Monday, July 21, 2008

Day One: Bangkok -> Doha -> London

The flight went quite smoothly with little hitch. I got some sleep on the plane but surely it wasn't enough.

I use Qatar airways this time as it is the cheapest one. I am surprised that there are TV screen at the back of each seats. You can choose to watch a wide range of shows, movies, and TV shows. It was quite a nice surprise. I gets to see The Spiderwick Chronicle :P Though in the picture below I was watching Friends.

The food was also surprisingly good. It was a fish menu with carrot and string bean. The dessert was cheesecake as well :dd It was so good that I ask for another set :d.

While I was in Doha for transit, I use the bathroom there and found another surprise. They have the washing hose, just like in Thailand, but they use warm water!!. Although this made me very happy, the overall hygiene needs quite an improvement... Most of the toilets were wet on the floor. I solve the problem by went into disabilities toilet :P Apart from the bigger size it was cleaner and certainly smell better.

From Doha to London, the plane seems to be a bit smaller and certainly seems, older model than the first. The TV screen is smaller and the bathroom position seems awkward. The meal was not as good as the first one but still edible. I got to chat up a bit with the man sitting next to me who looks Caucasian/Arab mix but said he's from Kenya. There was 30 minutes delay before the plane take off... While we were on the plane no less.

Once we landed, the line at immigration was crazily long. I think I was queued up for 20 minutes. But once I was up at the counter there was no problem. The line was so long that when I arrive at the luggage claim, mine was already on the belt. I spotted it right away as it has unique pattern and colour, my mom had chose them :)

I had to ask for directions a few times before to get to the subway station. Finally, I got to the station entrance and queue up to buy oyster card. There was a man behind me in the queue whom I asked a bit about the card and subway system. I did not think he is British but he speak good English. He turned out to be the chatty type, which I did not really mind. Since he is kinda sexy, see picture below :P

I also think I saw Mary J. Blidge. Though I am not sure, I manage to secretly take a photo of her with my phone so it was not be very clear.

I had changed the train twice, as my new friend pointed out. It was more direct and possibly take less time. It still took me about one hour twenty minutes to get to the station near my B&B.

And then it took me quite a long while to find my B&B because I am not familiar with the house number system here... But with the help of several locales, I finally found it.

1 comment:

tornwordo said...

Welcome back! I look forward to more.