Killing a day Tonight, I have a flight to Sydney at 2130, brought forward a few months ago from 2335.  I had cancelled the hotel room for tonight, which I was going to use as late check-out but with the earlier flight time, I would only use it for maybe 4h max. To my surprise, […]

Arriving in Bangkok The 1630 departure from Istanbul wasn’t conducive for sleep on the 9h10 flight.  That’s despite the 0415 wake-up and half a sleeping pill.  Somehow, I must have rested enough during the 5h30 between the dinner and breakfast, as it didn’t seem to drag on. I did get peckish in between the meals […]

Leaving Chisinau Today I fly from Chisinau to Istanbul and from there, will somehow and hopefully make it to Kuala Lumpur on one of several standby options. I woke at 0415 and left my room about 30 mins later to check out from the hotel.  I managed to get a car on the Yandex app, […]

Leaving Vienna Today we have a 1505 Wizz Air flight from Vienna to Funchal, Madeira.  We checked out of our hotel at 1030 and got to Vienna airport about 4h before our flight, spending just under 3h in the lounge. In the typical budget airline fashion, we were scanned through at the boarding gate then […]

Despite the 90 min delay out of Singapore, we arrived in Auckland only 55 mins late.  Despite all the food I was carrying, I was kerbside within 30 mins of landing.  I credit this to having taken photos of my food haul, to show the quarantine staff that they are of low risk (eg. not […]

Leaving Kuching It had been a productive six day stay in hometown.  Apart from the optician, I had a good dental visit and for the first time in about 20 years, I managed to get all air-conditions in the apartment working properly.  I had been having intermittent AC problems, a fix for which proved elusive […]

My AirAsia X was full but I was fine, having requested and paid for an aisle seat.  We landed in Kuala Lumpur at 0700 and parked at one of the furthest gates. Once landside, I checked if I could use the Plaza Premium lounge located landside in the shopping mall, based on my boarding pass […]

Background This trip was conceived with a booking made 14 months ago with a single flight on AirAsia X from Xian to Kuala Lumpur to use up vouchers that were issued during the pandemic when the airline was went belly-up pending revival. Over the months, I slowly built up an itinerary to include places that […]