lost4good

This is a blog: started whilst in flight from Adelaide to Kuala Lumpur to Istanbul to London to our month house-exchange in Truro, Cornwall.
As usual – Narda is italics Terrell whatever. Midway through our flight war begins.

Day One – Feb. 27 I had started a new experiment – that’s to break these marathon trips into manageable pieces – so Adelaide to KL, stay overnight in a nice hotel. So far pretty good. We had a long layover in KL in Holiday Inn.

Day Two – Feb. 28 On our way to Istanbul, we started to read alarming headlines: – U.S. military has begun major operations in Iran – “Our objective is to remove the evil regime” – We are no longer going straight to Istanbul – Iran makes retaliatory strikes on US military bases, Qatar, Bahrain, Abu Dhabi

Our plane diverted to Jeddah for refueling & having diverted to avoid Iran.

Update on our great idea of splitting the travel into 3… Don’t bother. The hassle for buying visas! $90 for me so that we can sleep in a cheaper hotel. It’s not worth it.

With not much to do aside of watching a documentary; I had two on the go. The first, and my main man musical master; “Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese” I am watching on my phone. The other, the only thing I could find to watch on the airplane screen, “Becoming Led Zeppelin which was quite good.”

So, this first ramble was on the first section; Adelaide > Kuala Lumpur, that I wrote on my phone.

Again. That’s my first thought of heading down our driveway which has a magical bus stop at its end. It leads us or cocoons us to wherever we wish to be. Last time we went into our special place and soon…well days later because Australia is a long way from anywhere, we were in Amsterdam. A time before that we were suddenly (sort of) in Hanoi. Other times Washington DC, Lahore, Pakistan, Paris, Delhi, Mexico City, so many places. 

This time to London then a six hour train to southern England. Truro in Cornwall for a month then Washington DC then upstate New York to see my sister from my mother’s side (I was adopted in 1950 and first met/found my sister in 1987 and met my brother from my mum’s side in 2002 in Hilo, Hawaii.) I only met my brother from mum’s side once, sister Sue I have met a few times; firstly, with my two boys in tow, age 11 &  9, in 1992. Then with Narda in 2002 and often whilst we lived in New York 2002-2011, a few times since, from our trips to the States with the last time a couple of years ago. 

That’s not the story now where our magical bus stop is taking us because after England and DC we are going to meet my brother from a different mother for the first time. I never knew about my father’s side, except for a name on my birth certificate. Sister Sue mentioned a few times about my father’s family, but I never had contact with them.  

Narda and I were on a cruise through the Suez Canal last December https://neuage.me/suez-canal/ when I received a message from sister Sue that a person wanted to get in touch with me who probably is my brother, from a different mother. Robert wrote that he was able to open New York records after 70 or so years and up popped me. A second time to have a brother named Robert. The first one was my adopted brother, Robert Adsit (I was an Adsit until 1980 when I got married the first time and neither of us would change our name to the other and my best mate said “you two think you are such New Age people just use that. We thought that sounded stupid so after numerical and astrology research changed our name to Neuage. Of course, after three years together it was painfully obvious we were not new-age people so we did a sloppy half ass divorce and I became a sole parent for the next 15+ years as a prisoner of South Australia; Court wouldn’t let me take my children to the USA to live, though I took them via court sanctioned visits a few times to the States.) wow that was wordy.  

So, to make a short story a rambling exercise into an alternative chat gpt precise narrative I seem to have a new brother at the age of 78. Which is great because my first Robert died of AIDS in 1992 aged only 48. 

We have written one another heaps going through the getting to know you phase. So this trip will be somewhat of a self-reveal. For example, do genes govern stuff. What will we have in common am I somewhat of my maternal mum’s side or is there influence from the father’s side? I am on my mum’s side politically according to sister Sue and brother Euclid in Hawaii. Not that I am political at all except I really liked Obama, Clintons, Biden, JFK, those sort.  

In Australia we get a fine if we don’t vote so I vote for whom my wife says to vote for, the good wife of the past 25+ years who kept her name, making the Neuage clan only three strong now. Australia seems to always be the same no matter who is in charge. I don’t even know who the head of our state is, let alone the mayor of Adelaide which I assume there is one. 

