Holiday nightmare

Just occasionally things can go s badly wrong with a holiday that one wishes one had never gone.  And I was so looking forward to my fortnight in Penang too. So what went wrong?

Well I was due to fly out early  Saturday afternoon, but flight was held up because a woman was taken ill on the plane (and indeed must surely have been feeling unwell before she boarded). Anyway, upshot was we spent 3 hours on a plane taxiing around Heathrow. Enough of a delay that I missed my connection at Abu Dhabi as the plane to Kuala Lumpur was taking off just as we landed. While they did put me up in a 5 star hotel that's not much consolation when you check in at 4am. There is of course nothing to do there beyond go to a shopping mall. I would rather poke out my own eyes...

And I wasn't best pleased that at 4 am, I needed to go back to reception twice as the door keys didn't work. Checking in took ages. And to be cheerily told that breakfast starts at 6am...

Now, obviously the Park Rotana is a stylishly designed hotel, but utterly soulless and one suspects a lot of its custom comes from delayed flights. There seems little other reason to stick up this in the desert. Abu Dhabi is a bit rubbish as you might imagine, and clearly not a proper economic proposition. The hotel they was well underutilized with a significant number of guests being stranded flyers like me. A few Arabs with tented women in tow, but that's all. Nothing to do but eat from the very well stocked, ie grossly overstocked, buffets. One could get a bus to the shopping mall, but who wants to shop? 

There was a pool, but obviously I had no kit without luggage. At least the sun loungers were in shade, not of an umbrella but the tall chacterless blocks of the hotel.  But then you got the flies, so I soon resorted to my room and just read and watched TV. And snoozed. No free wifi of course. (Saw the Scottish film Sunshine on Leith - as incongruous a setting as imaginable)

So I got collected in the evening, and now was forwarded via Hong Kong (nice airport I had seen in 2014) rather than KL. And just listened to the hundredth announcement about Ebola in the airport. HK health paranoia!

The little Dragonair flight to take me to Penang

So eventually I arrived At my Penang hotel 24 hours late. Sadly my luggage was still a further day away so it was Tuesday evening before I had got my first change of clothes. A sweat shirt and chinos are not ideal for 4 days in any climate let alone this one. Complete nudity is apparently frowned upon here so I had to make do. Skinny dipping in the pool wasn't, it seems, an option.

I had also lost all contact with UK as though I had all my devices in my hand luggage the chargers were in the luggage. So what did I learn from my emails? That I had been burgled again! As when this happened a few years ago, not much stolen. I probably need an alarm. Or a sign telling potential burglars I am an old codger with no jewellery or modern mobile devices and they would be better off staying home and watching the TV than wrecking my windows at irregular intervals.

So, bad starts to a holiday don't get much worse.Its difficult to get in "holiday mode" when you are thinking how bad the burglary might be.