Hello!! Sorry about the downtime, it's all a bit of a blur really!! Just a quick rundown of the adventure so far...

Chris dropped us at Auckland airport on Monday morning. We got all checked in and sorted then hung around in the bar for a bit before heading off to board. We misjudged the time needed to get through customs which left us running for the plane... great for Tom and his adrenalin rush... maybe not so great for my nerves! We made it though so that's the main thing ... I have to trust that Tom knows what he's doing given that he's done all this before, but even so... LOL

The flight to Malaysia was about 11 hours. We were lucky enough to have a double seat (next to the window) to ourselves so no clambering over others and vice versa.
Flying over Australia and watching the desert below was amazing... so many interesting colours and patterns and the vastness of it had me glued to the window for a lot of the time.

We landed in Kuala Lumpar at about 9:30pm, a bit later than scheduled. Because we'd checked our luggage all the way through to London we could head straight from the airport into the city. We jumped onto the express train and managed to negotiate the Central Train Station to catch another train to Chinatown where we had a room booked and were hoping to do a bit of shopping. I just have to say that our small experience of the transport system was amazing... we could hardly believe how easy it was to get tickets through the vending machine and to find our way around... and cheap!!

We very quickly checked in to our motel which was right in the night markets then back out onto the streets to look at the stalls. Tommy wasted no time and was straight into bartering and buying... what a shopping fiend!! In the short half hour or so we had before the markets closed for the night he had bought football shirts, belts, sunglasses, a wallet, DVDs and more football shirts... legend! I suppose it helped that he had a mental list to start with. I just wandered about looking in case I saw something but then didn't really have the energy or inclination to bargain.

After the markets closed we found our way back through the labyrinth of halls and lifts and stairs back to our 6th floor room and hit the sack about midnight ready for an early start.

5:30 our alarm went off and we staggered down to reception to meet our taxis. We were handed some sandwiches (breakfast was included in the room rate) and off we went. The taxi ride was great... averaging about 140kph in a wee datsun sunny (or similar) with a neon buddha on the dash, weaving from one lane to the next, seemingly at random... there was next to no other traffic so I'm not quite sure why the lane changing was necessary aside from providing a bit of entertainment. Made it onto the plane with a little more time up our sleeve this time... yay to that.

13 hours more of flying time and barely any sleep, we landed in Heathrow. Tommy flew through customs thanks to his home passport and then waited for me to get through the loooong foreigners queue. He thought he'd take a photo of my official entry into the UK....

here's one of me next to a big sign ... "NO CELLPHONES, NO CAMERAS" I'm pretending I have no idea who Tommy is... I could see security bearing down on him!!

Being the high flying international covert operations spy he is... he actually managed to take more photos as he was talking to security... you never know what secrets you'll discover in the carpet....