Saturday morning we woke up early for a 6.20am departure for the airport.

When we went to check in, we were informed that Rheanna was flying business class and me economy (obviosuy everyone was conspiring against me).
What had actually happened was that when we were leaving Johannesburg, Rheanna was scheduled to leave on the 9th of July and me the 12th. Rheanna was given a heart attack then but they sorted it out (obviously by simply booking her into business class as the flight was full). They ask if she paid business class, or used air points but no one in Singapore can work out how she got put into business class (even though she wasn't supposed to), but they don't want to downgrade her to economy for fear of doing the wrong thing.

So now we go to check in and they can't put us together as the flight is full...actually overbooked. They are looking for volunteers to take the later flight (12 hours later), and there will be compensation. As soon as I hear that I volunteer and Rheanna doesn't want to fly home alone.
So we take up the offer of monetary compensation, plus gift vouchers in US$ for on board duty free, plus paid hotel, meals and taxis to and from the airport. It takes us a long while to sort out, but eventualy we leave the airport, back to another hotel.

We had Breakfast, and then a sleep. We wake up around 1.30pm, and have lunch. After lunch we go back to Mustafas in Little India because we need to get fill in the approariate forms to claim the GST from our large purchases there. Nevermind the fact that we spend more again (more than what the GST refund will be!)

Then we go back to the hotel, get ready and leave for the airport again. Take 2.

We are already checked in and have specifically stated we wanted the 2 seats at the back of the plane. We go through all the rigormorol of the scanners etc and then go to board the plane. They tell us our seat numbers have changed due to a change of aircraft, but we are still sitting in a block of 2 seats.

We get onboard to find we are in a row of 3, in the middle section. I tell Rheanna we should complain but she says to leave it.

Eventually I get to complain to someone and she tells me she can't do anything. If I wanted something changed I would have to go off the aircraft and speak to the ground staff. I say ok, so she escorts me off the plane.

There I tell them we specifically requested certain seats and only volunteered to go on the later flight because we were assured of certain seats (really it was for the money). They said it was fully booked and there was nothing they could do. So I argued the point and said "my Wife was flying business class! We only downgraded and helped the airline on the proviso that we get the seats we wanted".

Within 5 seconds she changed our seats. Problem sorted! Back on board the staff were very apologetic and mentioned profusely that if there was anything we needed to let them know! I should complain more often (publicly that is!)

It felt like a long 7.5 hours! Going through customs took a little bit of time but they allowed our Springbok and wooden boxes through.

As I said to Rheanna the only good thing about being in Australia is that they have good quality toilet paper!

Oh well there is just over 10 months before South Africa 2009 - The down comrades! Can't wait...