And we're off

And so the journey begins. After the disappointment of not traveling to Britain because of the broken foot episode last year I have been looking forward to finally getting there and the day has come.

The flight is the thing I have been looking forward to the least, it is such a long flight and being cooped up for over 24 hours just seems a  waste of time frankly and a form of first world torture. I’m flying Royal Brunei Airlines and so we go via Brunei (stop for two and a half hours and change planes) then Dubai (hour and fifteen minutes refuel) and into London at 6.00 am.

The first leg was relatively painless with the plane not heavily booked. There was me and a young guy in three seats and I benevolently pointed out to him an empty row which he moved  to once we were mid air. Nice to have the three seats to myself. Service was friendly and attentive and first meal came within about an hour of us setting off. 

Amazing, breathtaking scenery of the red centre and north of Australia, red and flat and seemingly endless, wonderful to see.

Into Bandar Seri Begwin early which means sitting around in the airport lounge even longer. Plus the airport is ‘under renovation’ so only a few dull shops and one coffee shop which of course had a long queue, oh fun for nearly four hours!  Plus quell horreur the toilets are the squat type. I am anatomically and psychologically in capable of using such things (not to mention barely able to breathe in them) so one had to be creative in ways to use them and or make do/hold on. Not a great first impression of the place frankly but time dragged and eventually passed before we were herded through security and onto the plane leaving nearly an hour late.

New plane is bright and comfortable and again just two of us in the row so we can spread out a little. We were treated to a lovely bit of theatre with a large group of Indonesians who took quite a bit of time finding their seats,changing them, getting confused, realizing they had to put things in the overheads, changing seats again and generally causing mayhem and much mirth. Never seen anything like it, both hilarious and frustrating. It was clear many of them had never flown before so even a bit cute. They were all off to an Islamic conference in Dubai. With the musical chairs one just wonders if disaster had befallen us how they’d identify anyone by where they were sitting…

Dubai looks lovely at night with the lights and spread out ‘city’, fascinated by the eight (ie 16) lane highways. The airport also amazing and would have loved to look around but because we were running late we had 15 minutes after getting off to then get back into the boarding gate and go through a tiresome security check. This is if course because they obviously doubt their own ability to prevent security issues in their airport from the time one gets off a plane to go and reboard the same plane…am I the only one who thinks that odd?

So by now I'd been 'on the road' for 19 hours and still had seven to go but at least the greatest part of the trip was behind us all. Geez I was tired though!

It's those long stretches when you just can't watch another movie, or can't hear the soundtrack of the one you would quite like to watch, the food has taken a pause (while, in my case, the wind kicks in), You can't focus well enough to read anymore of your book and those micro naps are just putting your neck out rather than relaxing you. And each time you look at the time the time seems to be going the slowest its gone since you were counting the hours until Santa came.

At 7.00 am we touched down at Heathrow in heavy fog and TWO degrees. The queue at immigration was terrifyingly long but it took a mere fifteen minutes to get through. The baggage claim was another matter, being one of the first to check in of course dictates your bags will be the last and thus it was but out through the green line with barely a glance.

I checked into the Yotel cabin hotel at Terminal 4 to freshen up and relax before it was time to head into Paddington and check into my real hotel. Call it a cabin? That's what it was. The bed was up so high you needed a step to climb up (and I would not have liked to have been much heavier as the step was pretty flimsy).

Happy to be back in London, to be where it's cold and to be waiting for the adventure to come.