Day 39 - Hong Kong to London
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
40
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
London,
United Kingdom
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Last year a new terminal opened in Hong Kong, called Sky Plaza (or rather jazzily "Terminal 2"...whoa, funky), where there is an extremely attractive Tumi/Rolling Luggage store. Whoever opened this stunning festival of retail should be commended, it really is quite superb ;)
Ok, anyway, what I didn't realise about Sky Plaza was that it is essentially just a terminal full of extra check-in gates & shops/restaurants. You check-in inside the new 'Terminal 2', pass through passport control & security, go down an escalator, and then you take a transit train back to the MAIN terminal building, i.e. 'Terminal 1'?!
What's the point in that?!
After this rather bizarre and disorientating experience, we settled down at the gate for the late late flight. We left on time, the plane itself was ok, it looked 2nd hand, but it was fine.
The airline we used is called "Oasis", but despite the name it's based in HK, not Maaaanchesterrrrrrrr...
It's a budget airline (I think we paid US $500 each for a return) ticket, so very 'no frills', but it was absolutely fine.
I'd been led to believe that you had to pay for food, films, blankets, pretty much everything, but that proved incorrect. There were free films (we watched Spiderman 3 which was pants, and I watched some cool Korean gangster flick), we were also offered free soft/hot drinks, and we had a hot breakfast.
Ok, so it was totally inedible, but what were you expecting, Nobu?! My only consolation was that my 'chicken noodles' (yuck) looked somewhat more appetising than the lady next to me's 'scrambled egg', which looked more like lightly fried vomit. By the expression on her face when she tasted it, that might be a very accurate description.
Katie was audibly appalled when the trolley dolly snubbed her question if there was a vegetarian option, in fact he suggested that Katie "pick the ham off the omelette", which left Katie speechless, and almost had me regurgatating my noodles as I tried not to laugh. Poor thing.
To try and get some beauty sleep, Mrs Fey Jnr was necking tomazipans like they were sweets (ok, SLIGHT exaggeration), yet ironically I slept better than she did for once. My ear has been causing me so much pain recently that I've been sleeping sitting up, which ironically proved great practice for sleeping on a plane, something I've never been able to do before.
14 hours later we arrived safe & sound, into EXTREMELY thick fog at Gatwick. We made our way by train to Clapham Junction, bought some travelcards, and bought some breakfast at the station. These 3 events cost us something like £40/US $80, which is probably what we have been spending for 2 FULL DAYS in Asia, rather than a 30 minute single train journey, a subway ticket and a coffee & danish pastry!!
My God, London is expensive.
We're staying with Katie's brother James & his wife Anna in Barnes, west London for the next couple of nights, and then we have Milly's wedding, so we're staying with Adele & Ken in Hampstead on Saturday night, and then we're due to meet both sets of parents in Cambridge for lunch on Sunday, before flying out of Gatwick again on Sunday night.
So it's a whistle-stop long weekend in London, a nice comma to punctuate our travels in Asia, and a good point of contrast to the last 4 weeks of oriental vacationing.
It's very weird to be in London without being able to go to our flat (we're renting it out while we're away), and it was even WEIREDER to be sat on an early morning commuter trains wearing large backpacks, shorts & flip-flops! Bloody tourists ;)
It was FREEZING here today, so we soon changed into more appropriate clothing...
Today we both have long lists of things to do, as we have such limited time here. So I should really stop updating this and get going. Try not to cheer all at once!
(Later)
Ok, I'll be very brief on the travel blog while we're in London as it won't be very exciting (assuming the rest is of course!), and I'll pick this up again when we get back to Asia.
After we leave Gatwick we fly back to HK, transfer to Bangkok, stay overnight and then fly into Phnom Penh in Cambodia, which I'm really looking forward to. We're expecting Cambodia to be more like Laos, which has been our favourite country so far I think.
We hope you're all well, and we hope you've also had a chance to re-visit most of the last 2 weeks as I finally had a chance to upload some new photos and insert them into the daily blogs, which should make all the text more interesting!
Oh, and I know that some of the entries are getting very LONG, so I'll try to keep them more 'bite size' going forward, but I don't really have time to 'edit' them, I just chuck them down as they come to mind, and hope that the PC doesn't die before I finish!
The only thing to note today was that we had an excellent meal in at Annie's in Barnes with James & Anna, and my best mate Tim. Sadly Tim's fiancee Am couldn't make it, but we had a really good time catching up, and selfishly I loved being able to have a few beers with Tim at the end of the night.
It was particularly good to hang out with Tim after he managed to select the absolute worst possible date to get married, when we are in the air flying between Auckland, NZ and Santiago, Chile!
As I result - and despite checking every possible option - I can't make my best mate's wedding, so it was great to have a good catch-up over a few of Suffolk's finest, Adnams bitter, at a very impressive GBP 4.40 per pint?! (OVER FOUR QUID A BEER, ARE YOU SERIOUS?!)
I honestly don't know how we afford to live in London, it really is ridiculously expensive?!
lots of love,
Al & Katie xx
