Hope you have a good flight Mother Bear

[Dawn]

As long as she knows how to make the rain stop in a few days.....  [

I remember her once telling me that the ritual for this involves a full moon, a totem pole, chickens, nakedness (except for pop socks) and a feather duster (she said something about natural cork and rubber gloves as well but I think this was only a contingency measure in case plan B was needed so fingers crossed!).

Ready? :o

[Welshgirl]

Ready? :o

Absolutely............ not

[Maggiemoo]

If MB really has brought the rain with her, can she please keep it in the Waikato - we don't want no more of that stuff over here in Tauranga!!! ?;D ?Frankie and Ollie can't understand why I won't let them out on their climbing frame (they don't understand that its currently under about a foot of water!!) - I think this is the most rain I have seen since we got here last June.

Maggie

[MotherBear]

As long as she knows how to make the rain stop in a few days.....

Sorry, the way it works is that I have to leave the country before the weather improves. When we were in the UK last August it had been a scorcher before we arrived, then we had 2 weeks of damp and very cool weather during our stay. Hubster's colleague went on leave back to the UK just after we returned to Oman and he reported fabulous weather, so that's about the long and short of it, I'm afraid. The bad weather leaves when we do. I'd better make the most of it as it'll probably be at least 7 to 8 months before I see rain again and then it'll probably dry up before it hits the ground.

I guess we're having more R & R than we bargained for here, as we can't do all the outside work on the house we'd intended to do as it's so wet. Good excuse to chill out and catch up with the rellies.

Dawn, I left my rubber gloves at home so we're stuck with the wet I'm afraid ::). Got the rest of the stuff, but without the gloves it just won't work ;).

Lil Amy said
Not much I can say to it to make it any better but I think a very stern letter to her superiors is in order when you get home.

She IS the 'superior' Amy. She's the manager so we can't get past her to find out who's above her. We now wait with baited breath for her to email confirmation of our hotel voucher for the return journey. She's never made the effort to contact us before despite promises that she'd ring with information. We've always had to chase her, so it'll be interesting to see if we will, in fact, get a hotel booking, otherwise we'll be sleeping on the streets of KL. That, too, could be very interesting. ;D

[Debd]

Hi Motherbear,
I missed seeing you go and now you're here!! I remember your countdown and it seemed yonks before you were due to fly out!
I hope you have a better flight home but before you do, have some good times here! Take care, Debra

[MotherBear]

Thanks Deb. We're enjoying our time in NZ despite everything the weather has thrown at us. There's a terrific amount of fallen branches all over the place due to the high winds, including on huge branch hanging off a tree in our rear paddock. It crash-landed onto the electric fence which is causing difficulties with moving the lawn mowers (cows) to fresh grass. I hope the weather relents soon so that we can enjoy some autumn sunshine before we go back, not to speak of catching up with some more outside jobs that need doing.

[MotherBear]

Well, as you’ll gather from my posts on other threads, we’re safely back in Oman now although not entirely ecstatic at having left NZ. The journey back was rather long and drawn out, as you’d expect, but generally OK. I don't know if it's peculiar to Malaysia Airlines, but every one of our flights, coming and going, has been late taking off :-/. We finally managed to catch up with our hotel voucher (mentioned above) in Kuala Lumpur airport (KLIA) and, despite being a 5* hotel, like the hotel on the trip out, it was very dingy in some areas. I don’t know if it’s the dampness in Malaysia that’s the cause but quite a few places looked like they could desperately do with a makeover. One thing that annoyed us with the KLIA/hotel arrangement was that both times we had to wait over half an hour for a minibus to take us to the hotel, which was about 45 mins. away. There is a tourist-geared service at the airport that delivers people to certain hotels and I’m not quite sure how it works or why the transit hotels are situated so far from the airport. I recognised the driver we’d had on the journey out, but assumed he wouldn’t be taking us this time as it was a different hotel and he was just hanging about doing nothing. In the end, it was him that took us so we can’t understand why we’d been made to wait around for so long, especially having just got off an 11-hour flight. They seem to treat their clients very casually and make no effort to help you on your way to a therapeutic shower and comfy lie down. Although we’d landed around 8 p.m., it was more like 10.30 p.m. when we arrived exhausted at the hotel .

After an early breakfast we were back on the minibus on our way to the airport again. We didn’t realise that we would be calling at another hotel to pick up more passengers but that was fine, until we found ourselves waiting outside in the heat for 30 mins. while said passengers (a party of 4 Indian guys) took their time vacating their rooms. One of our co-passengers became somewhat enraged and verbally attacked the driver , which, at least, livened things up a bit for us. There was no apology for having kept us waiting nor for having curtailed my shopping experience in KLIA :D.

