travelling allrite

Two days after Christmas Qantas will operate its final passenger flight on its Boeing 767 fleet , marking twenty six years of operation for the airline. A Qantas 767-300ER glistens at sunrise at Sydney Airport It is with some degree of sadness that I will say farewell to the Qantas 767. Like its also recently retired smaller cousin, the Boeing 737-400 , the widebody 767-300ER is solid, plain, a workhorse more than a sleek beauty of the skies. But that is sometimes what you need. No sexy winglets on the Qantas 767s (though you can still spot the odd Air New Zealand 767 with winglets in Australian skies). As a passenger the 767 always felt like a confident aircraft, powering into the sky and offering a stable flight. The classic interior with angular lines and yellowing plastic harked back to an earlier age. Many of the aircraft flew until recently still with projection screens in the centre to compliment overhead monitors, bringing back memories of my early days on internatio...

What a pleasant flight home! After all the fear and internal drama of developing storms and jetstream turbulence combined with the apprehension of a "Sydney welcome" the flight turned out to be very smooth. We had to get up early. Early for Malaysia, but sadly still later than our usual Australian day which has returned all too soon. After a quick check out we made our way down to Sentral Stesen and caught the KLIA Ekspres to KLIA2, the Sun a red ball in the morning sky. It's a bit of a hike from the station to the departure hall. As we had already preprinted the boarding passes in Australia and just had carry-on luggage all we needed to do was have our passports checked. But only a single desk was open for document checking and the attendant was very slow at getting through the queue. Now time for breakfast. The terminal has a range of eateries in mock shophouses. We found a roti canai place, but we have eaten rather a lot of it and so we selected "Nonya...

I remember the first time we stayed in the Kuala Lumpur Hilton. This was called a "Techno Room" then. A 42" plasma TV with external connections, a repeater TV in the bathroom. Probably had a DVD drive and maybe a PlayStation as well. Now... the TV signal isn't HD and looks as terrible now as it did then. There's no HDMI input, only VGA and RCA plugs. No DVD player so far as I can see. And Alex somehow blacked out the TV with the remote control. And their reservations system crashed today... Doesn't really matter anyway. What's important is that the swimming pool is still nice. We had a swim after we got up this morning and swim before bed. Unfortunately, I was too full to order sticks of satay by the pool, one of my dreams. After swim one we caught a taxi back to Mid Valley Megamall, where we had a better kampong chicken rice than yesterday and various other dishes. The highlight was ordering a huge roti tisu from Original Penang Kayu, a thin m...