The Journey

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Day 1 - The Journey

Well, here it is the start of my blog, The journey itself was fairly uneventful to start with, the drive to stanstead was fairly quick as there was a complete lack of traffic on the roads so i ended up arriving before the flight could even check in!! Once i could eventually check in my bags the process was quick and relatively painful as i had checked in online the day before and so therefore was fast tracked into the same que as the premium passengers (fingers were being crossed in the hope of an upgrade!! needless to say i didnt get one!) after a smooth boarding procedure we were sat on the tarmac waiting for the green light to go to the runway when we were informed that we were going to be delayed by half an hour as we had missed our slot due to the sloppy speed of the groundstaff in stanstead, the captain apologised profusely for this and insisted that Air Asia were infact looking into this as they couldnt understand why the staff at stanstead seem to cause a delay to the service!!

Once up in the air it started very smoothly, food arrived on time, the plane was fairly empty so people spread out and prepared themselves for the 12hour long haul towards warmer climates and SE Asia! unluckily for me there wasnt a spare seat next to me so i had to remained in my seat next to an Aussie guy who proceeded to nod off straight away and start making some fairly amusing breathing sounds in his sleep,it was crossed between a whistle and him eating!! needless to say i could see that getting annoying very quickly so as soon as possible settled into my seat headphones in to watch a few movies and play a few games on the entertainment system. 2 hours of smooth flying passed before we started to hit major turbulence which meant that the plane was bucking and dropping all over the place much to the dislike of myself and about 3 young children who proceeded to inform the entire plane of their dislike by bursting into a cacophony of screams, yelps and crying..........................55minutes later, everyone was looking fairly annoyed with the sudden rollercoaster like drops and the children crying until suddenly we seemed 2 hit a perfectly smooth patch of air and normal flying service was resumed!

After hoping that the worst was now over for this flight the lights were dimmed and window shutters closed, all the sensible people with lots of space then sprawled out to enjoy the space and sleep so that they wake up roughly on local time, i managed 2 get 3 hours sleep in before waking in an atmosphere that could only resemble the inside of a washing machine on a spin cycle!! the plane was being tossed left and right followed by up and down and just to cap it all off large booms of thunder crashing in the distance followed by cracks of lightning in the air! GREAT! just what i always wanted on a flight!!

Again this lasted for the better part of an hour before we again hit normal airspace, that was the majority of the flight only the landing was still to come which was somethign i wasnt looking forward too, as we started our approach, people started to wake from their slumbers all refreshed and feeling ok as they seemed to have slept through all the roller coaster action during the flight, the pilot seem to think he was Steve harmison and proceeded to slam the plane onto the runway like a full speed bouncer aiming for ricky pontings helmet during the ashes!!! 3 or 4 bounces later we had finally touched down in Malaysia and the nightmare was over!!!

I breezed through immigration in a matter of minutes and went to the reclaim hall, bags kept coming on and going, none of which were mine.......... after about 45minutes of waiting i was starting to think that mine was left in stanstead with the slow snail paced groundstaff soon to be replaced by AirAsia, the last trolley of cases arrived and started making its way around the carousel........7 or 8 cases, still nothing............4 or 5 more, it was like watching the english football team in a penalty shoot out, nails were being bitten, beads of sweat were starting to form on the brow and it wasnt the 24degrees temperature at 6am.....2 more and i was about to go and find an air asia representitive and tell her exactly what i thought of the situation, when there it was FINALLY!!!!

After getting my taxi ticket i hopped in the back with my bags and started to relax, my driver was chinese and knew very little english so conversation was more likely to happen between me and myself than myself and the driver, as it turned out he was more of a lunatic than the taxi driver than anyone else i had ever had the pleasure of sharing a journey with, he averaged 120kph the entire journey, scraping the bumper of a bus and nudging a petrol tanker when it tried to come into his lane!!

After getting out of the taxi and almost falling to my knees and kissing the ground i managed 2 check into my hotel room (even though they couldnt find my internet booking) and thats where i am now, drifting off 2 sleep slowly for a well earned nap!!!

Lets hope any future journeys on this trip are more sedate!!!

Hope your well and stay tuned for more "exciting" entries!!

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P.s Sorry for the lack of photos, havent taken any yet!!

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