The Stans 2026

 When last we left off, we were sitting in Changi Airport. Well, that went on for quite some time. By the time the flight boarded, some time after 1am, we were exhausted and overfed - as it's easy to eat when you're bored. The upside of eating all evening was that once the flight took off we could go to sleep and not wait around to be fed. The downside was that it was a new seating arrangement. Technically a lie-flat bed, but you don't recline it until it's flat. No, you put it upright and then a flight attendant, who knows what they're doing, folds the seat back down - and there's a thin mattress on the back, and a separate seatbelt! All that was actually pretty good. The problem is captured in the photo below. In this flat bed, the room for your legs is the small area below and to the left of the screen. Quite a narrow hole, and off-centre. So it doesn't really work, and every time I rolled over I'd wake up and fidget around trying to get into some com...

 I am writing early-ish on Thursday evening, sittin in Changi Airport. Our flight isn't until 2am, so typing is a good way to pass a little time. Perhaps I'll update this in a few hours, should something unxepectedly interesting happen. Flying this route is not very efficient - we have a similar issue in Istanbul, with two days and one night to fill before our next flight. Luckily the flight out of Istanbul is not so ridiculously late, but we still have to check out of the hotel and then fill another day. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. These blogs are generally abouit the recent past, not the near future. Though I must mention that Lynn noted this morning that there is more disruption in the middle east and flights through the UAE are delayed, so it was good that we made the change a few weeks ago. So today we got up and had the standard hotel buffet breakfast. Decent but not exceptional. Then we got organised and checked out. We could have got a slightly later checko...

 Aargh. Trying to work out how to explain the day qwith my flight- and alcohol- addled brain. So I suppose we're in transit. The route we're taking, through Singapore and Istanbul, is a bit slow and it will take us some time to reach Central Asia. Perhaps it's a reflection of modern life that I expect things to happen instantly an not to wait for them? Whatever the reason we're both on the holiday and still on the way to it. We have just one flight under our belts so far. We are travelling with Lynn's friend, Lee-Anne, and she was at our place shortly after 6am for our 6.30 flight to the airport. Things were delayed almost immediately. These days you go through those body scanners, which scan you with radiowaves. Lynn had a number of suspicious spots on her scan. Don't ask me why. So they patted her and swabbed her, and she can back positive for nitro glycerin. Twice. Fortunately they didn't seem too fazed by this, it may happen frequently, and took her to t...