14.2.23

The highs.

We didn’t have any intention of going anywhere big this year, although there was discussion about maybe doing a family trip to Bali to celebrate the end of my sister Jackie’s treatment for lymphoma but realistically it got complicated with everyone in different place, annual leave and exam dates etc.

Jackie’s been the bravest, most inspirational bundle of gorgeousness, just incredible. I had thought I’d be in the UK to help her but she didn’t need me so we decided that in February we would go away in the motor caravan which then turned into let’s go to Vietnam once we knew Jackies chemo was finished and her radiotherapy would be almost finished.

I’ve been having an older age crisis, it’s too late to call it mid life.
Life’s too short and I’m getting on a bit now. John not so much.

When we’re maybe not much older, we can do sedate beach trips with nice hotels, or a Saga coach tour.
Right now we want trekking, homestays, mountains, caves, cheap hotels, trains, buses, crazy culture.. And unlimited Pho – Vietnamese soup and Vietnamese coffee.

We went to Vietnam almost 9 years ago, part of our Honeymoon adventure. Sounds like it’s got a lot more touristic with theme park type places, big hotels and modern buildings, but we’re going off piste to where others fear to tread.
Well not quite.

We have to go back to our favourite place, Hoi An.
It would take something mega to take away that olde worlde charm.
As if this wasn’t enough my daughter Lauren who lives in Sydney is joining us for our last 8 days.
I got a whiny little voice message from her after messaging to say what we were planning.
‘So you’re going to be 7 hours away from me and you didnt think to ask me to join you ‘
Omg, amazing….she has enough annual leave left and boss said she must come.
Yayyyyyy 😍😍😍 So excited.

The Lows.

On 6th February Turkey suffered 2 huge earthquakes which have devastated 10 cities.
The scenes there have been just tragic.
Help has come from all over the world, brave souls and their amazing dogs to find people trapped in the never ending rubble.
There’s not any words desciptive enough to describe what has happened.
Hope still remains today as after 9 days a young woman has been found alive.
We felt totally helpless, useless really.
Family and friends sent money and we shopped for essential items and bought requested medicines.
We helped at the Nil Bar a couple of times, sorting donations into food, baby food, nappies, tea, sugar, toiletries, toilet paper, blankets, toys etc.
Clothes were sorted into male, female, children, shoes, coats and so on.
Huge piles of donations, heartwarming that the response has been massive. Nil is just one of many places nearby that has been blessed with such generosity.

Whilst there the 1st time the truck arrived to take the donations to a village near Adıyaman.
When it arrived my tummy tipped and my eyes filled with tears.
Everyone felt emotional, it made it so real mixed with a sense of relief that we had helped to make a contribution to help being on its way, what an emotional 13 hour journey that must have been.

The next day there was a video showing that they had arrived safely.
A lot of people who work in tourism around Fethiye are from the affected cities.
Almost everyone has, or knows someone that has lost loved ones.
One lady I was sorting clothes with has lost 3 relatives.
How do you ever recover from something like this?
The psychological scars and sadness will never go away.

Turkey was in mourning for a week. I’ve never known such silence, we can usually hear the drone of traffic nearby, crazy motorbikes, the odd Tofaş car with blown exhausts, widows down, banging tunes blaring out, neighbours chatting in the street.
Nothing.
Everyone is inside watching on television or doing what they can to help and full of their own sadness.

All activities were cancelled as a mark of respect. No pool and darts, no walking groups, no rummicub gathering.

I went from panicking about how to get everything ready to go away to having lots of time, but no motivation.
It felt disrespectful to continue researching places to stay and things to do, we just couldn’t get excited.

Eventually we had to get our backsides in gear, make sure our cats and dogs will be well looked after, look at weather forecasts and decide what to pack.

Maybe we’ll feel excited when we get the airport bus?
No.
Maybe once we’re on our first plane to Istanbul?
No.

It just feels wrong to be going off having fun during such devastating times.

It’s a long winded journey.
Travelling to Kuala Kumpur, Malaysia, was a much cheaper option than to Hanoi, Vietnam, even factoring in additional flights and an overnight in KL as the flights don’t join up.

John is the finder of all bargains and with his grit and determination all our flights have come in cheaper than just the original Istanbul to Vietnam flight.
We’re flying with Etihad, through Skyscanner with a 3rd party called Trip. Com.
I’m always terrified of this idea, but Trip.com actually own Skyscanner and have been operating for 20 years.
For £300 less we decided it was a gamble worth taking.
No silly admin fees either like many of the ones that come up do.
Tickets were issued a few days later. Phewwwww!

