Author archive
5 October 2003
Arc de Triomphe to Eiffel Tower Breakfast at the hotel was nice, consisting of rolls pastries with ham and cheeses. The coffee was nice and there was plenty of hot milk for café au lait. There wasn’t any fruit, but I think that’s because the French are more into their pastries first thing in the […]
4 October 2003
Killing time in London We slept till 0900 today and had a late breakfast at our budget London hotel today. We have a flight from London Heathrow to Paris Charles de Gaulle at 1500 today, purchased at a very cheap price on British Airways. That means we have a few hours to kill before heading […]
3 October 2003
We did a bit of sightseeing in London today. Our first stop was St Paul’s cathedral which we tried to reach on the Circle Line. Getting on the tube heading in the wrong direction, the journey took forever. Once we got there, we realised that they charge GBP6 pp for entrance. It’s quite a new […]
2 October 2003
We woke at 0300 and with the aid of sleeping medication, we slept till 0800. That was a total of 13h30! Stuart Hotel’s continental breakfast was very good and we filled up before heading out. We took the tube to Richmond station where Kim’s parents picked us up, with Kim’s aunt Eileen in the car […]
1 October 2003
I had 1h sleep on this flight, making a total of 3h for the entire journey of about 24h from Auckland to London. Finally, we landed at Heathrow at 1105 and pulled into Terminal 3, a horrible terminal which involved a very long walk to the tube which would take us to our hotel at […]
30 September 2003
Despite the comfort of the business class seats, I only had two 1h sleeps. We arrived in Los Angeles at 1345 for a 2h55 transit. Because the USA really provide for any international-to-international, we had to go through immigration. But special arrangements have been made for this to take place at the gate rather than […]
30 September 2003
Our evening departure at 2045 from Auckland wasn’t like our usual. We had Kim’s parents Pat and Fiona with us, along with friends Matt and Steph. All of us are hopefully bound for Los Angeles on standby, and subject to space on the aircraft continuing to London Heathrow. Before check-in, there was random manual baggage […]
27 May 2003
Despite the Business Class seat, I didn’t sleep on the flight home. We landed back in Auckland around 1010 and was picked up by Kim’s dad from the airport. What an adventure we have had in Sri Lanka and especially Iran, a rarely-visited gem that is so misunderstood. I can’t wait to see more of […]
26 May 2003
We have a night flight back to Auckland tonight, which meant we had plenty of time to kill. After a trip to the supermarket where we bought some fruits, we visited my aunt and uncle. They were both well and in good spirits in their old age. Back in the city, we collected our printed […]
25 May 2003
Mum took us for a Nyonya lunch at a restaurant called Ivin’s. Nyonya (or Peranakan) food is hard to find in New Zealand and parts of Malaysia, so I really appreciated the choice of restaurant. We had otak-otak, beef rendang, chicken curry, ayam tempera and bubor chacha. The tempera was a dry version, different from […]