Travelling Hopefully

So once again I found myself sitting in Sydney airport waiting for a miracle of semi modern engineering to whisk me to one of those places it's difficult to reach on foot.  On this occasion said destination was Brunei.  This was a last minute, scrappily patched together and shoehorned in between university exams (not mine) and random pregnancies (also not mine).

I shall have ten days on Borneo divided between Brunei and Sabah.  A friend of mine invited me to join her in pestering large apes.  Once a little delicate questioning had assured me that she meant orangutans and not her boyfriend I agreed.  Sorry Dan, you're just not my type.

Since my friend (her name's Amanda by the way) and Dan had a few other items on their agenda we agreed to meet in Sabah.  This would allow us to poke sticks at orangutans together while hopefully not spending enough time in each other's company for them to get sick of the sight of me.  Alternatively they may have invited me solely as a sacrificial goat to hurl at the orangutans should they mass for an attack.

With a few days up my sleeve I decided to visit Brunei because a) it was convenient and, b) I'd ever been there.  Of course travelling to Brunei meant that first I had to travel to Sydney airport.  Normally I catch a taxi which deposits me just outside the gloomy converted barn that serves as a combined check in area/passenger holding pen.  This time however I took the train.  For a couple of dollars less than the price of a taxi the train will take you all the way from your nearest railway station and dump you in a tunnel a several escalator rides below the aforementioned converted  barn.  It does, however, tend to be quicker.

Malaysian Airlines has had a rough few years what with planes getting shot down or vanishing without trace so I decided it would be safer to fly AirAsia which is their idiot cousin.  Being a low budget carrier absolutely everything costs extra.  I was a little surprised to find that the cabin was pressurised as I was expecting to have to buy oxygen as we went along.  There was a sign in the lavatory saying it to drink the tap water, presumably because we haven't paid for it.

I doubt if I will fly a budget carrier again.  Not that there was anything wrong with AirAsia.  So far they've managed to get me to Kuala Lumpur without issue in reasonable discomfort.  I wasn't terribly fussed about it getting a meal on an eight hour flight either.  What brought home the true horror of a budget flight was the dreadful realisation that we weren't going to be given warm, moist towels to wipe our faces with.  Apparently I've become a princess in my old age.