I do all the itineraries and research about where we’re going, how to get from a to b etc.

John does any boring bits. He took on the role of visa getter. His was fine.
Mine was dated a month after we go.
Apparently the website auto corrects.
But either way thank goodness he noticed.
Visa number 2 arrived a few days ago.
Phewww again.

Turkish airlines flight at 9.50am all on time as usual. The obligatory feta cheese and tomato ciabbata roll and very good coffee.

Istanbul airport is huge. Actually massive or whatever the next word up from massive is.

We landed at 11.10am.
Taxied for 30 minutes to park.
10 mile hike.
Baggage reclaim.
5 mile hike
passport control.
Trip to buy Baileys.
7 mile hike to International departures and check in at Etihad.
Trip to hot water machine spotted last time we flew. Coffee granules in flask, but machine not working.
Hot water obtained from nearby coffee stand. (John can’t believe I had the nerve to ask, they didn’t bat an eyelid, good old Turkey.)
3 mile hike to departure gate.
2 hours in total.

Weve realised there’s no way 2 and a quarter hour gap between our flights is going to be enough when we return.
Might have to find out how we book one of those buggy transfer things.

Instead of Baileys we bought a creme brulee flavoured cream liqueur at Duty free. Looking forward to that. (a glimmer of excitement?)

In no time at all we we began boarding the 2.55pm to KL.
Excited yet?
No.

All around the airport were screens showing films of the many International teams that came to search for people in the wreckage from the earthquakes.
It was thanking them in lots of different languages with photos of rescues. Well done to whoever put that together. It was a very touching tribute.

The Etihad plane was on par with Easyjet. No screens, no leg room, nothing fancy apart from a usb port and an ebox thing for their internal Internet.
Lunch was chicken and rice or pasta with aubergine, or beef which had run out before it got to us.

It was very pleasant with a strong vodka and orange juice. John had a Tiger beer. Another hint of excitement as he remembered how much he enjoys a Tiger.
When they came with the coffee trolley I asked if they had any more Tiger, the lovely lady brought John 3 cans. 😍
As usual I had lots of downloaded tv on my tablet.
I watched a Spanish subtitled Netflix series ~ The Girls at the Back. Thoroughly enjoyed it, some laugh out loud moments. Not for anyone prudish.
John watched Top Gun Maverick for the 3rd time. By the time he got the ebox thing to work there wasn’t time to watch all of it. Never mind, he knows the ending.

At one point there was nothing but snow peaked mountain tops from the window. The stewardess said the flight tracker on ebox would say where we are.

There was a small map in Arabic which vanishes when you try and zoom in.
I do love a map screen showing where you are, nerdy, but this left me none the wiser.

The approach to Abu Dhabi is the most blingy I’ve ever seen. I imagine it would be fabulous to walk around the city at night.

On arrival at Abu Dhabi we made our way to terminal 3, where there was nowhere to sit. I couldn’t believe how busy it was.
Duty free was expensive and £6 for a coffee seemed standard. Maybe we’ll put an overnight city tour on hold.

We sat upstairs in the food area, the only place we could find 2 seats. I was pleased to find my flask was still hot.

It was soon time to board our flight to KL . A huge plane, as John pointed out the engine was bigger than our car.
This was much more fancy.
John watched the rest of Top Gun Maverick, I finished my Spanish series and watched a few minutes of several random downloaded series and films from Netflix before deleting them.
Dinner was chicken biryani and a cute Valentines desert. We both enjoyed a Tiger beer with it.
My sister had previously told us that the best biryani she had was on an Etihad flight. It certainly was very good.

On the first flight I was in the middle seat. The young guy next to me wasn’t too bad apart from mansplaying a bit too much.
He did the equivalent of mansplaying with his arms when we had the meal. I ended up scrunching myself to half my normal size as nothing worse than that brushing against people you don’t know.
My dad would have said put your arms in or you’ll take off, something we were reminded of at the dinner table frequently.
As we’d already taken off it didn’t apply, but the mum in me wanted to tell him off about his pig like eating habits. If the plane had jolted forwards he literally would have been wearing his food. I did wonder if he was training in the art of snorting rice up his nostrils, he was that close.

