Day 132: August 15 - flight Edinburgh to London, 5 hours at Heathrow, then to Bangkok

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Day 132: August 15 - morning flight Edinburgh to London, 5 hours at Heathrow, then to Bangkok
Accommodation: overnight Qantas plane

After hearing about the huge delays at Heathrow airport for everyone checking in for flights and loss of thousands of bags by luggage handlers, I decided the 2 hours given to me by Qantas to change flights at Heathrow would be pushing it for time to get my bags and myself from one flight to another, so I figured I'd go for a morning flight to give me a good 5 or 6 hours to get from one flight to the next. The last thing I wanted to do was arrive in Asia a day late or without my bags when I was just about to start another tour. Luckily Qantas was able to change my flight for no extra charge! I don't know if this was part of the conditions of my ticket or whether it was just a courtesy thing with the whole Heathrow problem, but I was very satisfied with that.

My new flight was to depart Edinburgh just before 9am and arrive in London City airport after 10am (an airport I'd never heard before until my flight was changed) so with such an early start and having to get up without others waking up with me, I slept in. I freaked out a little when I had half an hour left to shower and pack my bags and check out, but by now I should've learnt that packing bags early in the morning can lead to forgetting to pack things, and I later discovered in my half-asleep rush I had left my good pair of jeans I bought in Iceland in my Edinburgh dorm room.

I made it to the bus stop on time, and my double decker airport shuttle got me to the airport with plenty of time to check in and relax for a bit. The flight was uneventful, but I felt a bit sad that this flight was effectively taking me away from the UK & Europe and the start of my trip home. I'd done so much and the thought of my trip ending always felt so far away, yet this was the first step towards the end and I couldn't help feeling a bit down about it all. In comparison I was looking at Thailand as nothing more than a boring stopover even though it was for 10 days, but little did I know how wrong I would be.

I arrived at London City airport, and it was so tiny compared to the massive sizes of Gatwick and Heathrow that I'd previously experienced, and it felt like I wasn't even in London. I literally walked off the plane onto the tarmac and into a tiny room with one conveyor belt to collect our baggage, then 20 minutes after getting off the plane I was on the Tube heading towards Heathrow! If only my Tube journey was as quick as my London City airport experience. Both airports were at the far ends of London's Tube network, so I basically had to head from one side of London to the other, and I arrived at Heathrow airport almost 2 hours later! At least I had music to listen to on the way.

On arrival at the Heathrow Tube station I was directed by signs which took me outside the terminal where I saw a number of large long white tents. I was shown into one of the tents where I was asked to sit down and wait until my flight was called for check in. Several hundred people were inside my tent, mostly families and the occasional business traveller. Qantas were handing out food and drinks and newspapers, although all that was left for me was a bottle of water and a few cookies and someone else's used paper. I had arrived around midday but some people had been there since the early morning and had taken all the good stuff. It was a credit to Qantas that they had supplied what they could to their customers let alone anticipating the need for refreshments for the volume of passengers waiting in tents. Occasionally a staff member in a fluorescent yellow suit would call out a flight number and people would leave, and the occasional TV news crew would come through with microphones and video cameras to interview people, but not me as I probably didn't fit the demographic they wanted. After an hour my flight was called and I was off to the check in counters. A few people got up like a rocket and power-walked over to the terminal to be first in line, so I tried to gracefully do the same. When I got inside the lines were stretched out almost to the terminal entry doors. All I could see in both directions were long snaking lines of passengers slowly inching their way forward ever closer to the check in counters, so I joined one which I assumed was my line. Luckily there were several airport staff to direct people to the correct lines. It took me a good hour to get to my check in counter, and by the time I was through security and passport control I had spent 4 hours getting from one flight to another, yet I still had 3 hours to spare before my flight was departing, so I guess I had to count myself lucky that I was really early rather than slightly late.
I visited a duty free shop to kill some time and a guy was offering taste tests of Scotch whisky so I was keen to try some. However Qantas was still not allowing passengers to take liquids into the cabin area of their planes so I couldn't buy any whisky to take with me if I wanted to, which was a shame as I actually did want to take some authentic whisky home with me. I wondered whether all of this banning of liquids on planes was just too much over-cautious action by paranoid people in high executive positions who cared too much about safety and not enough about comfort of passengers. I figured this would be sorted out at some stage and I would just have to deal with it now, so I killed more time until my flight and was on my way to Thailand. This would be my first long haul flight since I left Canada some 3 months ago, and I would be losing half a day or so on this flight so I knew I would be tackling lack of sleep on arrival. I wondered how I would cope when I arrived at Bangkok.

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