On Route To Cairns

This needs its very own post as its so special. This also enhances why we have begun to call Joseph Michael David Rastrick - Special Fried Rice.

Firstly we head out of Singapore to the airport via the underground, we reach the airport and me and green get our bags checked in, meanwhile there appears to be something wrong with rastricks passport, we are both chekced in fine but the airport people begin to call other staff over and we start to get nervous. The passport is being checked over again and again. We begin to try and work out what we are going to do if rastrick cant fly, where we will meet etc, rastrick thinks he's going to be detained for sending fake rolex's back home, which warrants a $5000 fine.

I was planning to give him my map of Singapore and say cheeryo, we'll see you in Oz sometime, then they finally tell us the problem, special fried rice had paid and ordered his oz visa on one passport and then decided he needed a new passport also meaning he has a new passport number!

All worrying over he had to pay again ot get a visa there and then before the flight.

Thats the end of his troubles, on passing through security checks, the stupid lady doesnt think i look like my passport photo which is true, i had the photo done when i was about 16. So green and joe begin laughing and so do i. She continues to ask me my own name in a very questioning manner and i can barely hear her, so i look more confused and sketchy, she asks me to take my hat off, but i now have the longest hair ive ever had and still look nohting like i did back then, i asked her what she would like me to do to look more like myself, but all she could come up with was to have a shave. I had also just finished reading Mr Nice, so had terrbile thoughts of being detained and frisked by customs, very dodgy, luckily id already sent any thai and malaysian things that are not really allowed to be brought through customs. Finally she waved me through!

This was not the end of it. We ahd a hour stopover in Darwin, we get off the plain and im the only one to get a random frisk search by a large beer bellied aussie, in the meantime when we go to get back on the plane, special has lost his boarding card, but they let him straight on anyway, what was the point of the boarding card, i dont know?

Finally we arrive in Cairns to be greeted very nicely by the customs people, first line of questioning, all th usual stuff, show your passport walk through, i get a second line of questioning, "all fine carry on sir", next we get to a set of baggage checks, now in the uk after you get you bag your free to go, but in oz thats when you get a complete baggage search, great, so another line of questioning all your stuff is taken out of your bags, all medicines and liquids checked, all clothes thrown around. What they think i managed to put in my bag while it was in the hold of the plane, who knows? Finally after the sucession of 'nazi' checks we get allowed into Australia. And i thought this country was laid back?!?

The Australian side of customs was actually more stringent and abusive to ones self than the Singapore side and in Singapore you get the death penalty for drug trafficking!!