Anyway, this is not our blog really for this trip. Our real traditional travel blog will be at the end March probably early April when we are in DC staying with Narda’s son, his wife, sons and we will have three weeks of not much to do because what is there to do in such a non-descript low key town as Washington DC during a war? 

We have prepared for this trip heaps. Firstly, UK. We have watched the entire ten seasons of Doc Martin now for the second time because Truro is less than an hour from Port Isaac where the series was filmed and where the movie “Fisherman’s Friend” was filmed, both of them. And nearby Pirates of Penzance was filmed, a musical Narda has done with various schools over decades of being a music teacher. And some cool islands to go to. It will be good to get a change in weather from the nasty hot weather of Adelaide to cold southern England. We have exchanged cars too and the Cornwall coast is supposed to have a wow factor attached.

And best of all. King Arthur’s birthplace is nearby. I was so obsessed by him for years. Even for a decade (1970s) when I was in an occult-order in Hawaii etc. and they changed my name to Brother Arthur…go figure.

We have met the people we are exchanging with. They have children in Adelaide.  

I have been closely watching the news of lately. Just in case and all. Today is Friday 27^th of February. Lots of media saying looks like USA and Iran will have a go at one another this weekend and here we are flying about the place. Of course, last trip I was worried too. We were on a ship going through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea. That trip was cut in half due to folks bombing ships in the area. We told those stories in the last blog OMG   

We have had many such times from a stay in Guatemala City where we could only go out of our hotel even to cross a street to a restaurant with a machine gun totting dude. Or the time in Mexico City when we were told by our Airbnb host, “you went where?” because I wanted some photos of graffiti for my son, Sacha, in some sketchy area, apparently a very dangerous area, but we didn’t know. And on and on. I was even worried last year going to the Netherlands when Russia said they would nuke some European cities. I should stop worrying. Even lately, telling folks we are going to the States there has been some words to the effect of..”are you sure..kind of crazy there now.” 

And this is my start to our trip…on a flight on Malaysia Airlines…you know the airlines that disappeared a few years back, and which got shot down in the past. Life is good. We are trying something different this time. Instead of straight through for 24-30+ hours, Australia to Europe we are making two stops. This flight is to KL and we have 19 hours layover where we go to a hotel and sleep then a 10 hours or so to Istanbul with a 15 hour stop over and a hotel before going on to London. Hopefully we will not be so exhausted this trip.  

The reason we are doing less than 24 hours stays is so we don’t need to deal with our suitcases. We checked them in Adelaide, and we collect them in London. This takes care of a problem in the past. Last trip was awful lugging our crap around for three months. Way too much stuff. I even had my fold in half electronic piano and we had winter clothes for six weeks in the Netherlands, Christmas presents for our weeks in Thailand with Narda’s son and family from Pakistan. Way too old to lug about so much. This time our suitcases weigh 10-12 kilo’s and we just have our backpacks between Adelaide and London at seven kilos’. My laptop, book, three months of medications; I am old with lots of pre-existing crap. Insurance was $3500 for just USA just for medical. 

 Probably our last trip to USA as insurance will be too much a next time. 80 years old with too much wrong. Not to worry eleven countries in Europe have reciprocal medical with Australia, and after this trip we will focus on them. Of course, Asia is still doable as medical is affordable there.  

Getting old is nasty. In London we have a hotel near Paddington Station and if the world doesn’t end we will take a train to wonderful Cornwall. 

Then we will create and share a proper blog. 

We arrived in KL after our eight-hour daytime flight almost on time. Seemed like we would soon be at our hotel, have some food and off to bed. However, the wonderful world of digital arrival screwed us over. In the past we would get arrival cards on the plane, go through immigration and all would be fine. Now in the wonderful world of the digital nonsense we are all forced to surrender to we had to do the entry visa online. I think we were at the bloody computer for an hour trying to get it to function. A word to the wise – fill in the visa form before leaving your nest – anyway, eventually we got our sorry asses through that awful experience through customs and grabbed a taxi to Holiday Inn Sepang – Airport. A very good stay, four-star, unlike in the States where it is usually barely a three star. We had stayed in the Holiday Inn in Doha last year and that was very good too. We wandered out for dinner not knowing it was Ramadan and everywhere was booked out. We talked a restaurant into getting us take away food, found a nearby Bruger King and ate our lovely, imported dinner there. I guess that people don’t want to be seen in Burger King breaking their fast.

