So, the trip over. In summary, it goes like this :
Taxi, wait, plane, wait, plane, walk, train, train, train, RUN, train, taxi, collapse !
In a little more detail, that was a taxi to Melbourne airport, flight to Bangkok.
Bangkok airport is huuuuge, and has insane amounts of duty-free shopping. There were a fair number of people going around with face masks, perhaps 10% of them. We also had an extra security check while waiting at the departure gate for the London leg of our flight - everyone sitting in the dep. lounge was made to get up and queue up for a bag inspection and another run over with the hand-held metal detectors.
I dozed a fair bit of both flights, although I was still awake for enough of the time to finish the book and magazine I had brought and get very bored.
I've decided that now that the novelty of flying has worn off, the best that a flight can aspire to is "uneventful" - and every now and then some of the other possibilities flash through my mind.
We got to London (Heathrow airport) a little late, and went in search of showers. This involved walking from Terminal 3 to Terminal 1 (through various underground tunnels). We finally found them, and Lisa had a shower, but we had to skip mine because it was then 9:00 am, and we had to get into the city to pick up our train tickets to Edinburgh. We got the Heathrow Express train in to Paddington, found our way to the Paddington Underground station, caught a train to Edgware Rd (the next stop !), then caught a train there which went to King's Cross. We had to pick up the tickets at St. Pancras, and depart from King's Cross, or so we thought, but really they seem to be all one station. Thanks to helpful directions from a ticket inspector we found the ticket place easily, and then ran for the train, and got on board at ... 9:59 (am) ! Whew. And then we had around 5 hours on the train to pass to get here, and finally got here and taxied to the apartment we are staying in this week.
Last night, after showering and freshening up, we went for a little walk, and had roughly equal doses of sunshine and rain with cold wind. Today, feeling much better after a good night's sleep, we are back in town, and have got ourselves pre-paid SIMS for our phones, and found ourselves an Internet place. More updates later ...