India, Singapore, Australia And China

De Romeu Friedlaender Jr

India, Singapore, Australia, China and a little stopover in Indonesia are inside this report. Every week a new flight towards the next destination. Backwards the discoveries, views and adventures seen. At airplane the plans and expectations to the next destination of the trip. Get your place, look to the safety instructions, keep your chair in a comfortable position, fasten the seat belt and enjoy the reading!!!

• Idioma: Português
• Editora: Clube de Autores
• Data de lançamento: 3 de abr. de 2014

Pré-visualização do livro

Planning the trip

I lived in London for about almost two years, with the purpose of being fluent in english. And after months of speaking, listening and living with the language I had dreamed in english too. London is a great cosmopolitan city, where we can find people from everywhere, with different ways of thinking and habits, but living in harmony.

It’s a city where we can find tickets to everywhere and all of kinds. It has 4 airports, and the bigger is the bigger of the Europe too, Heathrow, with a plane landing or arriving every 2 minutes. Everytime you look the sky in London you see a plane. Living there has no possibility of don’t think in travelling, with plenty of ads about beautiful places to visit, beaches, mountains, ancient sites. And always has a different promotion to take it.

I decided to go to a travel agency, specialised in backpackers’ trip. There was some options: Europe, Americas, Africa, Asia, Australia and Round the World. I took a number for the ‘Round the World". Whilst waiting, I was thinking the route of my trip, thought in India, China, Egypt, Japan and Australia, would be 3 continents in the same journey. It’s my time, I said my plans and the girl started to type about it, and said to me that Egypt was no possible in that way, if I wanted Egypt would be so expensive, ok, Egypt is out. Another problem, has no flight in this route between Japan and China, I had to choose one of them. Well ... let’s cut Japan too. Now my route was India, China and Australia. I looked the world map again and decided to add Singapore to the trip. Well, now my trip was decided. The route is India, Singapore, Australia, China and back to London. Ok, I had to confirm and pay in ten days time.

It was 10 days that, sometimes I woke with the feelings of travelling and sometimes my wish of travelling was restrict to Europe only, in some Mediterranean’s beach. But in the day I had to confirm my ticket, I was back to the agency to deal with the trip, choose the flights, dates and times of it. I decided to do all the flights at night, sleeping, or at least trying to close the eyes. My first destine would be Dehli, after I should buy an additional flight to go to Mumbay, take there the flight to Singapore, after to Sydney, with a stopover in Jacarta, Indonesia. From Sydney a flight to Shanghai, buy another additional flight to Beijing, where I had to take a final flight to London. Well, in this moment I had bought a ticket ‘round the world’ and the additional Dehli-Mumbay, and decided to buy the way Shanghai-Beijing during the trip. Ok, was done my itinerary. Now I had no options, I had paid the trip, and had to find information about the places to visit, besides visas and vaccination needed.

The flight was by British Airways, the company that had this possibility of the itinerary, because of its flight and partnerships with other companies. I was in the office of the company that I took more information about my destinations. It’s a complete travel center, I bought two books, one about China (The Rough Guide – 1070 pages), and another about India (Footprints Handbooks – 1442 pages). In another day I bought a book of Singapore (Thomas Cook Travellers Singapore & Malaysia – 192 pages). Well, now I had more than two thousand of pages of information about what to see in those places.

I left my passport with some personal details with a person in the British Airways Visa Service to get a visa to China and India, and answered some bureaucratic questions about my intentions in visiting those countries. I have no much time for it, only 3 weeks, and they said to me that in less than 10 days everything would be done. Only the Indian visa took me more time, and later I knew that India deny the first request of a visa for one that has the nationality different of the place he lives. Well, as I was living in England and wasn’t British, I had to do the same procedure again, answered the same questions again, but as it was my second time to do it, now they gave the visa. Things that only the bureaucracy can explain.

One week before my trip I decided to go again to the British Airways office and ask for vaccination. Well, the doctors of the medical advice said to me that vaccination wasn’t needed, but would be good to prevent. Well, I took a lot of vaccination, against yellow fever, polio, hepatitis and tetanus, besides tablets against malaria. My health passport had more stamps than my travel passport. Well, after all, I thought I would be immune, but the doctor said that I could take malaria from a different mosquito that they had no medicine against, and I had to look at the insect to know. I thought was better if instead of taking the all pharmacy with me, I had bought the clothes the bee’s worker uses. Do you think stop with health care? No, I had to buy also tablets to purify the water for drinking, they said in India has no mineral water, and also sun protect and repellent. At the end I was with a big pharmacy with me and a lot of holes in my body of vaccination, and completely terrified with the monsters I could find there.

My flights from British Airways I could choose the seats in London, the others I had to choose only when in check-in. Well, for the flights London-Dehli and Beijing-London I had chosen where to seat. Mumbay-Singapore, Singapore-Sydney and Sydney-Shanghai, from Qantas, an Australian company, I had to choose in the airport doing the check-in only. And the flight Dehli-Mumbay was from Air India, and I had to choose the seat in the airport too. No problem

The big day is 18th of June of 1998. Second week of the World Cup Finals in France. Everyday has football matches at televisions, everywhere in London we can find one watching TV, and people with different T-shirts of their national teams. Well, my flight was at 22:00, it was in time, the next day