travelling allrite

As we descended into Kuala Lumpur, a tourist video on Malaysia was played for our benefit. It was awful. Cheesy lyrics, karaoke singing and claims to be everything. The slogan was "Malaysia, Truly Asia." I've got a better one. "Malaysia. It's yummy!" I've also got a slogan for Britain. "Britain: Under repair." It didn't help that we were slow to get out of the hotel. A queue at the ticket machines for the underground was to be expected. The fact that only one of four appeared to be fully operational and another which had issues was not. Not expected either was the woman at the head of the queue who went through the ticket purchase process at a snail's pace. Eventually another machine was repaired, but by then the damage was done. We squeezed on to the tube train with our luggage taking up too much space and made our way to Kings Cross station, from where we walked as quickly as we could to St Pancras. But it was too late. Check in...

London is one of the world's great cities. It's also congested, dingy and apparently almost nobody speaks English here without a non-English accent. Well, at least not near the city's centre. Actually, I did hear two families and both had the fairest hair you could have and then there was the erudite guy seated next to use at the cafe who talked incessently about books. It's a pity that Alex inherited my sleeping habits rather than B's. She claimed a lack of jetlag, having slept virtually the whole night. Alex and I were up early and back to sleep again a few hours lately. So it was that we left the hotel rather late on our only day in London. The new development around the Novotel Paddington is commercial highrise and was rather deserted on a Sunday morning. Quite attractive though, in a modern sort of way, and at least there is a small supermarket and eateries. As we walked to the station we passed long thin canal boats mored alongside the edge. Some looked aban...

Air travel is such an amazing thing. Thirteen hours in a jet aircraft sounds like torture to many, but have they considered what it is that they are really doing? I suspect that the answer is "not really" considering the number of closed window shades and active entertainment units in operation. I'd rather keep staring out the window. Actually, I'd rather be asleep in bed right now. Alex, still operating on Sydney time woke me up at 5am Malaysian time (that's 8am in Sydney). While he played with toys improvised out of some complimentary makeup pads and cotton buds I wrote my blog. B slept. The Pan Pacific Hotel at KLIA is quite nice with an Outlook over soothing rainforest gardens. But our mission was a local breakfast, which we took in the same "Food Garden" as last night. Yong tau foo and Assam laksa, washed down with Milo tarik. Then we passed through immigration and security before taking a look around the airport shops. Tempted to buy Alex some ...

One of my colleagues recently returned from a trip to the UK and shared her photos with us. I was quite taken by her photos of Mount Snowdon in Wales and the Lakes District and entertained the thought of visiting them while in the UK in November. Unfortunately, the Snowdon Mountain Railway , a rack railway, only operates between March and October. According to the National Rail website , Windermere in the Lakes District is a little over 3 hours from London by train, so that sounds doable. Not sure if the weather would make the journey worthwhile. We've only ever seen London in the United Kingdom, so it would be nice to explore elsewhere, though we only plan to spend a limited time in the country. I hope Alex will be okay in the museums of London. He might enjoy the dinosaurs in the British Natural History Museum by that time, but I would love to show B the Victoria and Albert and British Museums. They are all free too.