As we enter the Qantas lounge at Brisbane International and our boarding passes are scanned by the friendly staff, I realise that this is almost the first person we have interacted with since our friend Jane dropped us off at the airport. Baggage tags printed by a kiosk, luggage whisked away by an automated bag drop, boarding passes sent electronically to our phones, through Immigration via a kiosk and no interaction with anyone apart from the one person getting us to come forward into the body scanner at the security check. At least we still have crew on the aircraft!, Times they are a changing…

Outbound heading for Singapore on the first leg of our journey to the UK. Previously this has been a one stop 24 hour trip for us in economy with the attendant jet lag, but over the years, we have found this journey harder and harder. Time for a change.

In the 1930’s, Qantas Empire Airways and Imperial Airways, great names, started a 12 day service between Australia and the UK. The service had over 30 stops, some just to refuel, and passengers flew in small noisy aeroplanes with inflight service being sandwiches distributed by the pilots during the day. Nights were spent on the ground with dinner and sleeping in what I hope was a comfortable bed. We plan to emulate the better aspects of this, daytime flights, although only 2 stops over four days in modern aircraft and comfortable hotels. We realise that this will cost more but provides more measured time changes and the opportunity for a little sightseeing en-route. We will have one night in Singapore and two in Doha. Travelling from Australia to Europe the route opportunities are endless and perhaps some of the smaller airlines could work together to create such options for people like us, rather than the one airline through journey, at a reasonable price.

Out for dinner in Singapore: we thought Thai restaurants would be good for gluten free food, but a number of places we tried said no, or just offered plain rice. Possibly because they were not set up for tourists. We settled on grilled fish at an Indonesian restaurant followed by a comfortable night’s sleep.

Singapore Passport control outbound does not require any use of a passport as my attempts to find a place to insert the passport are to no avail. I am assuming facial recognition in use similar to Hong Kong airport flight boarding last year. How many copies of my face exist on computers around the world now?

Our Qatar Airways flight to Doha is not full and we have a spare seat next to us, great. Free Starlink provides connectivity to the internet en-route, a first for us. We can see and connect to the world, apart from over India where the service was suspended, for web, emails, messages. I used to enjoy the long haul flights for work without the distractions of emails and messages. No such luck today. Although Anne is happy to continue chatting via Whatsapp or Messenger while flying.

Even the “2slowspeeds”, supposedly experienced travellers, get it wrong: as we pass through Doha customs, an alarm goes off and we are called aside. We have a bottle of Finnish Liqueur that Anne brought for her sister last year and we were taking to England. Confiscated, no alcohol allowed into Qatar: all luggage must have been scanned before getting to us on the luggage carousel and they even x-ray hand luggage on arrival. What a waste and disappointment.

Why I ask myself am I holding 9.75 kg. / 21.5 lb. of dates when we only went out for 50 grams of saffron? Well, as we walked to the Souq Waqif, there was the “4th Souk Waqif International Dates Exhibition”, no not “Dating”, “Dates” the eating kind. Now Anne is partial to these small tasty fruits so we had to go in. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Algeria, Sudan, Palestine and a host of other countries were showing their wares. Tasting opportunities abound and we take full advantage, hence the packages in my hands. An unexpected opportunity as the exhibition only opened in the afternoon and some stands were still setting up.

Being Friday our second day starts late. Nothing is open until 12:30 at the earliest so no rush to get out, plus the temperature is a cool 19 degrees celsius. Anne has noticed that Art Basel Doha opens to the public today. An opportunity to see what is happening in the art world here in Qatar. Anne spends a couple of hours there.

In today’s of world of instability and wars, it is not surprising that there is an overwhelming message and representation of environmental and political pressures and human displacement embedded in many artworks.

And the finally some colour to lift the mood …

We had previously been to both The National Museum of Qatar and the Museum of Islamic Art in 2025 but had not been to the Heshrap Modern Art Museum. Time to remedy that. The museum is accessible by Metro and Tram some 16km from our location. The Tram here was likely built to transport fans to the World Cup football matches at the 44,000 seat Education City stadium. Today we are the only passengers apart from the Kenyan security guard with whom we talk about Nairobi, where we lived back for a couple of months in 1982/3, Mandazi (Kenyan doughnut), Matatu Kenyan minibus/taxi and Mzuntu (foreigner), some of words we all know come flooding back. We had a good time in living in Nairobi. Each of the Kenyans we met asked when we were going back. Good question. After so much time has elapsed, would anything we knew still be the same?

Coming out of one gallery, we are greated with this intriguing display:

In the middle of it is a notice with the following:

“Commissioned by Mathaf, we (Walid Raad and Pierre Hughebaert) set out to create a mixed media installation for this corridor, assembling headlines and statements by artists, curators, and others working in the arts about the wars in Palestine-phrases we wish were ours, and ones we would never claim. After shipping our materials to Doha, we arrived six weeks ago to find our assigned corridor arranged in an odd way. It quickly became clear that someone, most likely a technician or staff member, simply aiming to be helpful, had organized our materials to make installation easier. We abandoned our plans and decided to leave space as it was. Needless to say, we spent weeks trying to identify the culprits who had freely yet fastidiously laid these “facts on the ground.” But to no avail.”

Using the Metro and Trams is easy and cheap. A day pass for six dirhams (AU$2.5) allows unlimited travel on both. Very good value and need to be brought from the staff at offices at each station, not the machines I think.

For dinner we are back to our favourite Philippino restaurant Shore Time where they do a grilled chicken and steamed vegetables for the troublesome coeliac. Nice to have eating places I can return to. One more night’s sleep and we will be heading to London.

Spend US$40 on a limited edition strawberry flavoured Toblerone, only 15 left “even comes with a numbered certificate to remind you of what you ate” the salesman espouses. Much as I love Toblerone, gluten free and all, I will pass on this one. Smoked salmon for brunch with a glass of bubbly in one of the many Qatar Airways lounges will have to suffice.

Seems that the days of wearing masks on plane is over. We appear to be the only people wearing masks. While waiting to board our flight to London, the coughing around us sounds to me like an orchestra tuning. Never heard so many people coughing, but no one seems to care, we are keeping masks on and bugs out! We will let you know how that turn out.

London in 3 hours but no planned motorcycling on this trip, too cold and wet amongst other things. We have enjoyed taking this travel approach, only daytime flights and spending time sightseeing en-route: I think this will form the basis of our travel to Europe going forward.

– Anthony