Flight from Doha to Penang

I finally managed to connect to the internet after many tries, though I figured out that around the weird bear it was a wifi dead zone. So, I wondered around while sending voice messages to my mum on Facebook Messenger. Much easier than writing.

I found plenty of designer stores, which I didn’t even approach. Unless someone is willing to sponsor me, I don’t have that kind of money. Or a rich guy marry me. Either will do. There were also some nice-looking restaurants. Found a couple of WH Smiths, but they didn’t have any Doctor Who mags, no surprise there, still looked though. Also a few Harrods stores with the bears. I hurried away less one looks at me right and I accidentally take him to the cashier. I also found an electronics store, with some very interesting items, and did consider getting the portable wifi booster. I may still get one during my trip. I was walked into again in that store, because I still forgot to take off my invisibility cloak apparently!

I wondered into the food court and saw some nice things. The longest row was for Burger King, which was a surprise considering the other, much better-looking places.

I also looked at some of the interesting artwork around the airport.

My mum said that she read online somewhere that I had to go to the counter of my flight. I was “very happy” about that, as it was on one end of a massive airport. I still went there and was informed that I could go to this canteen-like restaurant and get a meal there with my ticket. I also meet a Malaysian woman from London there, who got the info with me. So, we started talking and went to the restaurant. We got some food, but it wasn’t very nice, and the place was cold with uncomfortable seats. We talked for a while, when I got a shock through the wifi.

My apartment in Osaka had been cancelled! I thought it had all the paperwork necessary now for lending out apartments, but apparently it wasn’t so. I had been refunded the money, but now I had to find an apartment in the very limited Osaka market. I quickly opened the Airbnb app, and started to search. With the refund I also got a coupon for the same amount for my next rent as compensation, and 100 USD that I could put towards an experience in the next 6 months. That did soften the blow a bit, and as prices have gone up, I could have a bigger budget than I did before. After some searching around, I found one that was a lot more expensive, but with the coupon it came out for less than the previous one. I quickly booked it and heaved a sigh of relief. I was definitely planning on using the experience coupon, but that was for another day. Securing a roof over my head was much more important.

Crisis averted, we chatted some more with the woman, and then walked back to the boarding counter. She decided to rest, so I tried to find a place to charge my phone. Sadly, the British outlet was not in my carry-on, and that was what they used in Doha, so I couldn’t use them. However, I accidentally sat down next to my previous acquaintance! What are the odds! We discussed our situation and as it was soon time to go to the gate, we walked there. It was a massive plane, so after the boarding gate we still had to wait, but at least they had seats.

I saw lots of kids around. I already saw the next 8 hours of one child or another screaming. I was hoping that I was exhausted enough to at least get some rest. It was finally time to actually get on the plane, and I was just so glad, I wasn’t even scared of the long flight anymore. I got on it, and it was indeed bigger. However, the seat felt smaller, and people were sitting next to me. So, I put on the headphones, turned on Suits - touchscreen this time - and watched as the plane took off in the early morning. There were what appeared to be clouds, but were more like a sandstorm outside. That was weird and unusual for me. Ascend felt quite long, and my nerves got a bit weird, but I chalked it down to being tired. Once we were all the way up, I tried to get comfortable and dosed for a few hours.

Food came, and I had a special meal again. I did have a little problem with this one, as I can’t eat mushrooms, they give me a stomach ache. Luckily, I could get them to the side of my eggs. I ate everything, had a coffee, and tried to rest a bit more. No such luck, so I selected some Hallmark movies and watched those. Over the Indian ocean there was a lot of turbulence, so that didn’t help. I just watched my second movie when we landed, and I finally got off the plane knowing that I wasn’t getting on one for over a week.

We walked straight into the airport, and after some corridors to passport control, and bumped into my blue-haired acquaintance again. We chatted some more as we walked and waited. I noticed a sigh of a quarantine for people coming from places that had yellow fever, which didn’t look promising. At the passport control they took my fingerprints electronically, and I could go to get my bag. It arrived quite fast and intact. I was so relieved I hugged it. I got my bags through another baggage check, and was finally outside. My cousin was waiting for me, and he was surprised to see us both. I said my goodbyes and we went outside to his car.

The air was very humid and hot at the same time. I hoped I would get used to it fast. We got into the car to go to his place, and as we talked I took pictures and marvelled at the streets. In a way it was the chaos and the mixture of wealth and poverty that I expected from TV, but it was still different to actually be there. By the time we got to the apartment I was getting very exhausted, so I soon retired to the guestroom. It was very lucky that I arrived in the evening, as I could get up in the morning on time. I had been on the road for 25 hours, and awake for 30. I slept like the dead.

Flight from Hungary to Doha

I woke today because of the heat. It has been quite hot in Szeged lately. However, I was also anxious. I've never been on a flight as long as I was going to take today. At least, not consciously. I know, however, that if I'm anxious beforehand, I will be all right during the event. It has happened to me several times. 

