I’ve been back in Sydney for a couple of weeks now, mostly trying to sort out what I’m going to do for the next few months. I was pretty much set until a few days ago when I tried to confirm new dates for my flights back to Aberdeen (via Tokyo).
It seems that my travel agent has sold me an open ticket that isn’t all that open. I can make changes to my flights, but not the changes I actually want to make! For example, Qantas tell me that the Sydney to Tokyo flight on the date I requested is full, but their website tells me that there are plenty of economy seats still available. Aparently these seats are part of a sale, and not available to customers who have already booked, the end result being that I had to cancel the remaining portion of my ticket, and book new flights myself. To say I’m not very happy about that is an understatement.
I’m thinking my travel agent is mostly at fault here, but I can’t help think that Qantas are being a little unreasonable too.
Anyway, I’m now flying to Tokyo from Cairns, which isn’t so bad as I’d planned to head up that way again to do some diving. Hopefully the weather will have cooled a little by the end of March! As a result of all these changes, I’m planning on heading over to New Zealand next week until the beginning of March.
New Zealand was always a bit of an after-thought on this trip. It was somewhere I really wanted to visit, but dependent on whether I had the time and money to do it. I’ve got a rough idea of what I’d like to see, but no real idea about how long it will take to get around. I travelled from Cairns to Sydney in around seven weeks, so hopefully five will be enough for New Zealand.