Lex and Glen in the Leighton Buzzard town centre with the 15th century market cross

Abu Dhabi airport views - more building going on

Our hotel, the "V"

Me in Arab Street

Sunday 7th, Monday 8th & Tuesday 9th September

                                    UK to Singapore

Robyn writes: Oh, what a blur the past few days have been! As I write this, it's 10.30pm in Singapore and 3.30pm in London. Our body clocks have NO idea what the time is!

Sunday: Carol woke us at 7.30 so we could get a good head start on the day, and also attend a favourite UK pastime - the car boot sale! We grabbed a cuppa and a slice of toast before heading out to a field on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard where many, many sellers and buyers were already assembled. We wandered around the sale for an hour and a half, vastly impressed at the range of things on sale and such cheap prices. We'd actually been looking for a new carry on port to replace mine, but the one and only one on offer was way too heavy, so it was rejected. Of course, we all ended up with one or two purchases and headed off just before 10.

As we'd had no luck with finding a bag at the markets, we went into the Leighton Buzzard town centre instead. This is quite nice - typically English town centre with lovely old market cross and some remaining old buildings that give it a very pleasant aspect (I sound like a Victorian travel writer there!) We tried a few shops and were about to give up when as a last resort we noticed an op shop was open, and hey presto - a very light bag was found for 7 pounds. We then headed back to do the big final pack.

Carol cooked us all a huge brunch, then Lex and I finally got down to the business of packing and weighing our bags. This all took quite some time but finally we had two big bags at 30kg each and two carry on bags at about 9 and 7 (Etihad carry on is 7kg). Finally it was time to leave for Heathrow, making sure we'd allowed lots of extra time in case of holdups, so we bade a fond farewell to Glen, Carol and Dave, and set off at about quarter to 3.

We had quite a reasonable run to the car hire return place - only took two or three wrong turns, and as we had plenty of time up our sleeve, this didn't prove too traumatic! After quite a cloudy morning, the sun was shining and it was a balmy 21 degrees as we drove through the English countryside for the last time on this holiday. A nice farewell. We handed our car over, then jumped on Europcar's shuttle bus which took us straight to Terminal 4.

Heathrow is such a huge place, it's sometimes overwhelming and it's always a good idea to allow plenty of time! We got to the Etihad desks to find that they hadn't opened yet, but were set to open in less than half an hour. Several people had already started lining up so we decided we might as well do the same (memories of in Japan where the same thing happened - we went away for a short time, came back and ended up in a huge line wondering if we were going to be too late!) We chatted to a NZ couple on the same flight while we were waiting. It eventually opened up and we booked in, holding our breath as we did. We'd noticed that for about the first time ever, they were weighing the cabin baggage. Bugger. Mine was fine, then we weighed Lex's. The lady told us to take some things out of his and put them in mine, then she let us through! (Huge sighs of relief.)

At last we could head into the departure area, so we lined up for security checks. This has got much more rigorous even than it was before, and took us ages. Both of our carry on bags were pulled out for extra checks, as they contained an extremely suspicious jumble of items (heaps and heaps of souvenirs!) All of this took quite some time, but we were finally released without a stain on our character. We headed to the food court area in search of some tea, and settled on a nice restaurant, "The Bridge", which wasn't at all like airport food (always a bonus!) We both had a very nice meal there with the last of our UK money. Then we headed down to the shops, where we met up with Rod and Rosemary, our NZ friends again. Rosemary and I went shopping in Harrods while the men talked jobs. Then we all wandered up to our gate to wait for our flight.

The trip from Heathrow to Abu Dhabi took about 8 very long hours. We were supposed to leave a bit after 9 but were about half an hour late in leaving. We were fed a very nice meal, then they turned the lights out so we could sleep. Well, as usual with me, that didn't happen! I think I got a grand total of about 1 minute's sleep during my second re-watching of "How I met your Mother". I just watched videos and read my book the whole time. In fact, I had just closed my eyes and was finally starting to drift off when some bastard turned all of the lights in the plane back on. It was 5.30am Abu Dhabi time and they wanted to give us breakfast! I turned it down and Lex resolutely slept through it anyway.

Monday: We arrived in Abu Dhabi at about 7.30am their time, 4.30am in the UK. A blast of heat hit us as we emerged from the plane (it was already about 35 degrees). We staggered through the airport security again and found ourselves some breakfast in "O'Leary's", an American baseball themed cafe. Lex had pancakes and I had some fruit salad and we both ingested caffeine, then we headed down to our gate to wait. Here we were told to go away and come back in an hour - the planes were running late, so we adjourned to the upstairs area where the aircon was working much better. I wrote a letter to my class while Lex had a nap. Finally our gate was open so we went back down, and eventually lined up to be bussed out to the plane. We eventually took off after 11. Another long seven hours then passed - this time I managed at least ten minute's sleep while watching a documentary on the Louvre! Lex napped beside me (I was rather envious of his ability to sleep by this stage.) On the plus side, I did get to watch the entire "INXS" mini-series, which was excellent. Finally, we arrived in Singapore at about eleven, quite a bit late. By the time we'd got through immigration and collected our bags, the MRT trains had finished for the night. We priced a hotel bus shuttle, but they were $9SD each and the next one wasn't for another half an hour, so we got a taxi. This was brilliant - straight to the hotel and at $31 wasn't all that much dearer than the bus anyway for that time of the night. We booked into our hotel, the "V" at Lavender, just on midnight.

Tuesday: We both had a very welcome shower and collapsed into bed. Soooo good after about 30 hours without sleep, in my case. When we woke up, it was to discover that we'd missed breakfast...and lunch. It was 2.30! I don't think we've ever slept that late. We wandered out in search of food and had a very nice late brunch in "The Lighthouse", a bistro across the road. Then we walked along Victoria Road to the Kampong Glan area which has Arab Street fabric markets and the mosque, then across to Bughis and the markets there. A very enjoyable long walk. It's lovely to be back in Singapore, which isn't yet too hot and steamy, and didn't even rain on us today! We bought a three day tourist travel pass ($20SD each) and travelled home on the MRT. The really good thing about this hotel is that it has the MRT station in its basement.

We got changed and headed out in search of tea - to go somewhere different, we took the MRT to the China Square Food Court, and found a Japanese restaurant, Shinkushiya, there. The food was nice but a bit pricey and (this has never happened before) they charged us a $5 service fee PLUS $1.50 each for the moist towelette that was on the table to wipe our fingers with! Never going back there again. We came back on the MRT and are now hoping that we're going to be able to sleep tonight - I certainly feel as if I will! Just hoping that dreaded jet lag doesn't strike in the middle of the night....hopefully we've walked enough and it's late enough to let us sleep.