My mum did say that I'm the one who decided to do the trip. I explained that it was like having two people inside me. One is screaming at me what I'm doing and I must be crazy. The other half wants the adventure. I let the adventure part win unless it's something unnecessarily dangerous. Therefore, off I was. Not that I didn't have three freak-outs while buying the tickets. However, the key is to let yourself be scared and do it anyway. 

I booked my flight with Qatar. It was either that, or Emirates. I wasn't going to go with anything cheaper than that, as I knew I needed a level of comfort to reassure myself. However, with Emirates I would have had to change planes in Kuala Lumpur again, and I didn't want the extra hassle. Qatar had direct Penang flights from Doha. My cousin, whom I'm visiting, warned me when he spotted a sale on tickets in January, so I got them then.

Reaching the airport today was no easy task. As I live in the South of Hungary, I always have to travel a lot to get to the airport. I could have tried the train, but they're repairing the tracks, so that would have meant a bus and a train. Instead, my lovely boss offered to drive me. 

It would have been easy, but suddenly the cars slowed and then stopped in front of us. They barely moved for a while. We called my mum as she has access to the Internet. She notified us that there had been an accident and they were detouring traffic from the M5. Slowly, with some driving skills we managed to get to a sideroad in an hour. It was scary, but I got to the airport an hour and a half before takeoff. 

I went through check-in and security, but they held up my bags. The hand-massager again. I got a bottle of overpriced water and chatted with mum about how I got in on time. I took an aspirin for my circulation and waited for boarding. 

Surprise, I meet a colleague of my cousin, whom I visiting! She's going to Penang too. We chatted a bit, she was very interested in my travel plans to Japan. She said she thought of going there herself, and I told her I would upload to my blog my detailed travel plans once I did them. That way they would be based on reality. Of course, with all travel plans, you always include some guesswork as to how long things are going to be.

Boarding finally came and I took my very comfy window seat. Luckily, no one sat next to me. It was probably the biggest plane I've ever been on, and according to my flight info the next plane was going to be even bigger. Sadly, I was over the wing, but while we were turning, I managed to get a few good shots.

Interestingly enough, the screen didn't seem to be touch screen. However, I really loved the headset they gave. I can't push the earbuds into my ears properly, or if I do, it becomes painful after a time. So I browsed through the movies and found that most I've seen. However, I have wanted to see “The Grand Budapest Hotel”, and they had it, so that's what I saw. It was an interesting movie with a unique style that I think appeals more to Eastern Europeans. 

Meanwhile, they brought dinner. They gave a menu beforehand, but I have picked a non-lactose meal with my ticket. They had my special meal put aside with my name and seat. So nice! The steward who served it was pretty good-looking too. He said my name and called me "mam". I almost told him to stop that, because I've been single so long, I feel a blush coming on every time he smiles at me.

The meal turned out to be chicken with vegetables and rice, a small salad, fruits and crackers with spread. They had alcohol, so I had a nice glass of chardonnay. I ate it all as I skipped lunch. Then they took away the trays and served tea and coffee. I had some nice tea with a slice of lemon. 

Afterwards, I visited the ladies’. Why I'm mentioning this is they actually had some kind of scent bottles in there. Didn't try them though, because I have very sensitive skin.

I returned to my seat, but it back, and decided to close my eyes for a bit. On the entertainment system I put on Suits and that was a great background to rest. If course, it wasn't very comfortable any way, but I managed to gather some energy. Then landing came. I was surprised as to how well I've taken flying so long, and that gave me confidence for the next, longer leg of my trip.

As I exited the plane, I was hit by the warm air of Doha. It was very hot, even though it was night. They took us to the airport by bus. I got on and put my heavy backpack between my legs. A family got on as well, and the guy with his own backpack stood so close, I had to back up a bit. Through the long ride he kept bumping his pack against my stomach. I had nowhere to go. After one stronger hit I knocked on his back and told him to be more careful as I'm there. That was when he noticed me and stood a bit differently. Now I'm not small by any stretch of the imagination, so I must have had my invisibility cloak on. 

When we exited the bus, I was hit by the hot air once again and hurried into the cooled airport. I had to go through security again, and they made me throw out my water bottle! WHY??? It made no sense, and I told them how stupid it was. Probably just a ploy to sell overpriced water again.

After security I checked the flight information. That's when I felt hopeless anger. My flight had been delayed by 3 hours! 3! Why? WHY? Only one other flight on the whole board had been delayed. I was already pretty tired, there were still 2 hours normally until my flight, so that meant 5 hours at the airport. On top of that my phone had a hard time connecting to the internet so that I could unload my troubles on my mum, and I tried to look for my newfound acquaintance, but she wasn't around. She had blue hair, so I have no idea how I didn't spot her. Shouldn't have been that hard to find. So slowly, I resolved to wait out the many hours and explore the airport a bit. It was good for my circulation to walk around.

