London calling

So the planned trip to Bangkok fell through, I guess it's a "nevermind" moment. You live, you learn. Next time I travel I won't be using STA Travel or any other agency, I'll book myself on the flights I want to go on, when I want to go on them without the hassle of trying to sort something out with a company that forces any change (or questions relating to) to go through an e-mail link with a guaranteed response time of 48 hours, which I have deduced means working hours rather than the 2 days that you may assume it would.  It took 2 weeks to get useable options tabled which when you're trying to work to a certain timeframe or budget can be a little frustrating.  Rather than just being able to pick up a phone, or pop into one of their global stores to explore options I had available to me, I had to abide by the following Terms and Conditions. With the night / day time difference sometimes meant simple queries could take a couple of days to resolve, assuming that they bothered to answer the poised query in the first place which the didn't always.  It can be a jagged little pill to take.

Terms & conditions▪ The Multiflex Pass can ONLY be redeemed by emailing our Global Travel Help Team via this link: http://www.statravel.co.uk/global-travel-help-enquiry.htm. Contacting us through any other channel will incur standard fees. 

So after the requisite to and fro's,   I was eventually given the following couple of feasible options;

• Return to the UK, no extra cost (covered by the multiflex pass)

• Pay an additional cost of £187, fly to Melbourne at the start of February, wait 5 hours for a connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur and then spend another month or so exploring more of Asia. 

This second option appealed to me for a several reasons. I had met some wonderful people who lived in the countries I travelled through previously and this would have given me the opportunity to meet a few of those people again and also explore the places that I had missed out on before and undoubtedly meet more interesting people along the way. Then of course there's the food.......

So I chose to return to the UK, the main reasons for which are;

• I want to travel more but in order to do so I need to fund it. As I am yet to implement a way of sustaining myself financially whilst travelling this means returning to the UK, working and saving to fund my next adventure whilst also working out a way to make the next trips pay.

• The Chinese New Year falls on January 31st  2014, which means by the time I returned to Asia I would have missed the celebrations which I would have loved to experience. Similarly the Thai new year (Songkran) falls in mid April,  after I would have left the continent to return to England. So Holding fire for now will maybe allow me to experience these events in future at the same time as doing some of the things I was planning.

So on Wednesday 29th at 16:50 I will leave Auckland International and travel via Australia and Dubai, past the darkside of the moon and onto London Heathrow, arriving at 11:35 on Thursday morning. A quick calculation will give a travel time of 17 hours which doesn't seem too bad. Factor in the time difference though and you will realise that it's more like 30 hours and that means there's a whole lot of "I spy" to get through with my single serving buddies. I'm going to have to get creative. 

My entire hand luggage is going to be filled with pillows to sit on and sleeping pills to munch. This should allow me to fall asleep and dribble on the person next to me without care or courtesy. I could alternatively spike the drink of any man, woman or child that I find particularly annoying then raise them up so high on the pillows that when they wake up they think the plane has shrunk. The potential for fun is only limited to what you can get away with before being thrown off the plane by rightly concerned cabin staff.

I also fully expect myself to look like a human puffer fish by the time I touchdown off the final flight, even more so than I usually do.. 

If I do bloat significantly then I will be left with little option but to change my name to Gill.  

   Fin