Ellie and Katherine jumped on their planes and successfully negotiated changes in Dohar and Kuala Lumpar to arrive in Penang on 26 June and we are now packed and ready to join them
Our journey was probably the most relaxed travelling experience we have ever had involving air travel, perhaps because there were just 3 of us not 5 and also because E and K had trail blazed the path and Nic had arranged to meet us at Penang airport.
Our next door neighbours are not only kind enough to feed the cat, but alo to give us a lift to Leeds station from where we took a train to Manchester Airport in good time for the flight to Qatar.
Our flight left bang on time at 20.05 arriving in Qatar 8 hours later, by which time J and L had watched The Grand Budapest Hotel (highly recommended and worthy of its BAFTA) and J had caught up with Big Hero 6 and The Hobbit.
We arrived in Qatar at the equivalent of 3am UK time, then had three hours in a semi awake state to wait until our onward fought to KL. Qatar airport is the poshest airport I have ever seen, a huge shopping plaza in the middle of the desert and as a demonstration of how cheap (immigrant) labour is, not a minute goes by without a cleaner passing by, every loo has a cleaner on perpetual duty (etc).
Then it was back on the next plane to KL a further 8 hours. This flight was pretty turbulent in places, especially over monsoon ravaged India , so the seatbelt sign was on for long periods but we were exhausted so slept most of the time, before watching The Theory of Everything about Professor Stephen Hawkins (also highly recommended) and Joseph went back to his old favourite Harry Potter (for the 77th time!)
We arrived in KL feeling pretty awake at 8pm at night (local time) the equivalent of 1pm UK time so we were pretty wide awake. KL is another massive airport, concentrating on shopping so exiting the airport baggage reclaim and immigration is only reached through rows and rows of shops which is a bit frustrating if your plan (like ours) was to get out of there as quickly as possible.
Then it was a simple transfer to a cheap and cheerful airport hotel for the night as we arrived in too late for the last scheduled Penang flight.
A reasonable nights sleep as we were exhausted despite going to bed at the equivalent of 4 pm and slept through till 8am local time (1pm UK time). The good news was that after a basic hotel breakfast there was still time for a refreshing swim in the Concorde Inn pool before catching the hotel shuttle to KLIA2 a separate airport terminal predominately for Air Asia. from there a 45 minute flight to Penang .
In summary a pretty straightforward journey, but just long!
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