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So, I flew out of HCMC headed for London at around 4pm Friday HCMC time, which is 10am Friday, London time.
I arrived in London at my Homestay house around 10am Saturday, London time.
That trip was via Changi and Zurich. I couldn't have escaped Changi, but I probably could have avoided Zurich.
(view on the way out of Vietnam)
What follows are my notes pretty much as they happen and are typed up on my phone in moments of amusement/annoyance/exhaustion:
Getting out of Vietnam via immigration is about as time-consuming as getting into Vietnam via immigration. There was a Frenchman bitching to his wife in the line ahead of me, and Americans bitching in the line behind.
A moment of breathtaking irony, Americans complaining it was taking forever to be processed out of Vietnam. They can STFU until they’ve spent 90 minutes in the incoming line for immigration ‘aliens’ into the US eight times in the last fifteen years.
Thought for the day as Swiss Airlines is boarding at Changi for a 12 hour flight to Zurich: I could lie flat in one of those overhead lockers and sleep...
I did get some sleep on the long-haul flight - about four hours, which wasn't as much as I would have liked, but enough to keep me going through to London.
Transfer train at Zurich: birdsong and cow lows as 'elevator music'. WTF?
Coffee at the airport: it's pretty awful. They're still using UHT milk in the latte!
Boarding the flight to London, people are so stupid and illogical. Taking up the single aisle so they can get their stuff up insteado f trying to speed up the process by being prepared, or even looking to see if they're making a queue form behind them.
Flight to London:
This continent's geography is fascinating: hills and valleys and rivers - so different form the plains of Australia. The dawn landscape is full of shadows and the mountains still have snow in the middle of summer. Blue lakes sit quiet and peaceful and the ridges of the hills are like folds of dough, layered over and over again. Little beards of mist linger in the valleys, hiding the lowlands and the rivers, and the fields show small and neat.
I took a ridiculous number of shots during the flight from Zurich to London - mostly because I had a window seat, the light was good, and the view was amazing. I'm sure that a more seasoned Europe->UK traveller would have been 'meh' but I liked it. It's a fascinating insight into the geography (and history) of the area: human habitation, how it happens, and then the resultant conflict of humans for beneficial resources.
We crossed the channel, flew in and up towards London...and then did a slow circle in to London - probably in a flight queue, during which I had some great shots of the segment of the Thames that flows out to the estuary, before we hit a massive fog bank as we descended into LHR:
More notes typed up on my phone:
At the UK Border - it's busy but moving. It might be the time of day: the big early morning flights that came across the Atlantic would have come and been processed, and that's mostly the European Union and UK nationals coming around for a day trip or a weekender. Plus they seem to have the same number of people on the immigration desks and they're moving reasonably fast.
It'll be interesting to see how things go in Chicago (US Immigration).
Why is Australia the only country that allows foreign passport holders to walk straight through the e-gates, no matter what country they're from? In every other country, people coming home to that country get the fast lane while the internationals have to wait in line for hours through immigration. But in Australia, it's just as fast for an international to get through as it is for an Australian. Bloody annoying not to even have a home ground advantage.
UK has e-gates, but apparently you have to pre-register for them, something which nobody told me. Otherwise I'd have registered, because by the time I got out of immigration, the turnstile was turned off and my luggage was lined up and waiting.
Getting a phone SIM took forever - because a) there was a German businessman who was asking every question under the sun and completely oblivious to the fact that there was someone...then sometwo...then somethree waiting... b) the 2nd guy who turned up to sell me the simcard (I was the sometwo) decided I probably had a vagina and therefore could not possibly do anything technically minded without my brains leaking out of my orifices.
I was quite prepared to hand him the money, take the card, and work out what needed to be done myself while catching the train out, but nope. I needed someone with a penis to take it out, insert into the phone (and he nearly tossed away my personal SIM card WTF MATE), and text the activation line.
Caught the underground to my Homestay. It's a nice place with a nice, friendly host. A simple room, the bed's a futon, so it's not the lap of luxury, but my body didn't care when I crashed at 4pm London time, and woke up at 10pm. I stayed up for another 3 hours before crashing again until 5:30am this morning (Sunday), and feeling very much refreshed!
And now I'm up and off to catch up with a Sydney friend who's moved to the UK and is presently living in Cardiff. Breakfast and touristing and lunch, and then I might come home and do some writing before going out to dinner...
I arrived in London at my Homestay house around 10am Saturday, London time.
That trip was via Changi and Zurich. I couldn't have escaped Changi, but I probably could have avoided Zurich.
