Another flight delay experience, part 1

Perhaps I should have learnt not to fly in July. You may wish to look back my last year's experience first to refresh your memory before proceeding. This time I was flying to HK on a direct flight on Air New Zealand. And this is what happened. (All times approximate - just guessing from impression)

19:30 Arrived at airport, after a rather slow and confusing tube journey. As you may know, the same train platform can serve trains going to different destinations. As it turns out, the sign at the front of the train, the elctronic board at the platform, and the voice announcement inside the train, told me three different places.

I think I actually have never been to T3, and (perhaps due to some operations moved to T5) it seemed surprisingly refreshing. The check-in queue was almost non-existent and I was through within a minute!

21:05 Scheduled take-off time. Boarding was fairly normal and everyone was on-board.

21:40 After idling for 40 minutes or so, the captain finally spoke of some sort of "engineering problem", and said they were working on it.

21:50 Then they admitted we had to get off the plane first, but said we can get back "soon". I didn't believe it. We went back to the gate.

22:10 After even more delay, it was finally admitted that the flight had to be delayed until the next day. There was a fuel line problem and they had to wait for another plane to arrive on the next day. It was then announced that we will be given hotel accommodation; as you may have expected, there were some cheering from HK guys...

22:30 We were patiently waiting for the "logistics" arrangements, when they made an "unusual" decision. They realized it was too late in night, it wasn't possible for the hotel to provide meals... but wait, isn't the in-flight meal already here, huh? Brilliant, just ask all the passengers to re-board the plane to take the dinner!

22:45 I was eagerly waiting for having an in-flight meal on ground for the first time, when they made yet another disappointing decision that, at the end, they decided against that idea. But there was no other arrangements - we were supposed to be kept hungry until the next day. So we left the airport. First, we need to go through immigration without actually flying. Long queue as usual. And I wasn't sure what to write on the landing card... I mean, "departure port"?
I wrote "Heathrow"... and the arrival plane number... er did I arrive by any plane?

23:10 Next it was to collect baggage, without flying that is. The trouble didn't stop here - the conveyor belt didn't work, and we just walked around the belt full of luggage already scattered around (for some reason). Only after another 15 minutes they said they are getting "another engineer" to fix it. I didn't think it needed any fix - it just took someone to turn it on...

23:30 Finally we got the luggage...

00:15 ...and it took another hour or so standing in the street to wait for the coach.

00:20 It just took a few minutes to arrive at the hotel. But then had to wait another hour for checkin... At least this time round we were not standing outside in the street at 30 degrees Celsius in bright sunlight...

01:00 Finally found myself inside the hotel room.

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