Got up c.7am. When forced, it's amazing how easy I find this if I force myself!! Hee hee!!

Finished packing. Have probably taken too much stuff; even though I've hardly brought anything. There's a lot of bottles and stuff that though small don't actually pack too well. Plus my walking boots take up a bit too much room. Cleared up my webmails and made sure that everyone knew I was going away.

Went to Birmingham City Centre. Had to buy a few things - got four disposable cameras for the price of two, some shaving gel cos I forgot to bring it I think, a second pair of trousers, and picked up my Chinese currency. Was almost as uninspiring as I thought!

Took the train to International Station; checked in and stuff. My rucksack was oddly defined as being "oversized" so had to be taken to a separate luggage entry place; was asked if there was anything electric in it and buggered if I could remember!!

At the airport, lol something made me laugh; a lady in her 40s/50s came back to her family, smiling, and shouted in a posh kind of voice "oh bugger!". Her plane was delayed apparently. Then she saw someone she hadn't seen for a few years and they had a kind of reunion. Cute!

Can't really remember my flight from Birmingham to Munich, was a bit non-descript. Small aeroplane, nothing too exciting. Had some food on the plane, can't remember what but I know it wasn't chicken ... !! I didn't feel at all strange flying out, it didn't really bother me; I like to travel and in any case I had been looking forward to this for some time. In any case I knew I would be taking the way back before too long.

Spent about three hours in Munich airport. Didn't do too much; wrote a bit of my story "Louise", and read a bit. Lots of Yugoslavians were around in the airport, don't know if they were coming or going or what they were doing there in the first place! They seemed to be a couple of sports teams, I'd guess basketball or volleyball or some such sport like that. Must ask Jelena.

The aeroplane to Hong Kong was much larger, an A340 Airbus. Everything seemed to be in little sections on the plane, rather than it being one whole compartment like on the earlier flight. It was a long flight, some ten hours, so I managed to grab a few snatches of sleep.

The food came relatively late really, just after midnight CET. We had a kind of choice between salmon, and chicken/noodles in chilli. Had the chicken. Chilli it wasn't lol. We had a starter and a dessert too, although even less memorable than the main course!

There was some "entertainment"; sort of like in-flight radio. Mainly repeated - each "segment" on each channel was repeated every two hours. I flicked between the pop, rock, and oldies channels!

They had a few news and entertainment programs on the TV screens; nothing terribly interesting but they were available in English and German soundtracks. Not Chinese, surprisingly. Made a note of a couple of songs to download when I got back home, that were shown on one of the programs.

They also showed a couple of movies en route; after the food so very late! First up was Spiderman - and I have to say I pretty much slept through it; managed to watch the first twenty minutes but that was about all. The second movie, on much later, was, er, "High Hopes" or something, which I'd never heard of and didn't look interesting anyway so I listened to the radio!

I did stand up and move about a bit on the flight, I had an aisle seat so I was pretty much OK on that score.