Day 18 - Heading West

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Well - its here .... not sure this is really day 18 but we leave Sydney at 5pm but wait - you've guessed it - we're delayed 1 hour due to a lighting storm coming in!!!!!

We do get away about half 6 local time, 1 hr behind. We've bagged rows 28 H&J in economy where a 2 seater exit row seat right at the front of economy so hoping for plenty of sleep. A simple travel strategy - stay awake until we leave Bangkok then sleep as much as possible on that leg to arrive in London refreshed 6am.

We'd be even more refreshed in business - a spare / empty seat right in front of us to Bangkok - our limited charm however with the crew fails to secure that slot. The flight goes pretty quick and we land in Thailand about 11.45pm local time - nearly 3am on our Aus time! We're tired at this point. Here we find that the Thai have their own 24h clock.

As they clear the plane to turn it around, we hear the turn around has been reduced and the new boarding time for BA10 is 24:30??? We knew what they meant but c'mon.... I hope their aircraft engineers are not so mistake prone! We dash for lounge which is pretty empty given time of day, and the limited turnaround and managed to get freshened up before heading straight back down to the plane. Boarded again with 5 minutes so no hassles - we keep queue jumping in the BA fast track gate with my Exec Silver membership which makes us feel a bit cheeky but hey ho.

Back in the same seats - themselves with almost infinite leg room :-) but no seat pockets, and a light behind them - mine shining on to Claires barnet :-( However the leg room outweights any downside. This time the flight in economy is about 40% full - first time I've seen long haul for ages - so some lucky gits in the 3s and 4s are laid out.... flat bed for 1/4 of the price. We talk again about business and in our quest to convince ourselves its not worthwhile (jury still out) we decide its the most expensive hotel in the world. I mean come on - where else would you pay £1000 per person for 1 night with dinner....????? We also work out that the space a business seat takes is pro-rata the economy fare so booking a business ticket space wise is about 3.5 times that of economy - and so is price. Maybe one day we think as we dose off after dinner. To this point, I've eaten nearly every meal so far on every plane - however Claire has struggled on this return leg with mushrooms appearing in nearly everything.

We manage the flight well - both sleeping for about 6-8 hours of the 11+, we're back on home soil.....

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