travelling allrite

I'm not over my last holiday. Still haven't got my old sleeping patterns back. I think it's because I've still been busy writing up trip reports, this time focussing on the aviation aspect for Airliners.net . Low Cost Asia 2.1: AirAsiaX SYD-KUL-SIN Low Cost Asia 2.2: Jetstar SIN-KIX J in a Typhoon Low Cost Asia 2.3: Jetstar Asia KIX-TPE-SIN-SGN Low Cost Asia 2.4: Vietnam SGN-HUI, Train Hoi An Low Cost Asia 2.5: BL Cancels, VietJet Rescues . Low Cost Asia 2.6: Hospitality? MH SGN-KUL Low Cost Asia 2.7: Home With AirAsiaX KUL-SYD That's over 15,500 words. When I pasted the content and images into Word it came out to be over 350 pages long. And if that's not enough for you, the series is considered as a continuation of this year's trip in March, constituting Low Cost Asia 1.x. Low Cost Asia: I've Got Scooties! SYD-SIN Low Cost Asia: AirAsia SIN-PEN, PEN-KCH Low Cost Asia 3: MASWings And MH KCH-BTU-BKI-TPE Low Cost Asia 4: Scootie...

It appears that 30,000 words is too many for most people to read, so here's a summary of our recent trip to Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and Japan . It's okay, I write this blog mainly to record my trips for myself, if anyone else finds it interesting then that's just a bonus. Singapore We flew to Singapore on Scoot. I found their seats hard and uncomfortable, B not so much. We stayed at the Parkroyal on Beach Road, which was nice. Our main purpose of visiting Singapore was to eat, and we had great food at the Maxwell and Old Airport Road food centres, but the best was chilli crab and Haron 30's satay at the East Coast Lagoon Hawker Centre. We also visited the Gardens by the Bay, enjoying the great glass Flower and Cloud Forest conservatories. Best of all were the lights of the Supertrees. Malaysia Penang AirAsia took us to B's birthplace of Penang Island, where we stayed at the lovely Parkroyal Penang resort in Batu Ferringhi, along with Mother-in-...

Where is that, the old track going? Where is there, I want to know Running away, I want to follow Far away, I want to go Into the distance, the old track leading Into the unknown, I will follow Hidden away, I will seek Beyond horizons, I will go Comes the time, the old track ceases Comes the place, I find the end Where it goes, I cannot follow The passing of a dear friend We begin this final installment of our 25 day trip around Asia at the end. Once the Shin'etsu Line ran all the way from Takasaki to Nagano and Niigata via the very steep (1 in 15) Usui Pass. So steep that it required a rack system, like that of the Oigawa Line of a week ago, before that was replaced by powerful helper locomotives. With the opening of the Nagano Shinkansen in October 1997 the Usui Pass section was closed and the line split into separate sections. The section from Takasaki now terminates at Yokokawa and it was to there that we were heading. It's only half an hour by local t...

Last sleep in Japan after an unremarkable day. Got woken up way too early by Alex while B kept sleeping, had a breakfast of toast across the road, then lugged our ever increasing baggage to the Shinkansen platform at Kyoto station, the one visible from our room the night before. The reserved sections were booked out, so we chanced the unreserved sections and were in luck. I had wanted to take a different, longer route to our destination of Takasaki, to travel on a new line for me, though undoubtedly older than the one we were on. Instead we were on the too familiar Tokaido Shinkansen bound for Tokyo. After the flat farmlands and factories whizzed by we at least had the pleasure of great views of Mount Fuji, still snowcapped, around Shizuoka. In contrast to the bare slopes of Japan's highest and most sacred mountain the other hills were forest or bamboo clad, speckled with pink puffs of cherry blossoms or the orderly rows of tea plantations. At Tokyo station we change...