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Earlier this year I embarked on what can only be described as an epic journey (or a two-month holiday) around the other side of the world. After some light planning, a flight was booked, then, after some even lighter planning, my friend Will and I departed for Australia on May 10th 2009, with little but two back packs, and an inordinately small amount of money. What I hope to do is detail some of the highlights of our trip, share what was an amazing experience, and maybe even provide a little inspiration.

Heathrow Terminal Four is a bizarre part of the sprawling Heathrow complex. Set aside from the main body of the airport; it is in the middle of an insane labyrinth of side-roads, countless roundabouts, and unusually named villages (Poyle, for example, sounds like something you would need to get a cream for). This is all helped by the convenient way that the terminal is only signposted once you are within 200 yards of the building, meaning that the only way to find it is through a baffling combination of guesswork, and following aircraft as they land. However after stopping for directions at what must have been every petrol station in the West London area, we made it, with the prospect of a 5 hour wait for a twenty four-hour flight ahead. But by now all we wanted to do was get as far away from Poyle as possible.

We hit our first obstacle in airport security. Due an unfortunate need amongst some religious fundamentalists to carry explosive devices onto aircraft, my innocent bottle of Sprite was the first casualty of the trip. Needless to say the deodorant in Will’s bag was the next thing to go. After some time (presumably suspicious airport staff were checking our faces through Interpol), it became possibly the first can of Sure to be involved in a controlled explosion, and was consigned to a premature oblivion. However, one benefit of causing a minor security incident in one of the world’s busiest international airports is that it conveniently used up an hour or so.

There is something about being propelled through the stratosphere at 600 miles per hour that makes me feel uneasy. Thankfully, before we left, I had looked into the various options that are available to ease this, things such as: therapy, prescription drugs or even various herbal remedies (although I’m not sure how much ginseng it would take to numb a chronic fear of flying). I however ignored all of these reasonable options, and chose to get drunk. Very, very drunk. Which was a strange experience at Heathrow Airport on a Sunday afternoon; one that mainly involved fake Australian accents and getting confused by automatic taps in the toilets. After managing to stumble onto the plane without falling over or arousing further suspicion amongst airport staff, and settling into my seat, I began an agonising hour-long wait until the next available toilet break (a process not aided by my slightly inebriated state).

Our flight turned out to be fairly innocuous; but during some turbulence my use of a bread roll to sponge up spilt tea did draw the occasional alarmed glance from the cabin crew. The arrival of breakfast also was inconveniently timed; coinciding with the onset of a rather large headache, which did not combine well with my attempts to stomach Qantas’ finest attempt at what was apparently an omelette (according to the rather offended looking hostess, whom by now had unsportingly stopped supplying free beer and chocolate). Thankfully out of the window of our descending plane, the first few islands of the Malay Archipelago were coming into view, the group of thousands of islands in-between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. As we neared Singapore we flew lower and lower, getting increasingly closer to these lush, green, day-dream paradises that form the last outposts of South East Asia, grouped together in a sea, still pale blue, even in greying light.

Singapore was still under colonial rule up until 1963; evidence of the western world was in abundance in this tiny island-city state as we descended into Changi Airport. The roads were dark with tarmac, buildings were made of red-brick; even the road signs looked similar to those we had left behind at home. It is a place that totally contradicts its location, an ultra-modern, ultra-clean beacon of the western world; completely the opposite of the South-East Asian stereotype. Furthermore, it has a deep history; of which its colonial era is only a tiny percentage. It would have been a wonderful (albeit slightly pricey) place to spend more time than just our three-hour stopover.

It was however a three-hour stopover that proved to be particularly unpleasant for me. Having neglected to sample the delights of Changi Airport’s duty-free (the only one in the world to have a dried meat counter opposite a shop selling diamonds and the like), we headed to a lounge. Unfortunately, we decided to pick the lounge that was showing the recent Manchester derby (in which my beloved City had been comprehensively beaten), on a continuous loop. This left me with a rather bitter view of my time in Singapore as we headed on to Australia; with a month of unfortunate impersonations, and trying not to get stung by anything venomous, ahead of us.

Pete Ames