The stopover in Kuala Lumpur had been the easier one, and we genuinely enjoyed it. But as we compared our options, it became clear that two nights in Doha would have been better—though, in hindsight, we were lucky we didn’t go through with it.

On our last trip, the young guy sitting next to us turned out to be surprisingly pleasant. He lives in Malta and had that relaxed, easygoing energy that makes long flights feel a little shorter.

Somewhere in the shuffle of boarding, I managed to lose Terrell’s boarding pass. That set off a small adventure of its own—chasing around the terminal to get another one printed. In the middle of that scramble, we discovered something unexpected: Terrell had used his U.S. passport to apply for the new regulation in the UK, which complicated things more than we anticipated.

It was one of those travel moments where everything feels slightly chaotic, yet somehow still becomes part of the story.

Life is good. We got some sleep and headed off to the airport next day for our flight to Istanbul. One of my extreme worries was could something happen this weekend between Iran and Isreal? There had been suggestions in the media and of course social media had all kinds of nutcases giving out predictions, with lots of conspiracy theories  (which eventually, unfortunately, came to pass).

The Turkish Airlines flight KL to Istanbul then after a night there on to London seemed all good and on time, to begin with.

February 28th. The world shifted today. The United States launched an invasion of Iran, taking out the leadership — clerics, officials, even the Ayatollah, who had grown deeply unpopular. Many leaders were killed, and Israel was involved as well.

We left KH and spent a calm night at the Holiday Inn. But things changed on the next flight. As we were boarding, news broke Iran had begun retaliating, striking American air bases.

We realized how lucky we were not to have taken that long layover in Doha. The people who did were stuck inside the airport, some losing their flights because “war” wasn’t covered.

Our Turkish Airlines pilot handled everything with steady confidence. Mid‑flight, he made an unannounced change of course, diverting to Jeddah for a fuel stop so he could steer far away from the bombing.

We eventually made it safely and spent the night in Istanbul.

Sidenote at the moment, sixth of March…we had met a dude from India on one of our trips a few years ago. He has said sometime when we are in India look him up and he will show us around. Narda just wrote him to say where in the world are you now and that we are looking at going to India in October- November this year. Well he is in Dubai. Now sending us clips of incoming missiles (being shot down) and telling about his life there. He has his own bit coin company…so we know someone who makes money and who is in Dubai as Iran is shooting missiles at them. All very interesting – at the moment we are safe in our home exchange in Truro, Cornwall, writing this.

I was watching the Led Zeppelin when I for an unknown reason I switched to live TV. OMG look what was on…I looked around the plane, no one else had this on their screen. Narda had just fallen to sleep so I awoke her. After an hour with us realising this all looked quite bad the head pilot dude announced that instead of continuing to Istanbul we would be going to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. We had initially had a flight over Iraq and northern Iran. No one quite knew what would happen when we got to Jeddah. Basically, we would be refueling to make a detour then go straight up over the Suez Canal to Istanbul. We had hoped to get off the plane, but we were left to wander up and down the aisle. I just wanted to eat. No one was willing to serve us. I said I was diabetic and needed to eat. I was given two hard rolls and butter.

Eventually we were on our way, war seemed to be raging nearby, but we were headed off to Istanbul. Soon we did get a meal, which was quite good. Turkish Airlines does good meals.

