Back on the road again

So, where were we?! After leaving Malaysia we returned to Singapore briefly to await our flight home to the UK. On our last evening in Asia we visited the nearly brilliant Night Safari at Singapore Zoo. I say nearly because it's a bizarre concept where you get driven around the park in a "tram" (basically a glorified tractor and trailer painted with zebra stripes) to look at the animals in semi-natural surroundings – in the dark. It's hard enough trying to spot zoo animals in their enclosures in broad daylight so adding the element of darkness seems a bit thoughtless. In a bid to give you at least a fighting chance of seeing something, the zoo keeps the animals awake by not feeding them until night-time and shining giant spotlights at them. This means you end up being driven past tired and grumpy creatures who are up way past their bedtimes. Odd.

Our flight back to the UK was one of those disappointing experiences that people always bore you with after they've just been on a long haul flight. So here goes…

We were flying on an Airbus A380 – the largest commercial aircraft in the world, which has two decks and can seat about 700. Which meant it was exceptionally bad luck that Singapore Airlines managed to put us behind the two most annoying passengers to have ever been on a plane. They were parents to arguably two of the loudest children on all of God's green Earth, screaming pink bags of anger who chose to demonstrate their vocal range for quite a large proportion of the flight. The parents, in turn, were the two most ineffectual, self-centred, hapless and annoying humans ever to have been sold a plane ticket. I think they must have assumed that they were the world's first ever parents and that their cacophonous offspring were some sort of royalty for whom nothing should have been too much effort. This is the only reason I can imagine that they thought it was ok to commandeer 50% of the cabin crew to attend to their massive list of very specific needs: they wanted hot water to warm the baby's milk DURING TAKE OFF; they wanted other passengers to move seats so that they and their children could all sit exactly where they wanted; they wanted other passengers' luggage moved so that there was room for their SIX massive bags. Yes, SIX! I tried to block out most of what was going on by plugging myself into the in-flight entertainment system and watching a marathon of five films back-to-back but even this proved difficult as they kept leaning on my seat-back screen in order to constantly fetch, replace or fiddle with these surely allowance-busting (and I repeat) SIX giant pieces of carry-on. Even our in-flight meals were delayed as the trolleys couldn't get down the aisles because they were blocked by these two insufferable knobs and their spawn. Fifteen hours this went on for.

So, we came back to the UK for another brief hiatus while we tried to organise the next bit of our trip. Now, those of you who have followed this blog from the beginning (God bless you), will be aware that "Leg 3" of our world tour was originally going to be spent in South America. However, two things have caused us to change our plans. Firstly, we have had enough of spending inordinate amounts of time on knackered old buses, struggling with communication and generally following thousands of other slackers and layabouts around – a pattern we feared may have been repeated in South America. Secondly, we really loved the freedom we had in our camper van, bimbling around Europe, stumbling across all sorts of random nonsense and generally not being tied to timetables. The result? We have flown to the US of A and are going to spend the next 90 days cruising around in what the Americans refer to as an RV. Road trip!

Some of you will know that, in the past, I have not always got along with Americans, their sometimes annoying ways and often bizarre attitudes (some people say they don't understand irony but surely that can't be true when 90% of them are against abortion but support the death penalty!). So why have I agreed to tour this seemingly irrational nation? Well, to see if I've been wrong. To see if they're not all that bad really. To see if I can grow to love this country and its baffling inhabitants. Wish me luck.