Flight number 2s young man to my left was a fiddler. He repeatedly wound his phone lead cable round his hand. I thought I was going to have to take it away.
Then the nail biting started. I was surprised after 7 hours that he had any fingers left.
Another of dads sayings was stuck in my head. ‘If you bite your nails you’ll have to wear gloves.’

Meal time made Johns clumsiness fade into insignificance.
He dropped his knife, his serviette, the salt packet and got in a right faff with the various lids.
His eating habits were only slightly better than the rice snorter.

They dimmed the lights later and I tried desperately hard to sleep. I’d just dozed off when Mr Clumsy poked me in the ribs. I really jumped, he did apologise.
He fidgeted constantly, a bit more nail biting, and every time he moved about in his seat we made body contact. 😱
When he dropped his water bottle on my foot it was the last straw.. For f*c*s sake slipped out of my mouth, but I got away with it thanks to the huge engine.

For a long time I used a podcast app called ‘Nothing Much Happens’ to soothe me off to sleep.Descriptive cosy words, story time for grown ups. I had 2 episodes downloaded on Spotify, so that would sort it.
I’ve previously never got to the end of any of the stories.
I heard these 3 times each on a loop and gave up.

Around 4am they turned the lights on and brought coffee and what was described as vegetable pizza. A soggy sausage roll looking thing with very flaky pastry that John managed to flake all over his blanket which he later flicked all over me.
One soggy bite with a weird texture and taste of red peppers was enough for me.
Excited yet? No.

I’ve told John I am absolutely not sitting in the middle on any more flights. He says I have to if thats my number. We’ll see.

We arrived in KL. I had in depth info written in my little travel notebook about to how to get the shuttle to our hotel, Tune Aeropolis.

Escalator to Level 1, door 4, blah blah. That didn’t work and we found ourselves at the ticket desk for the shuttle between Klia and Klia2.
This was also written down, after OR..
Tickets were 2 RM each, total 76p. I’m sure that’s the same as 9 years ago.
I always keep odd notes and coins from previous trips and have a plastic bag containing 78 RM, £14.57.
So I’m going to play the 78 RM challenge as we’re only here one night.

Up another escalator after the shuttle, look for Family Mart, take exit and proceed to Tune Hotel.
Just a short easy walk.
I’d forgotten how humid KL is and was so pleased to be wearing a hoody with a vest top underneath.
I’d also forgotten it’s a conservative country where many women wear the hijab or just a headscarf so removing the hoody wasn’t an option.

Of course at a fraction of the price. Tune Aeropolis isn’t as posh as the Tune hotel closer to the airport, but the free shuttle was only 15 minutes, 20 for us with a petrol stop.

The reviews online prepared us for the rooms to be very small, but not for the prison like inner sanctums and the difficulty of maneuvering cases around trolleys and laundry bags.

The room is perfectly adequate for one night and a shower and change clothes was lovely.
We decided we had to crash it was 1.30pm, 5 hours ahead of Turkey and 26 hours since we left our house. We set alarms for 5pm.
The bed was so comfy and even the fan that sounded like a washing machine wasn’t going to keep us awake. Heaven.
We woke around 4.30pm,feeling refreshed and hungry.

The on site Glasshouse Cafe wasn’t going to be part of the 78 RM challenge, especially with one portion of chicken skin being 15 RM.
I’d already researched eateries nearby and knew there was a nearby food court, in fact literally over the road. We love an Asian Food Court.
Apparently pre covid there were several businesses inside but now just 2 serving food, 1 doing drinks and a small shop.
It made choosing what to have very simple.
We both opted for the masala chicken, a large drumstick or thigh 4 RM each. 76p.
2 pieces of chıcken each, one rice, one portion of amazing noodles, and a bag of poppdoms. 24 RM.
It was delicious, even in the not very salubrious surroundings.
The only criticism was the plastic cutlery.
John broke 3 plastic spoons trying to remove chicken from the bones 😂
Of course there was a ragged kitten and of course we fed it.
We saw the sign afterwards.

Back at the Tune we sat outside and played rummicub until it got dark, had chocolate ice creams, browsed the web and switched the lights out by 9pm, unable to stay awake any longer.

I’ve been writing this since being woken up by 2 men sitting outside their room next to our chatting at 3.30am. It’s now 5.30 am.
Logically I should go back to sleep but all I can think about is whether I can catch up on Married at First Sight and eat the Karam chocolate bar that’s calling me from my backpack without waking John up…..