In a little over four months, Mum will be coming to see us here in Kazakhstan again 🙂 Although we had all been hoping this would be possible, since she bought the idea up, with my younger brother and Roz having had a child recently, another bargain holiday for Mum and John found on eBay and the prices for plane tickets to Astana, nothing was guaranteed. We have told Anna that her Nana is coming over, and she points at the photo of her and John, so she might even understand what we’re talking about 🙂 We are all really looking forward to seeing Mum again, and I’m pretty sure Mum will be looking forward to seeing her granddaughter.
Now all I need to do is control my online purchasing, and try not to take Mum over her baggage allowance. If you visit relatives via road, gifts can be reasonably bulky, however as the flight isn’t direct, and you only get 20 kilos, I might need to limit myself to some Shreddies, Orange squash and a couple of powered USB hubs 🙂
Mum did find an airline called Baltic Air (a sort of Ryanair/EasyJet equivalent based in the Baltics) and although their prices were almost half of the next cheapest fare (Turkish Airlines), the reviews indicated that this wouldn’t necessarily be a wise choice to make.
Anyway, John (and Gwen obviously) will be staying in Britian, so we’ll have to wait until out next trip to the UK for a reunion with them, but we’re over the moon that Mum/Carol/Nana is coming to Kazakhstan again 🙂
May 24 2010
Mum Coming To Kazakhstan Again!
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Apr 17 2009
Painful Trying To Extract Info…
Painful Trying To Extract Information from Turkish Airlines – sorting a bassinet for Anna, and find semi-decent timings for flights…
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Sep 04 2008
Downright Disgusting
[EDIT]
Please see here for an update.
Morning everyone. I’ll hopefully be back to posting regularly soon – I’m almost recovered from a bug/flu/bad cold that I picked up on the flight back to Kazakhstan last week (Turkish Airlines are sadly not alone in the pitiful amount of fresh air (as opposed to the germ-laden recycled stuff) used on their flights).
Anyway, onto the reason I’ve made this post. First, please read this story from the BBC website. A brief summary is that a member of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces was refused a room at a hotel in Woking. Apparently it is the management’s and/or hotel’s policy not to accept military personnel!
As long term readers of this blog will know, I am not a supporter of the war in Iraq or Afghanistan per se; however, when it comes down to the lives of those individual people who voluntarily sign up to protect their country, I believe we should show some respect. Support the personnel, even if you don’t agree with the politics. I can only guess that the policy of the hotel has come from previous problems they have experienced with squaddies relaxing a little too much. If so, I can understand how large groups of physically fit men who are trained to fight would not be ideal guests. This does not appear to have been the situation in this case though. One lone man, who was on leave from Afghanistan due to an injury, and was in the area to visit another injured soldier friend needed a place to lay his head and rest for the night. Having been refused a room, Corporal Tomos Stringer had to spend the night in his car.
View Larger Map
(I believe the hotel is located in the centre of this map.)
I would ask all readers (especially those in the UK) to consider calling the hotel to register a complaint about this incident. If you live outside Britain, but still feel strongly enough, I can recommend using Skype (and purchasing some credit) to call the hotel – assuming your normal phone has high international call rates. This is what I did, and left a message for the duty manager. The lady answering the phone behaved in a professional manner, and I would ask any callers to remain civil and simply ask that their disgust with the management be registered and passed on to them.
The hotel’s phone number is (01483) 727100 , or if you are dialling internationally, +44 1483 727100 . Should you live in the Woking area, and have a few minutes spare to actually complain in person, their address is The Metro Hotel, Gwent House, Crown Sq, Woking, GU21 6HR. There are two different addresses listed by Google, with the same phone number, so I’m not sure whether one is simply a correspondence address.
If your job happens to include arranging overnight stays for staff in a hotel, then I would ask you to consider not using this hotel in the future.
If you do not feel anything wrong has occurred, I obviously respect your right to hold a different opinion, but thank you for taking the time to read this message.
Nov 17 2006
This Post Isn’t Useful
for the vast majority of my occasional readers.
It is mainly here so I don’t need to go digging the paperwork out each time I need to check flight info.
These are the flight times for when I return to the UK – sadly without Ira (her work won’t give her any time off until she has been there 6-12 months 🙁 )
Airline : Turkish Airlines
Date of flight to UK : 17 December
Leave Astana 03:30 – Flight 1355
Arrive Istanbul 05:40
Leave Istanbul 08:30 – Flight 1979
Arrive Heathrow 10:30
Date of flight returning to KZ : 30 December
Leave Heathrow 07:55 – Flight 1982
Arrive Istanbul 13:40
Leave Istanbul 16:35 – Flight 1354
Arrive Astana 01:45 (31st December)
Airport Codes
Astana – TSE
Istanbul – IST
Heathrow – LHR
Times that show ??:?? need to be updated – the ticket only mentions departure times, not arrival…
Nick (my brother) and Dad will be coming with me on the return journey, and staying in KZ until 9th January 🙂 :> :] :}
[edit] All times updated
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