Getting to London – planes, trains and buses!
Well we arrived in London safely after 25 hours of pure unadulterated HELL! I’m so glad we don’t have to do that flight again for a long time, as Lija and I were saying, on the way home we will holiday every chance we get to break up the flight time!
The 9 hours from Melbourne to Bangkok wasn’t too bad as it was night time in Melbourne so we slept most of the flight. It was also the smoothest landing I’ve ever experienced – Lija and I were both talking and didn’t realise we had even decended until we were gliding along the tarmac. We moved easily through Bangkok airport to find out where our next flight was, and sat down to wait the 5 hour transit, with our bags checked to go straight through to London (haha more on that later), there was a bit of a duty free place but not much so yeah, we just went through security and sat.
And waited. And listened to music. And some annoying ad playing downstairs of a Thai woman saying “Long live the King” in broken English over and over again.
And did I tell you how long we waited?
Well, with two hours to go we decided to go out of the terminal to the toilets (having eaten way too many chocolate plums :-)) and decided to go for a wander upstairs, which looked like a lot of people were coming from there. Low and behold we find an even bigger duty free shopping centre and half a dozen proper food places and COMFY CHAIRS that did not make our bums go numb!
Anyway, after dicking around for a while longer, we went down and boarded the plane. A 12 hour flight with no personal TV screens, sitting in the very front row where the big screen is. Yeah, not cool. Turns out half the plane was empty so everyone spread out and Lija and I had two seats each. The inflight movies were crap, we only watched 2/4 (Because I said So, which I’ve already seen, and The Theif Lord, which was a stodgy kids movie). We slept a lot, probably overslept, but I think I’m over the jetlag now. Maybe.
Getting into Heathrow wasn’t too bad, we woke up flying through Germany and watched the flight pattern for the rest of the way, although landing was really funny. This rude girl behind us who had taken the whole four seater and slept for most of the way didn’t wake up when all passengers were told to sit up etc, and none of the Thai hosties woke her up, she got up just as we hit the tarmac, which wasn’t pretty and wasn’t smooth, and because she wasn’t belted in she went SHMACK into the seat next to me, needless to say Lija and I pissed ourselves laughing. Aussies are such nice people!
I didn’t take that much longer to go through customs than Lija, but she already had three of our bags waiting off the carousel when I walked through. And we waited for the next one. And again with the waiting.
And it just didn’t come. That’s right, Lija’s suitcase, packed for life in the UK, had been left behind on the conveyor belt at Bangkok Airport because some moron forgot to transfer it, even though they had 5 hours to figure out it was meant to go on another plane. Lija was “compensated” with a ‘complementary’ toiletries pack including an oversized white T-shirt. This was to last the next 24hours until we had to make our way back to the airport and pick up the suitcase.
The plane got into Heathrow at 6pm but it was about 8 by the time we checked into the Holiday Inn across the road. First night in a hotel, didn’t have to worry about other people and we just slept. Lija tried to keep me awake but I only lasted till 11pm and slept till 8 the next morning.
It did make it easier going back to the airport though, because once we got Lija’s other bag, and perved on the All Blacks who had just flown in from NZ, we took the underground (cue David Bowie’s song from Labrinth) into the city and changed twice to get to the YHA Thameside. Mind you, the hostel isn’t on the side of the river we needed to be on, it’s on the cheap side. Several circumstances showing. More later.
Tags: Travel
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