offpeakfang

Fanar Mosque, Doha Having returned from Tokyo to Hong Kong and having spent a day hiking around Hong Kong's Lantau Island with local friends, it was time to return to the UK. When I booked my plane tickets, I had a choice of either a 2 hour transfer or a full day in Doha, Qatar. Of course I chose to spend a full day in a new country.  HND-HKG: UO629, 0220-0600 HKG-DOH: QR815, 0025-0405 I spent almost the entire 8h40 flight from Hong Kong sleeping and so was reasonably rested when I arrived in Doha, albeit at a very early local time. Doha Hamad Airport is enormous but assumes that you only want to transit through, and there are only a relatively small number of people who were leaving the airport. By the time I went through immigration and customs control, it was still a bit too early to do anything or even get into the city and so I spent some more time in the nicely air-conditioned airport.  As I arrived on a Friday, everything was closed in the morning: after all, this is on...

Flying over Iraq: possibly Najaf Out of all the London airports, Gatwick Airport is the most annoying airport to get to from East Anglia. I'd have much preferred going from Norwich or literally any of the other London ones, but leaving from Gatwick was considerably cheaper and my Ipswich - Gatwick Airport rail ticket was £11.90 - a similar price to the Ipswich - Stansted coach. At least Gatwick is an airport where one can turn up 1¾ hours before the scheduled flight departure for a long-haul flight without getting nervous.  LGW - DOH: BA2033, 1405-2350 There was a time - not that long ago - when I quite liked flying with British Airways. Long-haul economy class isn't that different between most airlines, but for a long time they'd even offer Worcestershire sauce with their tomato juice and had a doing-things-properly kind of vibe. Alas, not any more. The in-flight entertainment was quite good, with a strong British focus and I could even listen to BBC Proms on the way to Do...

Hong Kong, as viewed from West Kowloon Cultural district, September 2023.  After three years of zero-Covid policy, quarantines and closed borders, I had some paperwork to do in mainland China that required me to visit for the first time in four years. This was also at a time when I have friends living in nearby Hong Kong and Japan. Hence formed an idea for my usual kind of epic overland adventure, but on the other side of the world: Hong Kong to Japan without flying. How hard could it be?  Overall, this was an outstanding trip, and a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was very fun to experience so many cultures and traverse several countries over the space of three weeks, covering 5355 km by rail and another ~600 km by ferry. The fact that China to South Korea passenger ferries only restarted a few weeks before I used it, together with how the vast majority of passengers were local traders, means that I strongly suspect I am the first person to have done this journey since at l...

Cité de Carcassonne, the very archetype of a medieval fortress. December 2019.  Ryanair's way of negotiating cheap handling fees at small airports is simply to threaten to leave: they are often the only airline serving the airport, so if they leave then the airport will simply cease to exist . Carcassonne is a good example, where it becomes a much more significant tourist attraction simply because Ryanair has cheap flights there - there are so many things that cost more than our £10 tickets from Carcassonne back to Stansted.  Most importantly, it opened up an opportunity to play Carcassonne (the board game) in Carcassonne (the medieval fortress city from which the game is named), and spend a day thinking about trebuchets along the way.  View of the fortress from the Old Bridge.  The fortress itself is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and is one of the best-preserved Roman citadels in Europe. Founded in the Gallo-Roman period in the 3rd Century, it has been a defensive f...

Winter Palace, St Petersburg, December 2019 Getting a Russian visa is usually a very complicated process: you first need a hotel to issue an invitation, then spend a day going to the Russian Embassy to submit your forms and pay a substantial amount of money. However, tourists from the EU and a few Asian countries can now also visit certain parts of Russia with only a free e-visa: the Russian Far East, Kaliningrad, and St Petersburg. The latter is the most worth visiting for now, though there are currently plans to introduce an all-Russia e-visa in 2021. I'll likely visit again if and when that comes into force; I'd certainly like to at least visit Moscow, and the Trans-Siberian Railway remains on my long-term list as well.  For now, the application for St Petersburg e-visas is free and straightforward: filling out a form online, with booked flights and accommodation. The e-visa PDF came through after just a few days.  Luton is my least favourite London airport, but even then i...

Kazakh flag display, Nur-Sultan Kazakhstan isn't a very common tourist destination. It didn't really even cross my radar until I noticed that the cheapest flight back to the UK from China was with Air Astana, the national airline of Kazakhstan, with a 8 hour flight transfer in the national capital, Nur-Sultan. As price is essentially the only factor that decides which airline I fly with, I therefore returned from my couple of weeks in East Asia via Kazakhstan.  Check-in at Beijing Capital airport, even more chaotic than normal The flight from Beijing airport (PEK) was timed to leave at 0255 local time, with a flight duration of 5h55. First, though, came check-in: most of my commercial flying these days is with Ryanair, so it's now rare for me to check-in at a physical desk with hold baggage. I've got used to the ruthless efficiency of low-cost airlines, so the check-in experience with Air Astana was particularly unusual: nearly all the Kazakhs on the flight were checkin...