Today we begin a long-awaited journey to Pakistan via China to visit Kim & Jo’s cousin and travel the Karakoram Highway to Xinjiang.  We had booked this trip in 2020 but the Covid-19 pandemic shutdown forced us to cancel, fortunately with no penalties but full refunds. With a departure time of 1930, Chris dropped us […]

We arrived in Auckland about 20 mins earlier than the scheduled time of 0540.  The arrival processing has improved in the last few years and I was out immediately, helped by the fact that a few flights before us had already been cleared. D wasn’t too far behind, despite having luggage and food to declare.  […]

Flying to Shanghai Today I fly from Dalian back to Auckland, transiting in Shanghai’s Pudong airport. The day started with a 0430 wake-up in Dalian and leaving the room at 0500.  I had no luck getting a car promptly and shared one with a lady that had better luck.  Getting to the airport, I gave […]

Yesterday was an easy day, spent partially indoors.  I had started the day with the hotel breakfast which was cheap for Poland at PLN35 (NZD18).  And I made good use of the hotel room.  With the grey day, I did my rehab exercises and made good use of the internet before I go behind the […]

Above:  Pleased to finally arrive in Kuala Lumpur. Bad start It wasn’t a good start to the day, waking up to notification that our 1350 Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur had been delayed till 1825.  That’s a 4h35 delay. When the flight got upgauged from a B737 to a widebody A330 a few weeks […]

Today, we fly to my hometown, Kuching, for a 6 day stay.  We left the hotel at 0840 for the 0900 KLIA Ekspres train to the airport for our 1225 flight. That gave us over an hour in the landside lounge before going airside for our AirAsia flight to Kuching.  The aircraft had left its […]

Flight cancellation and rebooking Today, we fly to Kuala Lumpur at 0600.  It doesn’t sound too bad except that we would need to wake at 0145 to get to the airport. This flight wasn’t our original choice but we had booked a flight 19h later at 0100 (whereby we would leave Wuzhen for the airport […]

Standby fail Tonight, then plan was for Kim and I fly out to Shanghai separately to commence our big trip of the year.  We chose to separately due to maximise the benefit of complex staff standby travel tickets, with me trying for China Eastern at 2100 and him trying for Air New Zealand at 2245. […]