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Our flights to the UK had been booked since November 2008, for our very brief visit to the UK to attend Neil’s big brother’s wedding (congratulations Darren and Vicki!). As we hadn’t been back to our home country for 2 years and 7 months we would undoubtedly find it a very interesting and possibly strange experience - so the next couple of blogs are about our experiences in the UK.
Before heading to the UK we decided on some beach time in Malaysia and spent a fantastic 5 days lazing before our long flight back to the UK, the longest we had done in quite some time. The budget terminal - LCCT - or as we like to call it Cheap Charlie Terminal is impressive; we were last there in January 2008 and the changes are amazing to see, it even beats Changi’s budget terminal which we thought would be hard to do. An added bonus is a cheap Tune hotel (where we paid £8 for a brand new en suite room with wi-fi the night before our flight).
Apprehensive about our booking with Air Asia X to Stansted, our fears were gone when we checked in 2 hours
Neil and Eleanor Rigby
...well we hope it isn't really her!before the flight to find no queues and they had even allocated us seats together without us having to pay extra! So we loaded up with a McD’s breakfast as we hadn’t paid for food on the plane and we were ready to go. We were pleasantly surprised by the flight, our seats had plenty of room (our plane was formerly owned by Air Canada) and the staff were friendly but a little forgetful and clumsy at times and there was no issue with us eating our own food on board. The flight flew by (hahahahaha) and it seemed like in no time at all we had landed at Stansted.
The first thing we noticed when we landed was that the ‘smell’ was different (erm it was clean?). The second thing we noticed was the awful carpet everywhere in the airport - Stansted therefore wins the dubious award for being the only airport in the world with carpet everywhere, how very British. The bonus was, because we had our flashy new biometric passports, we just put our passports in a special machine, had our picture taken and got let through - we knew we had to be paying £150
each for something! We were actually quite embarrassed in the baggage reclaim area as the airport has decided to put coin operated luggage trolleys which we think is a bit unreasonable. We, like many others arriving from abroad, didn’t have any coins to put in these trolleys as foreign exchange’s don’t give out £1 coins...it’s a bad first impression of the UK for foreign visitors and we heard many grumbles about this! Again these coin operated trolleys is another first in airports for us.
Waiting for our train to Liverpool, we sat on the floor at Euston station and this was where what travellers refer to as the ‘reverse culture shock’ set in...we were truly scared at being in the UK, a strange feeling for us as we don’t recall being particularly scared in any other country we have visited. Everything felt so alien to us when it should be familiar - firstly it was so bloody cold, all the other passengers were standing with their eyes glued to the departure screens, no-one seemed at all happy - it was like their lives were an immense chore, there weren’t many smiles and no-one really made eye contact with anyone
else - they were in their own little non-contact bubbles. We had a wander around the few shops and eateries in Euston and almost had a heart attack at the prices - 72p for a small Galaxy bar, £10 for a Burger King meal? OH MY GOD...we were truly shocked and had to keep telling ourselves it would be cheaper up north! We boarded our train for Liverpool, after an argument with the ticket collector (these are the same the world over unfortunately!) because the ‘proper’ part of Donna’s ticket had been swallowed by the Underground’s ticket reader. The ticket collector gave in probably sensing it was not a good idea to argue with two jet lagged, grumpy travellers and we found our seats and settled in for an unbelievably fast and almost on time (which is impressive in itself for the British Rail system!) journey to Liverpool.
Still shivering we were glad to see Donna’s parents waiting for us on the platform and we made our way to the car, remembering to stop at the pedestrian crossings and not just walk out in front of the buses like we are used to - being pulled back by our
clothes by Donna's parents helped us remember! Back at the house we had our first cup of proper British tea and some toast...wow, hot, fluffy toast with melted butter now that is something we could get used to - without fail in Asia toast is served cold and rock hard, as if they have made it 1 hour before the rest of the breakfast! We also wasted no time in getting stuck into chocolate - Galaxy for Neil and Chocolate Orange for Donna - we had been dreaming about Galaxy and Chocolate Orange for a few months now so we were very happy bunnies getting into bed and nice and toasty warm thanks to the central heating!
We weren’t so happy though when we woke up at 6am and we couldn’t get back to sleep so up we got and had some Cornflakes (proper ones with proper milk!) and more hot toast, followed by...more chocolate! Yes, small things make us very happy (we don’t think Donna’s mum was too happy at being woken at this hour though...sorry!). Visiting Donna’s Nan and Grandad we were treated to chocolate disgestive biscuits, tea and lots of gossip from the last 2 years
Neil enjoying a longed-for pint
...not because he's an alcoholic but because he hasn't had a pint in 2 years and 7 months. and 7 months since we were last in the UK. We started to worry about the weight we were going to put on here with all these treats but not to worry, Donna was busy trying to convince herself that because it was much colder than what we were used to our bodies would ‘burn off’ the extra stuff we were eating to keep up warm so therefore we wouldn’t put any weight on (yeh, keep dreaming said Neil!).