(view on the way out of Vietnam)
What follows are my notes pretty much as they happen and are typed up on my phone in moments of amusement/annoyance/exhaustion:
Getting out of Vietnam via immigration is about as time-consuming as getting into Vietnam via immigration. There was a Frenchman bitching to his wife in the line ahead of me, and Americans bitching in the line behind.
A moment of breathtaking irony, Americans complaining it was taking forever to be processed out of Vietnam. They can STFU until they’ve spent 90 minutes in the incoming line for immigration ‘aliens’ into the US eight times in the last fifteen years.
Thought for the day as Swiss Airlines is boarding at Changi for a 12 hour flight to Zurich: I could lie flat in one of those overhead lockers and sleep...
I did get some sleep on the long-haul flight - about four hours, which wasn't as much as I would have liked, but enough to keep me going through to London.
Transfer train at Zurich: birdsong and cow lows as 'elevator music'. WTF?
Coffee at the airport: it's pretty awful. They're still using UHT milk in the latte!
Boarding the flight to London, people are so stupid and illogical. Taking up the single aisle so they can get their stuff up insteado f trying to speed up the process by being prepared, or even looking to see if they're making a queue form behind them.
Flight to London:
This continent's geography is fascinating: hills and valleys and rivers - so different form the plains of Australia. The dawn landscape is full of shadows and the mountains still have snow in the middle of summer. Blue lakes sit quiet and peaceful and the ridges of the hills are like folds of dough, layered over and over again. Little beards of mist linger in the valleys, hiding the lowlands and the rivers, and the fields show small and neat.
I took a ridiculous number of shots during the flight from Zurich to London - mostly because I had a window seat, the light was good, and the view was amazing. I'm sure that a more seasoned Europe->UK traveller would have been 'meh' but I liked it. It's a fascinating insight into the geography (and history) of the area: human habitation, how it happens, and then the resultant conflict of humans for beneficial resources.
We crossed the channel, flew in and up towards London...and then did a slow circle in to London - probably in a flight queue, during which I had some great shots of the segment of the Thames that flows out to the estuary, before we hit a massive fog bank as we descended into LHR:
More notes typed up on my phone:
At the UK Border - it's busy but moving. It might be the time of day: the big early morning flights that came across the Atlantic would have come and been processed, and that's mostly the European Union and UK nationals coming around for a day trip or a weekender. Plus they seem to have the same number of people on the immigration desks and they're moving reasonably fast.
It'll be interesting to see how things go in Chicago (US Immigration).
Why is Australia the only country that allows foreign passport holders to walk straight through the e-gates, no matter what country they're from? In every other country, people coming home to that country get the fast lane while the internationals have to wait in line for hours through immigration. But in Australia, it's just as fast for an international to get through as it is for an Australian. Bloody annoying not to even have a home ground advantage.
UK has e-gates, but apparently you have to pre-register for them, something which nobody told me. Otherwise I'd have registered, because by the time I got out of immigration, the turnstile was turned off and my luggage was lined up and waiting.
Getting a phone SIM took forever - because a) there was a German businessman who was asking every question under the sun and completely oblivious to the fact that there was someone...then sometwo...then somethree waiting... b) the 2nd guy who turned up to sell me the simcard (I was the sometwo) decided I probably had a vagina and therefore could not possibly do anything technically minded without my brains leaking out of my orifices.
I was quite prepared to hand him the money, take the card, and work out what needed to be done myself while catching the train out, but nope. I needed someone with a penis to take it out, insert into the phone (and he nearly tossed away my personal SIM card WTF MATE), and text the activation line.
Caught the underground to my Homestay. It's a nice place with a nice, friendly host. A simple room, the bed's a futon, so it's not the lap of luxury, but my body didn't care when I crashed at 4pm London time, and woke up at 10pm. I stayed up for another 3 hours before crashing again until 5:30am this morning (Sunday), and feeling very much refreshed!
And now I'm up and off to catch up with a Sydney friend who's moved to the UK and is presently living in Cardiff. Breakfast and touristing and lunch, and then I might come home and do some writing before going out to dinner...
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A penis is just naturally shaped to handle delicate technology, didn'tcha know?
But srsly, IMMIGRATION LINES IN THE UNITED STATES ARE HELL ON NON-RESIDENTS -- India is fine, Australia is fine, the UK is okay, Canada is okay, China is bearable too.
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If you'd like to meet up/catch up, my number is: 312-810-7989 - don't forget to let me know who it is when you first text! :)
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I'm in Mexico City right now! :)
Sent from my iPhone
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