Re-entry is Painful

Our fabulous summer vacation has come to an end and we are back in Bangalore, India. We have travelled extensively for the last 6 years and have been very lucky with most of our flights - a few delays but that’s about the worst of it.  However, our trip back to India this time was quite adventurous, with our flight from Brisbane to Singapore cancelled due to a technical issue with the plane. I’m all for safety issues being resolved, so was happy to wait until it was fixed but alas, it couldn’t be and they cancelled the flight late in the afternoon.  We had waited in the airport for 7 hours and then had to go back out through immigration, collect our luggage, all 5 HUGE bags, and then sort out our flight for another time/day.  The logistics of finding another flight for the 3 of us was proving difficult but they managed to re-route us through Hong Kong.

It meant another night in Australia, which was lovely but it really was painful given we had a cooler bag of meat and cheese that we hoped hadn’t defrosted  !!  The hotel concierge was very helpful and kept the bag in the freezer overnight for repacking the next day.  We finally managed to takeoff a day late, with frozen meat in tow, and hoping that we weren't; on the same plane from the day before ! Given the current disruptions in HK, we were happy to hear that there weren't any protests that day and we didn't see any signs of issues in the airport.  However, an Amber rainstorm hit the island as we tried to leave, which had us reminiscing of old times.

We finally arrived in the middle of night - about 2am and on collecting our bags we saw the telltale signs of a bag marked for customs review (the bag is hand marked with chalk....) of course it was my bag with all my goodies in it. Nothing serious or anything that’s not allowed but the last thing you want to be doing at 2am with two kids in tow is have someone trawling through your bags in Bangalore. Luckily, the airport was super busy and we managed to get out without having the bag opened.   

After the hour long drive home, I managed to get that meat back in the deep freeze and it was still solid frozen!! The raisin toast and crumpets had defrosted but refreezing those was of no concern.  Our 5 massive cases were mostly full of food, medicines, and a little wine!!

Re-entry this week has been rough with dentist vists, power outages and monsoon rain causing horrendous traffic issues. Yesterday, Jack and I spent 45 minutes in the car to go 5 km..... would have been faster to walk if it wasn’t so muddy and there was an actual footpath to walk on  !!

On a positive note, we had a bbq on Sunday with our beautiful Aussie rump steak, and school has started and the boys have both settled well with another year ahead of them with lots to challenge them.  To avoid the re-entry blues, I am keeping busy at work, getting to the gym and trying to plan the next few adventures.  Stay tuned !!