ON THE ROAD TO KL

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Pre flight refreshments Rustan style

It was with a sense of the usual trepidation that we greeted the arrival of our driver Iddon. He had kindly agreed to ferry us to Stansted where we were to begin the first leg of our journey to Kuala Lumpa. The drive there was uneventful apart from the occasional sniff or sneeze from poor Trish who has a cold. I seem to remember she was similarly inconvenienced when we set off on the fateful Wagrain trip at Christmas. We waved goodbye to Gary who is house sitting for us while we are away.

When we arrived at Stansted, a sight I had never seen before fair took my breath away....it was almost empty. It looked as if there was some kind of strike but there was a lack of bodies sprawled out over the floor so it could not have been that. No, joy of joys, our flight with Air Asia was a night flight and we were the last departure of the night. Even WH Smith was closed! We checked in bags really quickly as I had already done it on lie but was a massive queue of fellow travellers who had not. I could not help but wonder why. We were soon sitting in the one place that was not closed, the good old bar. The queue joined us later!

After a couple of beers and a wine for Trish we were boarding. Now here I have to mention the fact that Ally Hearn traveller extrodinaire forgot to tell us that Air Asia was nothing more than a Long Haul Ryan Air but with more comfortable seats Nothing on board was free, and there was no free in-flight entertainment which I for one always look forward to as it passes the time rather efficiently. To obtain this you needed to book a console which showed reruns of mostly American soaps. No movies. Trish would have been in her element. Also worrying was the sight of the cabin crew seemingly praying as we boarded. As it was a night flight we were soon getting plenty of shut eye, which proved to be pretty good in-flight entertainment.