Leaving Perth For England And The Slint ATP

24/2/05 Thursday

How to put a major dampener on your planned holiday, misplace your passport, look around for a few hours and miss the plane by 10 minutes! After mad rushing about at the airport, my redirected ticket had me waitlisted at Singapore airport to go to Heathrowe. Being stuck in Singapore when I was meant to be in Rye by the 25th was not really going to cut it. After much rearranging and a patient travel agent, a $650 cancellation fee and up to 8 weeks for a refund on my remaining money from the $2000 something dollar airfare, I was very tired and not in the best of moods by the time I got on the plane.

During my few minutes to rearrange my holiday, I had to give up the three months in Bangkok to make sure I got to Rye in time. More of my plans gone to smoke. On the spur of the moment, I decided to extend Europe to 4 months and perhaps take the trip over to Canada and the US to check out the Indy F1 Grand Prix.

I will say that Singapore Airlines were very cool to fly with. The service was good and comfortable enough that I managed to get some sleep. The amazing thing was how cute all their stewardesses are in their tight fitting dresses. I'm beginning to wonder if they have a selection and training process to rival that of NASA's astronaught program. I wasn't given the option at the time, but it may be worth investigating to see if I can make a stopover in Singapore on the way home to investigate how cute the female population of Singapore really is!

When I got to London, it was a bit of an eye opening journey via the underground (which from Heathrowe isn't particularly underground for most of the journey). Some of the people on the train were odd to say the least. One young school girl in particular was so far up herself I think she thought the train was her own private audience and usable props for her overinflated ego.

Walking around London trying to find a hostel to stay in proved problematic. It was interesting seeing lots of those famous sites and they sort of distracted me from my task of looking for somewhere to stay. London really seems to have made its niche building massive squat buildings with large gates around them. The strange thing was that the most immediate and in my face things I noticed was these cheap theatre ticket shops. Maybe it was just because I got off at Picadilly Station and that is popular for that kind of thing... who knows.

When it got dark, I ended up having to book a hostel through a booking service at one of the major train stations. Little did I know that the prim and proper looking young women at the booking service was busily checking me into hostel/nightclub Generator. This turned out to be a massive hostel that seemed to cater for the young fashion conscious party crowd. I was just looking forward to finally being able to put my bags down, relax and short a few things out when I heard some noises come from my allocated room. As I was considering knocking, the sounds eminating from the room started to sound a little more urgent and were joined by straining inanimate objects. Fed up, I went back downstairs and paid 3.50 pounds for the "special" meal that I only managed to eat half of. Another point to Singapore Airlines for their food.