12th January : Due East........sort of.

This is our ninth year of using Blogger (8 X Radinja 1 X Radinoz) and every year some new wrinkle appears. Apologies for the lack of paragraphs in yesterday's post but Blogger appears to have stopped recognising the return key. Eventually we will find a solution to this but until then please bear with us.

We discover why the Brunel is less expensive than other hotels around. It is easily the noisiest hotel that we have experienced anywhere outside Asia. We take the first big risk of our trip and clean our teeth with London water. Yeuchh! One of the handles falls off our suitcase. Fortunately the screws that hold it in place are still inside the case. A job for another day. 

At 06.40 we step out into the gloom and drizzle for the short walk to Paddington station and the Heathrow Express. Unexpectedly this is decked out in Tata Communications logos but Paddington is much too sedate at this hour to be mistaken for an Indian Railways terminus. 

The Heathrow Express is a new experience for us and we are impressed. Comfortable seats, air conditioning and plenty of room for luggage. Our immediate destination is Terminal 4, which involves changing trains at 2/3. This gets even more exciting. Less than two hours into day 2 of our trip and already on our fourth train. We sit down and wait. And wait and wait. After about twenty minutes we are told that there is a serious fault with the train doors and that we need to get off and move to another platform. Here we wait again before boarding a much less impressive Heathrow Connect train for the five minute transfer to T4. 

Vietnam Airlines check in is painless and we make our way, via Fast Track security, to the SkyTeam Lounge where a charming young lady welcomes us and invites us to partake of a complimentary Full English breakfast. Rather ungraciously R wants to know why there is no Scottish option. We get stuck into the freebies and have time to experiment with Blogger in the hope of solving the paragraphs problem. Time will tell. 

We board our Boeing 787 Dreamliner at around 10.20 and settle in to our seats. The champagne is soon doing the rounds and it seems rude not to partake.

 The flight departs on time at 11.00 and once we reach cruising height lunch is served. This is six courses and the best airline meal that we have ever had. The wine is rather classier than on Virgin Trains, served in smaller glasses but regularly topped up. Straight after lunch the lights are dimmed and we settle down for a siesta. The pod seats do fully recline and are pretty comfortable but sleeping at 1 pm does not come easy.

We have been warned not to have too high expectations of Vietnam Airlines entertainment offering. There are two films D has heard of. One has already been seen and considered pretty awful. The other was not recommended by a trusted pal. The TV section is not too exciting either meaning that D has to forgo his annual Big Bang Theory binge. The audio section caters for an eclectic mix of tastes but it seems inappropriate to listen to Revolutionary Songs in Business Class.

Loading a few thrillers on the Kindle paid off and being awake during the darkness was rewarded with regular top ups from the bar. The best thing on the entertainment system was the Skymap which charted our progress. D had assumed that our route will follow some sort of Great Circle trajectory across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and China but it is nothing like that. We duck and weave, conspicuously avoiding Poland, Iraq and Iran before enjoying the airspace above Tajikistan, Afghanistan and Pakistan. We then fly across India at 41,000 feet for around two hours, passing over Jaipur, Jhansi and the Northern suburbs of Kolkata. We see lots of names that we recognise, evoking Radinja past, as well as one quite large place near Kolkata called Haora. No idea about that one. All of this is in darkness so the on screen map is as good view as we are going to get.

Just after we cross the Myanmar border breakfast service begins. It is 8.20 pm in London and 3.20 am in Ha Noi, neither of them very civilised options. Vietnam Airlines ease the pain by offering bar service with breakfast. Champagne seems to fit the bill. By the time things are cleared away there is less than an hour of flight time left. The next post should be from Vietnam itself.