Our “in search of happiness” tour has finally begun after a few nervous moments of waiting for: a replacement passport, credit cards, the hotel to clear of covid and Dubai airport to get back on schedule after devastating floods. Auckland Airport fleeced us for a few drinks and chips, AirNZ managed to overbook our plane and break my suitcase, however the crew of Emirates were fantastic even when I projectile-vomited between the seats just as the breakfast trolley pulled alongside us. I got lots of attention but unfortunately no upgrade to first class.

Dubai appears to have recovered from the floods and at 6.00am had already reached 31 degrees Celsius. Not feeling too flash after redecorating the plane, I spent most of our 24 hours in Dubai sleeping, eating bland food and wondering how anybody lives in the extreme heat. The upside is that food from the dairy is ultra cheap and single use plastic isn’t an issue, but fat people clearly are, as any consumable goods that have a high sugar or fat content carry a tax-surcharge.

Our trip from Dubai to Hamburg was also not so plain sailing. Roger temporarily joined the Emirates Airport staff and sorted out the Asian tour guide who thought it was all right to queue jump his large tour party. A firm ‘NO’ and a raised hand beats 50 rapid fire words of Mandarin. In the end, it turned out there was no hurry as Dubai was having yet another once-in-a-life time storm and our plane was delayed for boarding by an hour and then it sat for two hours in a runway holding queue. During this time: Roger had partly consumed an extremely bad and expensive coffee, we sat in a plane that was rapidly circulating Covid and the stewardess kept forgetting to feed Roger and me (Ed: possibly she thought we didn’t need feeding). The whole experience was quite surreal as on the flight from Auckland I had watched the movie What Happens Later which was about a couple stuck in an airport due to weather delays.