In Istanbul nightmares of possibly of our own doing engulfed us. We had booked a hotel – airport hotel it was called – before leaving Adelaide. It was part of our new clever-us aging people to get to where we were headed in life in a most comfortable fashion. Instead of flying from Adelaide to northern Europe, which is what we usually do; for example, five-months ago when we went to Amsterdam for our six-weeks stay, then on to the cruise through the Suez Canal and popping into Narda’s co-music teacher in Saudi Arabia we went via Doha. Most people do this. Adelaide (or one of those other towns: Melbourne, Sydney, Perth, Brisbane – etc.) via Doha or Dubai to Europe. But not us, this time, we were doing the elderly slow way, taking overnight breaks along the way. Of course, in hindsight, lucky we did, because here we are now in the UK with all those other folks stuck in Doha or Dubai. And news is coming in that even Turkey is under attack and the Istanbul Airport is going bonkers.

Back to our miserable time in Istanbul. So, we were already arriving late, like 10 pm instead of 4 pm. We had to get our boarding pass for the next day to London which was OK. We had to leave the airport to get to our hotel. Shock…we had to get a visa to enter Turkey. We thought back in Australia that since it was an airport hotel and one night that we did not need a visa. Big mistake. $90USD ($128 Australian). We argued. No one cared that we were just out of the airport for eight or nine hours. We had to get a three-month visa even if walked out of the airport one foot. One lucky thing was that for some odd reason, USA citizens did not need a visa. I quickly pulled out my USA passport and we ended up only paying $90USD for my Australian sidekick. We got a taxi to our “airport-hotel” which turned out to be twenty-minutes away and around midnight we got to our hotel. It was a cheap ass no frills hotel, meaning no restaurant, no coffee in the room, not even a front door; it was being renovated. Our cheap ass hotel just cost us $90USD more plus about $20USD for a taxi each way.

We were up at six am and of course, there was no one at the front desk – not until 9 am the sign said, so we went out looking for food. Not to complain, but it was cold. Like five degrees centigrade and we had sent out suitcase through from Adelaide to London, so I just had a tee-shirt. After ten-minutes of shivering we found a hotel that served a great Mediterranean spread of cheese and olives and a hardboiled egg and a small paper cup coffee.

As there were a lot of ‘airport hotels’ in the area there were many taxis lingering about and we were at the airport five hours before our flight to London.

We should, could, point out that the last time we were with Turkish Airlines was in 2021 flying business Lahore > Istanbul > DC. Not because we are wealthy, but because the business price on Christmas Day was close to the price of economy. We had just spent a week in Lahore for Brendan and Sofie’s wedding.  We spent Christmas Day in the business lounge. Narda played Christmas songs on the grand piano and we ate all day at their wonderful food counters.

I found lots of prepared salads, and of course at the coffee centre there was an endless supply of Turkish Coffee which I drank an endless amount of (I would be awake all the way to DC – more than 30-hours since Christmas Day began in Turkey and ended in DC, whilst Narda slept about seven hours on the way in her comfortable business class flatbed – I spent the whole time on the internet – who would guess?). We wandered around the airport – it was very quiet in our area. All this and more is in our blog for then at https://neuage.org/covid-worldtour.html and yes, we did get covid the day we arrived in DC and that of course is another whole story.

When we went to check in, we realized that we had lost one of our boarding passes, mine. To get into the UK now one needs a visa, like everywhere else. We made a mistake in Australia and got one through a third party paying $93USD instead of the $22 if we had done it on their official website. This trip is getting expensive due to mistakes, perhaps we are getting long in the tooth after twenty-five years of so much travel. Anyway, they said I did not have my visa. We had four dudes at customs working on this as we had a printout that we had paid for a visa. It took us all about fifteen minutes to realize that I had used my USA passport to get the visa and not the Australian passport I usually travel on. With my little stamp now on the back of my passport, we managed to get ourselves onboard and life was good howbeit exhausting. We arrived in London at 4 pm and had our first coffee,

grabbed the train to Paddington and to our hotel, which we had stayed at before, expensive but cozy; Balmoral House Hotel. Five-minute walk from the Paddington Station.

We landed at London Heathrow without any drama, everything moving along smoothly. From the airport, we took the train into the city and got off at Paddington Station.

Once again, we stayed at the Balmoral Hotel — this time in a lovely downstairs apartment on the newer side of the road. It felt familiar but refreshed, a comfortable place to settle after the journey.

Then the next afternoon we took the five-hour train trip to Truro which will be our next blog.