Author archive
13 October 2015
On board We took off late as a last-minute illness stopped one passenger from travelling and his/her luggage had to be offloaded. Seated near the front, the 787 wasn’t as quiet as my Scoot flight last month where I had been seated overwing. This felt on the quiet side of normal. After the supper service, […]
12 October 2015
Tonight at 23:59, we depart for Shanghai to begin another journey in the Middle Kingdom. At the airport, the kiosks wouldn’t issue our boarding passes as we were on standby. A staff member checked us in immediately; we didn’t have to wait till flight close-off 45 minutes prior to departure. That allowed us to check […]
7 September 2015
Home time today! I fly back to Auckland after just over 24h stop in Sydney. I took the shuttle from the hostel to the airport instead of the train as it was AUD7 cheaper (AUD12 instead of nearly AUD18). It takes just a little bit longer; both modes have their overhead times (eg walking to/from […]
6 September 2015
Scoot check-in for my 0145 flight to Sydney was swift without any queue as I turned up early. I stayed landside till I got hungry so I could have a snack of McDonald’s prawn burger and sweet potato chips. On board the aircraft, the doors closed and I was surprised to see so many spare […]
3 September 2015
Quite unusually the queue for my AirAsia flight bagdrop was quite long at Kuching. My flight to Singapore left a few minutes early, which is quite usual for the airline. Prior to arrival, the “death sentence for drugs” recorded PA was made (quite normal). But there was a new PA this time about the prohibition […]
2 September 2015
Food in Nepal is a nice mix of Nepali food, Indian and Tibetan (which is in turn quite like some kinds of Chinese food)…. Posted by Alex Chan on Wednesday, September 2, 2015
24 August 2015
Above: Kuching is a bit hazy this visit with the slash-and-burn of forests in preparation for agriculture in Indonesia. The transit “hassles” in Colombo made the 2h10 transit go really quickly. We boarded the Malaysia Airlines B737-800 for the 3h40 flight to Kuala Lumpur departing at 0055 and arriving at 0705 due to the time […]
23 August 2015
Today is the beginning of the end when I finish the adventures and relaxation and proceed to Kuching for time with family before flying back to reality in Auckland in less than two weeks. We had set the alarm for 0600 to catch breakfast at the hotel before getting on the 0730 dhoni to Male. […]
21 August 2015
We did two dives during our stay at Maafushi. Most people would probably consider the dives we experienced to be quite good, but I am fortunate that I can access top-class sites like Sipadan relatively easily. So, the dives we had here were OK. Diving does depend on luck and exactly which dive site you […]
21 August 2015
Introduction We did two dives at Maafushi (a handy but beautiful island only about 90 minutes from Male). There were three dive operators on the island. Shark Diving & Watersports (which we dived with because they were straight up and no-nonsense). They gave us a discounted price of USD35 per dive including all equipment (without discussing […]