Day 42 - London to Hong Kong
Trip Start
Sep 02, 2007
1
43
243
Trip End
May 01, 2008
Hong Kong,
China
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Frustratingly, all of my superb organisation the day before went out the window in a drunken stupor, as I somehow managed to leave the house without the CDs of photos and mini DVDs of video footage which I'd intended to give to our parents later today. Well played, Ray.
Anyway, we left Adele & Ken's palatial home in West Hampstead and headed to the train station, to catch our train to Bedford.
Katie went off to have one last Starbuck's coffee & marmite toastie (which she has definitely missed in Asia), leaving me to get the train tickets, a fateful mistake... I wasn't having a good morning, so I managed to buy two single tickets to Luton rather than Bedford. Clearly I was still drunk!
Miraculously, an hour later the ticket barriers at Bedford weren't working, so we avoided a penalty fare, squeezed our big rucksacks through the barriers and said hi to Pam & Ian (Katie's parents) and James (Katie's brother), who had kindly come to collect us.
Our first and only stop in Bedford was the nursing home where Katie's gran Eva now lives, which had recently been plagued by some sort of superbug, meaning that all visitors "entered at their own risk", like in some B-movie. Needless to say, I stayed in the car to try and get my head working properly, I doubted that Eva would be too impressed with me being glassy-eyed and smelling like a brewery ;)
(We subsequently found out that both Pam & Ian fell ill after visiting the home, as did some visitors the day before. Thankfully Katie & James avoided the bug, otherwise Katie's next two days on planes wouldn't have been much fun!)
After dropping James off at the station, we were soon on our way to Cambridge, where we'd arranged to meet my parents Pat & David for a spot of lunch, and to start working our way through our 1,200 wedding photos from June!
The food was great, even if I struggled to finish two courses, and it was good to have some proper English bitter (dark beer) with our food too. I'd definitely missed that.
I must have been hungover because I didn't even think to take any photos!
We had a good time with both sets of parents, so the time whizzed by, and before we knew it, it was time to leave for Gatwick.
It was really good for me to see my parents, who I won't see again until the very start of May next year. It was sad to say goodbye, but at least they now have the wedding photos to go through, which should keep them busy until early '08! ;)
Pam & Ian very kindly gave us a lift back to Gatwick airport, most of which Katie & I spent fast asleep, so we arrived right on time at 6pm.
It was good to have some time in the departure lounge to buy a few bits & bobs before leaving, especially some nice sandwiches because the one bad thing about Oasis Airlines is the food, which is even worse than most airline food.
Our plane was delayed but by 9pm we were off the ground and heading back towards Hong Kong, and a connecting flight on to Bangkok a few hours after landing in HK.
We had a fantastic time in London, seeing most of our friends & family, spending an astonishing amount of money in just a few days, and going home gave us a really good benchmark for our travels, showing us what we missed and what we didn't miss about our home city/country.
We now have approximately 6 months before we get back to London on May 1st 2008 after flying home from Brazil so here's to some fantastic experiences until then.
We're sending a massive collective group hug to all our friends & family until we see you all next! Take care and be good!
Lots of love & hugs,
Al & Katie xx