We had a long wait in Dubai airport before we could fly the last leg to Oman. This was puzzling as there were several much earlier flights going to Muscat we could have got on. Was it the dastardly Mary that had a hand in that, too? Even if she didn’t, she certainly did when we came to check in with Oman Air. Although I held a ticket, I didn’t appear on the passenger list because Mary hadn’t confirmed my booking with them. Hubster was OK for some reason, but I wasn’t going to be allowed to travel. That @#$%*& woman had managed to blight every step of our journey to NZ and back again. I just couldn’t believe it. However, fortune smiled on me (for once 8-)) and there was a vacant seat on the plane (very lucky as it’s only a small plane and was the last flight of the evening) so I could travel after all.

Shame that my relief came to an abrupt end when we got off the plane in Muscat to find several other planes had landed at the same time and we had to queue for 2 hours to get through immigration. It’s taken us much longer to get over the journey this time, compared to last year when we went to NZ with another travel agent and another airline. I guess we’ll be going a different route next time in both respects ::).

[MotherBear]

Anyway, aside from all this, we did enjoy our visit and achieved a fair bit of what we set out to do. We had dealings with 1 glazing and 2 heating companies and found them all to be very helpful and knowledgeable about their products. I don?t know about slick, smart-suited salesmen, but the guy from the glazing company was dressed as if he?d just come off the rugby field and sported a massive beer belly, yet he couldn?t have been more helpful, well-spoken and courteous. It must be psychological, but I found his style of dress made him appear more honest because he wasn?t hiding behind the sharp suit normally employed by salesmen. The other salespeople were similarly casually dressed and I felt less under pressure because of their manner and lack of formal business suit. At no time was there any hard sell.

We visited several shops and found it not unusual for them to refer us onto another rival shop that might sell an item just that bit more suited to our needs. We were very happy with the whole shopping experience as we were warmly greeted in many places and involved ourselves in lots of little chats along the way. This simply doesn?t happen here (unless the person is an oriental with a sunnier disposition), as entering a shop or approaching a checkout brings about a scowl and a look that means ?Go away, you?re spoiling my day by just being here?. I felt myself re-emerging as a person again instead of just being a walking wallet and, now I?m back here, I?m feeling quite lonely and bereft.

I wouldn?t say we had a ?wonderful? holiday in the normal sense of tourists doing touristy stuff because it was more of a working holiday, trying to hammer the house into shape. However, the visit only reinforced our beliefs that NZ is a place we would very much like to settle in. For us, it?s not about beautiful scenery (we have that here) and being a great place to bring up the kids (ours are long since grown up), it?s just something that you can?t see, something that?s in the air and something that money can?t buy. We simply just enjoyed being there. We enjoyed a young lad trying to get past us in a shop and saying ?Excuse me please? then apologising for having disturbed us with his presence. We had other experiences like this, too. We enjoyed the food (even just simple stuff like the wonderfully soft, fresh bread products), enjoyed mooching around the shops and doing everyday things. I got to taste some of the typical kiwi fare like kumara chips, hokey pokey ice cream, L & P, a feijoa smoothy, afghan biscuits etc. and enjoyed them all . In short, our time in NZ was more a small slice of life than a proper holiday.

Of course, our experience of living in NZ (NZIS permitting, as usual ::) ) will be different because we hope to retire there, so won?t be doing the ?going to work and living off a small salary? scenario. Instead, we?ll be doing whatever retired people do whilst living off a non-index-linked pension, which will surely test our budgeting skills. We hope this won?t be a problem as we are already mentally preparing for it by living a modest life in some areas so that we can afford to enjoy the things we would like in other areas.

I hope at least some of this makes sense. What we found so acceptable in NZ, may not appeal to those who are looking for different things. We?ve been there twice now and only feel stronger in our decision to gain approval to live there permanently. All that remains to say is ?Bring it on!?

[Glenda]

Hi Mother Bear,

So glad you enjoyed your stay in NZ - the place does have a feel-good factor if you can adjust to the slight change in culture, and ignore or deal with the problem of less money to spend.

:)

Jeez, what a journey back though. ?Your travel agent certainly doesn't believe in good karma. ?If I have to travel back to the UK at any time (heavens forbid) then Malaysia will not be a first-choice stopover.

:)