We used the afternoon for our first shopping experience in the UK - we went to Birkenhead town centre in search of a very strange combination of Primark, suntan lotion and Haribo sweets. The shopping trip was semi-successful with the purchase of Haribo starmix jelly sweets - again we had been craving these for some silly reason. Although Donna managed to make a fool of us by walking up to her mum (who was in the check-out queue at the front of a long line of people) and asking in a too loud voice if a bar of Whole Nut Cadbury’s chocolate was good value...it was only when she walked away that she realised how weird and stupid she sounded.
On a serious note though it was difficult to get back into the ‘pounds and pence’ we had no clue as to whether something was good value or not, at least in countries in Asia we could compare them to each other to get an idea whether the price is good but we had no benchmark for the UK. We had been 'out of it' for too long to compare prices to what it was when we were last there - for example petrol was 65p a litre, it was now 95p a litre! We felt very lost and had to keep checking with Donna’s mum to see whether something was cheap or not, although it was nice to not have to convert to pounds every time we saw a price so instead we converted to the major Asian currencies just for fun! It’s one of the weirder feelings we have had - to be a stranger in your home country we felt like we stuck out a little bit, not only because of our sun tans but because we felt like we didn’t belong.
Everyone in the UK complains about certain things - supermarkets is one (prices,
The famous Mathew Street
...famous of course for the Beatles! monopolies etc), the NHS and the state of television are the others. But shopping in the supermarkets was nothing short of AMAZING! When we are in supermarkets in Asia we are used to an aisle of soya sauce, an aisle of noodles, an aisle of rice and one type of bread, usually sweet etc...in the UK the supermarket seriously bamboozled us. The British are very lucky, in our opinion, to have so much variety food-wise - the selection of breads was extensive, the wines were unbelievable and at 3 bottles for £10 were amazing value too. The crisps (chips for the non-Brits reading) wow, salt and vinegar flavoured crisps what a welcome luxury; all the crisps you find in Asia are mainly cheese flavoured or strange fishy types which we aren’t too keen on! There are so many good quality products and at cheap prices - again we were surprised...we had prepared ourselves that food prices had gone up since we had last been shopping in the UK but we didn’t find the supermarkets to be that expensive.
As you have probably noticed, most of our pictures are of Liverpool city centre from when we were shopping there. We
did want to go to the Pier Head and get pics of the Albert Dock and other tourist attractions but we were too damn cold to do anything but wander into the shops, Neil just had to have a steak pasty to warm himself up from that great British institution - Greggs the bakers! We had a bit of a shop and then met Donna’s dad for lunch at the other British institution of a Wetherspoons pub. The menu had improved and extended since we were last in a Wetherspoons and all 4 of us ended up going for a Burger and a beer for £5.69...again good value as you could select one of 6 burgers and drinks. Neil was happy to have a pint again and Donna even happier to have rose wine! It's good to see the huge improvements made to Liverpool city centre since it won European Capital of Culture in 2008 - it has a great atmosphere and the new Liverpool One shopping centre is very impressive and comparable to some of the big shopping centres in Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.
The nice thing about Liverpool (and the rest of the UK actually)
The wonderful Primark...
...Donna went all weak at the knees. Nicknamed Primani in the UK due to the 'copying' of designer clothes for rick bottom prices. is the absence of the 'every man for himself' mentality when it comes to shop entrances or shopping in general. It has to be said that the British are very, very polite, we had to get used to people holding doors open for us and apologising if they bumped into us or got in our way - it was nice not to have to use our elbows when trying to get through a shop door! In Asia this sort of politeness gets forgotten about - doors are left to slam in your face and you are made to feel like it's your fault if someone walks into you! It was also a pleasant change to arrive at a destination/transport hub and not have the local taxi mafi or accommodation touts hassling us. Oh and all prices are clearly on display in the shops and there is no two-tiered pricing or haggling to be done, what a relief!
At this point in our stay we were exhausted, the 14 hour flight and 7 hour time difference was catching up with us so apart from shopping we took the rest of our time with Donna’s parents easy. So our first impressions
of the UK were mixed...will our impressions change, well stay tuned for the next installment of the blog for our adventures in the North East of England!
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Sophie and Dale
Sophie & Dale
ha ha... good old Blighty!
Fab blog as always.. so nice to see snaps of 'home!' It's our 1 year anniversary of being away today can you believe it. We always think how strange it would be to go back now so we can't even imagine how it was for you two! Have a lovely time won't you.. hope the wedding goes well and that Donna got a nice outfit. Hope to see you guys at some point when you come back to your second home of SE Asia. xx