Turkey - The long day of two flights

I wasn’t looking forward to the travel portion of this trip. The thing I hate most about travel is waiting. Waiting for your plane at the airport is the worse. Changing planes and waiting for hours in between is pure torture.

My day started at home, with trying to get in as much rest as possible. Then at around 10am it was time to leave my home and head to Budapest to the airport. Weirdly enough, more times than not, when I have to go to Ferenc Liszt airport, it rains. It was no different that day. The sky was covered in thick clouds, and the occasional icy wind ruffled my jacket. Drops of rain fell enough to annoy, but not to open an actual umbrella. I was glad when I could finally be in the protection of the airport terminal.

The change at the airport was that the usual wrapping company had changed to a different one. I heard that it used to be an Italian company that security wrapped the bags, but their contract had expired. The new company is Hungarian, supposedly close to the government, but I like to stay out of politics. The important part is that the fee had gone up. There was a very long queue for the Turkish Airlines flight to Istanbul. It was a mixed bunch of people, with a group of Koreans, some Americans, and also Hungarians. My bag was fine weight wise, and we got all the papers for both flights as well. We opted not to pick the bags up at Istanbul.

Security went surprisingly fast. Costa Coffee had reopened, but I didn’t have a lot of time to drink my coffee. Ended up finishing it on the plane.

The plane was not the usual affair. It seemed to be an older model, no personal screens, a bit less legroom, and I had an aisle seat. I couldn’t watch the clouds from above, which made me a bit sad, as I really like to do that. The plane was unusually cold. Without a screen to entertain me, I decided to study a bit of Turkish. I downloaded a very good book for it recently, and upon closer inspection I found that it was indeed very useful. The grammar explanations clear, and the right amount of words to study. I have been doing Duolingo, and that is very good to learn Turkish, but I prefer detailed grammatical explanations.

Food was the same as always. A cheese, tomato and olive sandwich, a chocolate mousse for dessert and I chose tea for drink to warm me up. I tried to order in Turkish, but I got lost when he asked me if I wanted sugar. He said it so fast, and all those suffixes made the “şeker” part lost. Oh well, I’ll get it next time. Not bad for learning on my own.

The plane landed in a sunny Istanbul that had a strange darkness in the air. I wondered if it was the pollution of that busy city. However, a chilly wind still snuck under my clothes, rushing me to the terminal building. The passport control was as busy as always, but kept a steady pace, and I was quickly processed. To get to the domestic terminal (İç Hatlar Terminali) I had to exit the International (Dış Hatlar Terminali) one, keep going and going, until I got to the equally busy point of departure for local planes. I was still a bit hungry and got some fries at a small eatery. Only later did I realise that after the security check there are a lot better places. Still, there were hours and hours of waiting to come. I kept myself busy by watching Gundam. I want to finish Iron-Blooded Orphans season 2 by the time I go to Japan.

We could finally get on the plane. I was in the last row, 22 and next to the window. I was happy about that, because that way I could see Istanbul at night from above. I decided to do a video as well. As people were boarding, I watched as the workers were putting the bags into the belly of the plane. There was one that arrived by an airport car, maybe a late check-in. One came back on the belt, they put it on the ground next to it. The suitcase just sat there for a while, and I wondered if the plane was going to run over it. Then the workers came again, and three of them stood contemplating over it. In the end they put it back one, and it came with us. Glad that wasn’t my pack.

As I watched the people of the airport bustling about, I started to think about how much effort it took to run the place. All the coordination, the organisation that went into making the planes move about as if to a silent symphony. It still baffles me that these steel birds can leave the ground carrying tons of weight through the air. I know that there’s aerodynamics and all sorts of physics involved, but to me, it’s one of the wonders of the world. Humans, these highly evolved apes are capable of such wonders. It’s a sad thing that we can turn our minds to destruction as well.

I wasn’t lost in my musings enough to not notice when the plane finally got into position to take off. I happily recorded it all, and kept my eyes glued to the twinkling lights. Sadly, it wasn’t perfect, as there were some clouds. Even through them, I could marvel at the different shapes the lights gave the fantastic new buildings, the boats floating in the sea as tealights on a pond.

When I stopped the camera, we passed through a thick cloud to gain altitude, and the plane was thrown about a bit. One rather large bump gave me such a fright – I hate turbulence to begin with -, that I gave out a little scream. Of course, everyone looked at me, and I laughed it off. Don’t ever scare me, seriously. I’m a screamer.

We got the usual sandwich, but no chocolate this time. ☹ The only had orange juice (portakal suyu). On the way the sky cleared, and there were small settlements everywhere. From above they were campsites warding off the night with fire. Then a bigger stretch of lights arrived under us, and I knew we have arrived to Konya. It didn’t look all that big though. Supposedly, it has as many inhabitants as Budapest, but it looked a lot smaller.

