger card in a box.

Our next flight was due to board at 10:30, so we went straight to the gate. But after standing there for half an hour they finally made an announcement that there was a problem with one of the cargo doors they were looking at, and it would be another 45 minutes before we boarded. So we high-tailed it out of there and went for a drink and snack in the Qantas club. Much more relaxing. In the end they didn't board until 13:00 with pushback at 13:27 - over two hours late.

Karen at the Qantas Club at Melbourne Airport

On the flight I had tortellini for lunch which was quite nice, but quite filling. Later on they had noodles for a light dinner. With icecream and fruit in between.

I watched Moana first up. Nice enough movie, not sure how it'd stand up to repeated viewings. It was visually stunning though, would be nice to watch it on a bigger screen. Stay for the end - shiny! Next up I watched La La Land. Which to be honest for the most part I found really .. boring ..! The songs just didn't grab me and the whole first scene I'm going like "what's the point?". Meh. I did like the camera work on some of the scenes though - lovely long takes reminiscent of the old school days of movies. Next I watched Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them which I enjoyed. Little references here and there to the Harry Potter world (including a teensy bit of John Williams' score), but able to stand on its own. Finally I watched three episodes of season 10 of Big Bang Theory.

Given that we were two hours late leaving, we landed in Hong Kong at 18:47 local time - only an hour late. At the airport we headed to the Macau ferry ticketing area to get tickets for the 21:00 ferry to Macau. Then had to sit around the airport for an hour which was a bit boring. But not for as long as if our flight had been on time! Sat next to a super annoying Vietnamese guy who was facetiming his girlfriend but he wasn't really talking (and neither was she), he just had her on video with the volume up really loud so all the background noise was super loud and annoying. In the end we moved to a much quieter spot.

At 20:30 we were able to catch the people mover to the ferry terminal. We had allocated seating on the ferry (they gave us seats at the front but on opposite sides of the aisle, with noone in the window seat) but the ferry wasn't full so I took the window seat next to Stu. The ferry ride was a bit boring - it was dark and rainy so there was really no view. Took a bit over and hour to get to Macau (would have been quicker if we hadn't had to do a go-slow because of the airport extension work going on). Then a bit of a walk to the arrivals hall, and we walked in to chaos. A couple of ferries had arrived at once so there was a room full of people. It was *somewhat* organised but a bit stressful getting through immigration (and sadly no stamp for the passport). Then to go pick up our bags. It's a little bit nerve-wracking because you never actually see your luggage when you get off the plane. You give the ticket office your baggage receipt from the airline and they go and get your bag and put it on the ferry. So it's a little bit scary wondering if your bag will turn up. Fortunately it did, as if it hadn't we'd have had to spend the next couple of days shopping for clothes, which is noone's idea of fun.

The hotels all have shuttle buses from the ferry terminal, so we went out and across the road to find ours. The relatively short drive to our hotel took us past the Parisian and the Venetian which are pretty over the top themselves. Finally we arrived at ours, and really the whole place reminds me of Vegas. Absolutely over the top. Just insane. Checked in and came up to the room. But it was nearly midnight so we just had some noodles from the mini bar and the single beer (complimentary mini bar, as least on the first night) and collapsed into bed.