About the trip
We’re back in the UK after a long, but very fulfilling, couple of weeks travelling to Seoul, Singapore, and Dubai – with a day trip to Malaysia while we were in Singapore.
There have been ups and downs – we saw some amazing things in some places, but had bad experience in others – and I was unwell for the last few days in Singapore but overall I really enjoyed this trip.
I don’t normally like to travel to places that I have been before, as there are so many things to see in the world, but I really enjoyed my second visit to Singapore after visiting for a few days back in 2007. We visited lots of places that I didn’t see last time, and it was nice to spend a bit longer there this time around.
Not only that but I loved Seoul – it was an incredible city with great people and a great atmosphere – so I’ve already decided that I want to return to South Korea to see not only Seoul, but more of the country too. It’s a fascinating place to visit and we only scratched the surface on this trip.
The exception to this feeling is Dubai, where we flew in from today. Maybe we didn’t stay long enough to be able to fully appreciate it but it’s probably somewhere I won’t return to unless it’s on a short stopover again because it doesn’t really fit with my travel priorities. Having said that, I’m glad that we visited as the experiences that we had were great, and it has been somewhere that I’ve been curious about for a while.
The journey back from Dubai was also something that I don’t want to repeat too.
The first leg of our journey
Everything started perfectly this morning and we departed the hotel in a pre-booked transfer at 7am after a quick breakfast. It was only a short ride to the airport so we were there in no time but we weren’t able to check in yet so we grabbed a coffee in Costa while waiting for the desk to open.
Our journey was with Oman Air, with a short transit in Muscat, which is an airline that I had never travelled with before and I picked this route both because it was one of the most affordable, and also to try out a new airline.
The route of our first flight took us straight down the coast between Dubai and Muscat, with the second leg from Muscat to London taking us north along the Persian Gulf before crossing Iraq – passing directly over Baghdad – before crossing Turkey and entering into Europe over Romania and heading directly towards London.
The transit in Muscat was a lot better than the one in Shanghai. The signs made sense, and the staff were great, with the only issue being that my Mum set off the metal detectors both times meaning that she had to be taken into a side room to be checked by a female security officer.
From Muscat to London
Overall Oman Air itself was fine – the cabin crew were great, the planes were comfortable and spacious, and they also have this facility where you can bid to have an empty seat next to you if the flight isn’t that busy so that you can guarantee space to stretch out. This is a facility that we took up and I think we paid 75GBP to guarantee that we would have the row of 3 seats to ourselves for the flight from Muscat to London which, although an additional expense, helped to make the flight a bit more bearable.
In the entry that covered the journey from Singapore to Dubai I mentioned that unruly passengers were one of the things that I hated the most while flying. Unfortunately, we had one of those sat directly behind us in the form of a child who kept kicking the back of our chair, and was screaming at the top of his lungs so loudly that several people from various points of the cabin shouted at them to keep him quiet. On occasions he also started throwing things around the cabin.
In terms of kicking the seats, luckily they noticed that the middle seat was not in use and so they moved him there after a while. This we were thankful for as it meant that he wasn’t kicking either of us, but the noise was unbearable.
Travelling with young children is never easy, and so I feel really bad for the parents, but I’ve been on flights with loud, stressed, crying, or overly excited children lots of times before and this one was by far the worst one I’ve encountered – and he was unfortunately sat in the row behind us.
The parents, to give them credit, tried their hardest to get him to calm down but nothing worked until the Dad had enough and gave him a time out in one of the bathrooms on the plane. He, of course, didn’t lock him in there and he was waiting right outside but he told the child that he was locked in there and the time he spent in there was enough to calm him down that he was only a minor nuisance for the second half of the flight which was fine.
Why I hate the Boeing 787
So yes, overall I really enjoyed my time flying with Oman Air and I would definitely consider them again for a future flight if they were convenient and the price was competitive. The only thing that I would mark them down on, however, is more to do with the feature that makes the Boeing 787 my least favourite passenger airline than it is to do with Oman Air.
Those of you who have travelled on a 787 before will know that it doesn’t have traditional window blinds – opting instead for an electronically dimmable window that you control with the touch of a button. It is this feature that makes the 787 my least favourite passenger airline because, more often than not, crews will just lock the window as it’s darkest meaning that you can’t look out of the window during the flight.
In various forums online this is a controversial subject – some say that it’s good that the windows are forced to be dimmed during flights, but I fall on the side of people who think that airline travel is an amazing thing and it gives us a chance to see more of the world than we would otherwise see – including places that we will never visit ourselves, like Iraq. So I hate it when the window is forced to be dark, meaning that I can’t look out.
I will give the cabin crew some credit, though, as one of them noticed that we were trying to look out of the window and asked if we would like it unlocked for a little while so we looked out. We said yes please, and we were able to look out for about 10 minutes as we flew over Baghdad – keeping the window at medium brightness so that it wasn’t too bright for people – before another member of the cabin crew locked it dark again for the rest of the flight.
But yes, other than the child and the built-in features of the 787 that I don’t like, the flight itself was fine and we landed at London Heathrow right on time.
Arriving back in the UK
As we were arriving in the evening I booked some rooms at the Premier Inn at Terminal 4, where Oman Air operate from, which is conveniently located only a few minutes walk from the terminal and which is connected directly to the terminal by an elevated and covered walkway.
Since it had been a long day we didn’t really do much after arriving other than eating dinner, and I’m now back in my room ready to go to bed after what has been a busy, and long, but really enjoyable holiday.
I have no idea when this blog will appear online – it usually takes me a couple of months to finally type it up and get it online from these notes that I’m writing, but hopefully it won’t take aa long as it has in the past.
Tomorrow all that is left to do is get my Mum back to her train home, before travelling home myself, and catching up on things before returning to work the following day.