The Koetsy Capers

Our latest adventure started with an overnight stay in Kuala Lumpur in an attempt to be in a somewhat reasonable condition when we arrived in London, primarily because as soon as we arrived at our hotel, Eily was to whisk us straight to the wheelchair basketball.

The overnight stay in KL did work to a certain degree – however to claim that one will step off a 13 hour flight as fresh as a daisy is nothing less than fanciful. Nevertheless, we were certainly considerably fresher than at the conclusion of any other long haul flight we had taken and we were able to go to the basketball and watch the entire game.

But back to the story so far....

 As is usual, the first thing we noticed was the considerable warmth at KL compared with August in Victoria. The next thing that we could not fail to notice was the Immigration desk.

We touched down in KL at around 8.30pm local time. It took nearly 1½ hours to clear immigration. They fingerprinted every foreigner and did not have enough staff on. It was fair to say that we were not in a good mood when we left the airport – it is a very long time to stand in a queue.

We stayed at a hotel named the Concorde Inn which was not far from the airport. The hotel had a courtesy bus running every half hour for 18 hours a day, so getting to and from the hotel was not a problem at all. The hotel, form the exterior, reminded both of us very strongly of the Naviti Resort in Fiji. Whilst the hotel was only a single story building (while Naviti had two or three floors) the Besser block construction of the building, painted white, and the garden and vegetation was very similar. An Asian/western breakfast served in the dining room was a good start to day two as it gave us the opportunity to try something different for breakfast – fried noodles! They were tasty.......

We boarded the aircraft to find that the lady in the seat next to us was a lady from Ballarat. Here is something that will interest Gladys – she was on her way to Scotland to check out births, deaths and marriages for her family tree – she was a very keen genealogist and she was a stickler for proving people and relationships. I gave a wry smile when I heard that.

Arrived in London on Sunday afternoon and got through Immigration in a fraction of the time it took to get through KL.  Because we wanted to catch the basketball, we caught the Heathrow Express, which is a ten minute ride to Paddington station. The tickets cost 38 pounds (around $57) and another 8 pounds (around $12) to get from Paddington to Kings Cross. Travel by train in Great Britain is very, very expensive.

We were about half way from Paddington to Kings Cross when Gloria asked where the duty free grog and smokes was. Dopey had left it on the Heathrow Express....this was turning into an expensive trip. Fortunately, it was only worth about $40 – it is very cheap to buy duty free in KL.

In any case, to the basketball we went as soon as we had checked in at the hotel. Unfortunately, our day just seemed to get worse. Unknown to ourselves, or Eily, the stadium at Olympic Park took around half an hour to walk to from the train station – and there was no other mode of transport except walking. We duly arrived at the stadium to watch GB defeat Poland quiet easily and afterwards spoke with Murray who was very pleased with his team. Thereafter came the long trek back to the station and an eventual return to the hotel at around midnight where sleep came quite quickly.

Unfortunately neither of us slept very well in our extremely small “double bed” This bed turned out to be only 48 inches or 4 feet wide. We think it may have been what we would call a ¾ double bed. There was not a lot of room and a lot of “move over” uttered during the night. The body clock clicked in and I found myself staring at the ceiling at 4am. It was just the start of a long day......

Gloria and I found a place selling a “full English breakfast for 3 pounds 75 p” It turned out to be one small sausage, one fried egg, some very smoky bacon, half a small tomato, about three tablespoons of baked beans and two slices of toast. We gloomily ate our half cold breakfast and swore never to return. A popular vote saw it awarded as the worst breakfast we had ever had overseas.

The basketball was at a different arena named North Greenwich Arena. It is more popularly known as the O2 arena, but the owners refused to sponsor the Olympics in any way, so they renamed the arena for the duration of both Olympics and Paralympics. This resulted in a lost opportunity for the arena owners who have wound up with a poor image amongst Londoners.  GB easily defeated Japan in this game.

After the game we made our way to the train station to find huge crowds waiting for a train. Jac, Eily and Gloria managed to get on but the station staff kept pushing me down the platform to the next carriage, where more station staff did the same again. I eventually found myself at the very end of the train, the only passenger on the platform and more station staff telling me to get on one of the earlier carriages, which I could not. By then I was in a white hot rage and commenced abusing a policeman who responded by marching me to a carriage and bellowing at people to move and he got me on the train. Not a pleasant experience.

The next day (Tuesday) was a lay day – no basketball – and much of it was spent shopping. The return to the hotel was marred by cancelled trains and overzealous and highly offensive and aggressive station staff who kept insisting that trains were not at platforms when the announcers said that they were and forcing us onto express trains that we did not have tickets for. Fortunately the tickets were not checked at the other end, so we did get away with that one.

Wednesday was a quarter final, where GB played Turkey. The game was won by 5 points but was a real heartstopper – Turkey got within 1 point with about a minute to go and looked like winning. This means that GB play Canada on Thursday and the winner of that match plays the winner of Australia v USA to decide the gold medal. Win or lose, Murray’s team will be playing for a medal because if they lose, they play the loser of the other game for the Bronze medal.

Just for a change, other than the basketball, nothing eventful happened.

More to come later......