I’m safe in my uncle’s place now. Lucky for my crazy sleeping habits in Malaysia where I sleep at 3am and wake up at 11am, I’m not really jet-lagged here. Slept mostly in the aeroplane and bus journeys. But there were all hour long naps, so it was great that I finally got a 9 hours sleep the previous night.

Anyway, here’s a descriptive journey of my trip so far. I’m too lazy to put photos here. If you want to see some photos get to my Facebook photo album =P

Well let’s start from the beginning. My KL-London flight was supposed to depart at 11.40pm. But we were delayed by slightly over an hour. Reason: the flight was full and the cabin crew had difficulties trying to sort passengers with infants. There was a row very near me with 3 infants and that is not allowed under rules because of the shortage of oxygen masks in case of emergency. So the cabin crew had to run around the airplane, contacting ground staff trying to sort out this problem. Alas if I’m not wrong, they simply upgraded a single mom and her baby to business class cause all other seats are taken. It was a really tense environment. Nobody wants to be delayed cause there are lots of complications - missing the airspace time slot allocation, congestion at Heathrow etc.

We did miss the flying time slot over Afghanistan. We had to fly later and at a lower altitude. The Captain also reported some problem with Bangkok but I’m not sure what exactly. Well I believe the pilot must have flown the plane at a faster pace because we were scheduled to land at London 15 minutes late only. Alas congestion at Heathrow forced us to holding and we had to circle around East London for about 10 minutes before landing. Lucky me. I will be pretty screwed with my schedule if the plane is delayed more.

It took about 12 hours for the flight instead of  13 hours. Filled my time sleeping and fiddling with the in-flight enterntainment. Watched some comedies and played some video games there. But I spent most of my time sleeping, conserving energy for my crazy transit the following morning.

Checked out of airplane, went through immigration. Luckily things went smoothly with not much questions asked. Got myself an Oyster card and headed to the Tube on the Picaddily Line for an hour long ride to Caledonian Road station. Had to drag my big luggage and hand-carry for a good 15 minutes or so to my self-storage location. ABC Self-Storage is the company I went with. About £30 for 2 weeks of storage. Plus I get to use my own padlock!

My shoulders are really aching cause of all the lugging. It’s not over yet. I had to travel to King’s Cross St Pancras and transfer to Liverpool Street station to get a bus or a train to Stansted. Finally got myself into a Terravision bus to Stansted. It’s supposed to be £9 but they don’t provide change for £10! I’m not sure if it’s company policy or simply the bus attendant way of collecting tips for himself but I couldn’t be bothered. I just wanted to get to Stansted airport on time and catch my flight to Brno.

By then I was too tired to look at London, I slept throught the bulk of the hour long journey. Reached Stansted and checked in for my Ryanair flight. Security check over at Stansted is really tight. I finally had some time to relax and have my lunch. I also had some time to check out some shops there. Looked at football merchandise there and am just waiting for my time to get hold of that Arsenal jersey. The shop also sell football and offered to inflate the ball! lol. Anyway I also went to the perfume shop and thought it was quite cheap. I did some conversions and figured that perfumes are way cheaper there as compared to KL or Singapore. Well, shall see how. Might do some shopping and get myself a ck perfume there on my way home.

Got into my flight at Ryanair and off I went to doze off again. It was nearly a 2 hours plane ride but half the time the Ryanair staff are peddling things to sell. They were noisy like those pasar malam junkies selling stuff. Got a good hour rest on the flight.

Reached Brno and immigration was really simple. No forms to fill up. Just a simple stamp on my passport and I’m cleared to enter Czech Republic. Met my uncle at the airport and headed home for a quick shower. Luckily I had all the rest here and there on my journey cause immediately after my shower and a short Skype session with mom, I went out my uncle’s sister company Summer Party.

Drank beer and ate meat (turkey and pork ) and bread the whole night. Luckily we went back early cause by then I was already a little tired. 9pm Czech local time is about 3am Malaysia time and it’s right in my sleeping time zone already.

StaroBrno is the local beer. It’s really smooth. Had a sip of their local Cola too. I have no idea how to describe that. Anyway, this is the crazy journey so far. It was more than 24 hours of travelling since I left home to KLIA on Wednesday night. This is the start of the trip. I shall update more soon again. Cheers!

Tags: aeroplane, Brno, bus, Czech Republic, London

This entry was posted on Friday, September 11th, 2009 at 2:57 pm and is filed under Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.