I took my camera out to shoot the landing, and then we taxied for some time. The airport felt huge, or they just put the landing strip too far. As a domestic arrival, there was no security check, and we just went straight to the bags. We waited for a while at the wrong belt, and then the other belt finished without our luggage. Some other people were also looking around perplexed. An employee came and started rattling something off in Turkish. Now I may know a few words, but it wasn’t enough. So I asked him to say it in English, and he managed to get out that transfer luggage arrived at a different section of the airport. There was my bag! Such a relief! We got a taxi to the hotel, and I checked on my phone if he was taking us on the short route. He was, good job! The only problem was that the car smelled so strongly of smoke, I kept the window open all the way. I’m getting really intolerant to the smell.

Arrived to the hotel, and of course check-in was a drag. The guy saw two people in both rooms in the reservation. I made it myself, so I know there was only one. My name wasn’t anywhere, when I did put it down in the system. We also asked if the rooms could be on a higher floor, but higher floors are smoking.

When I finally got into my room, I was ready to hit the hay, but at first I wanted to make the room video. Overall, I quite liked the room, even though it wasn’t quiet like we asked, overlooking a busy road. The bathroom had a sewage smell, and the fan in there was loud, as per usual. The floors around the edges not as clean as they should be. The TV all in Turkish. However, at least the bed was comfy. I finished up some things and went to sleep fairly quickly. I did wake up at night a couple of times as I often do when sleeping in a new place.

Italy - Agrate Brianza

My journey took me to Italy now, though it's projected to be mostly of work.

It started at Budapest Airport, as per usual. Ryanair is my least favourite airline, but they are the only ones who go to Northern Italy directly from Budapest. They have messed around with their price settings, so it got increasingly complicated. We got priority boarding just to make sure that the laptop wouldn't end up in cargo. We had the big bag wrapped up, to prevent theft. Budapest Airport has been in the news a lot lately, because the steeling got out of hand. The rule had always been that you only put clothing and toiletries in what you check in, but it's been getting international attention just how bad the thefts had got. Hence more people are opting to get things wrapped.

I also tested my new laptop backpack. I never got the point of laptop bags that you carried on your side. Especially for women, laptops can get heavy. I've had pain in my waist because of heavy bags, so I decided to get a backpack for my work laptop. I got a Samsonite one, and it was well worth the higher price. I could feel my spine being supported much better.

My usual routine at the airport was interrupted by Costa Coffee being closed. I'm lactose intolerant, so I always have to pay attention that they have my milk where I get my coffee. Luckily, at Upper Crust they had my milk, and even caramel coffee, so I was happy. Good coffee too, I recommend it.

As per usual, the boarding gate for the Ryanair plane was in a little building outside the airport building. We went there and waited, and waited. They only started to let us into the plane around the time when we were supposed to take off. I guess that's not so bad.

My seat was an isle seat, so sadly I couldn't take pictures. I got my laptop out and watched a few episodes of Iron-Blooded Orphans. I want to watch more Gundam until I go to Japan, because I want to check out the Gundam café in Tokyo. What was annoying was the captain of the plane. When he spoke, you couldn't tell if it was Italian or English most of the time. He was speaking so fast, I don't think he breathed. The speakers were extra loud too. I was just glad it was a short flight.

We arrived to Bergamo airport, which is sort of near Milan. There are lots of buses going to Milan, so if you arrive to that airport, don't worry. I'm sure they also have a price competition going on. We got our rental car, and were off to Agrate Brianza, where the hotel is. Sort of.

On the way we stopped at a local store and got some food and drinks. Nothing special, but I usually get Yoya drinks here, which are very nice.

Checking into the hotel - Hotel Ibis Styles Agrate Brianza - went very smoothly. The receptionist spoke really good English, she didn't even have the usual Italian accent. Very nice woman too.

I got an accessible room, because they're cheaper. For more on the room, check out my video. What I don't talk about on there is that the bed is very comfortable. The water pressure in the shower is okay, could be stronger. The hand-shower was also so high up, it was a bit difficult to reach. Good thing I'm not in a wheelchair. The annoying thing is that since the room is right next to the lift, I can hear it going up and down all the time. There is also an electric buzzing in the room, and so I have to have something on all the time to make a sound barrier. They often have this sound in chain hotels. Why, I have no idea, but it's highly annoying.

We had dinner in the hotel's restaurant. Kind of late, as my boss usually likes to eat at odd hours. Not very good for my attempts to lose weight. I was pretty tired by then, so of course I made the bad choice of pasta. Bad for my waistline, but it was very good. Perfect sauce. Also had a glass of wine, so by the time I ate it all, I was ready to fall into bed. I did fall asleep quite fast.