Another dream standby flight My Thai Airways B777-200 pulled up at the gate 5 mins before our schedule departure time.  Boarding took place without passport checks. We departed about an hour late but it was otherwise an awesome flight with only around 50 passengers. I had three seats on which I was horizontal for 6h […]

Killing the day I had spent yesterday entirely indoors on the computer and at the hotel gym, only stepping outside to get a meal. My only human interaction in spoken words was calling home to Kim and also a friend. Tonight, I have a flight after midnight but realised that the 1200 check-out isn’t true.  […]

Saying goodbye E leaves today for Riyadh for some time with friends before returning home.  We ate the buffet breakfast together early before I ordered him a car to the airport. This trip, I’ve been lucky to have found three great travel companions:  first the two schoolfriends while in Japan and E in Saudi. E […]

After several hours out in the car outside of Jeddah, we returned to the hotel to use hotel’s pool and sauna facility.  It was a waste of time as the former was cold and the latter lukewarm.  The showers were cold too.  We gave up pretty quickly to chill in the room instead. Returning the car […]

Back to Jeddah Today we return the car after 11 days back to Medina Station and take the train to Jeddah where we finish our trip together.  This is the beginning of the end.  This rental, our second in Saudi, had taken us 3119 km. We commenced the day with one of our rare hotel […]

Navigational tiff We left packed up from our home of three days at Al Ula and departed at 1000, first filling up with petrol. Things went downhill soon after with some navigational disagreements between E and myself. I had the route planned towards Medina (Al-Madinah al-Munawwarah) on the most direct route.  For a number of […]