Finally on!

Paris, Charles de Gaulle.  Wednesday Feb 9th 2011
The first flight of our trip completed here we are with 5 hours to kill before the biggie to Singapore.  Left Spain on a beautiful day having cleaned and generally tidied up the house for Melissa, our trusty cat-sitter.

Stange experience of culture blur as we drove through an industrial estate to reach the airport: at least half the names on the premises were in chinese!  Whether this has long been the case and I'm just more aware than usual in light of our destination, I don't know.  At the airport there were several Chinese passengers on our full flight to Paris and there were whole crocodiles of school children here from China......a sign of the times?
C d G is huge and we had to walk miles but at least we were not in a hurry!  Tried to buy some internet time but Paypal was not in a cooperative mood.  At least it's very quiet and clean here though sofas would be a good idea.
Our first connection with a fellow traveller this trip helped pass the time: a guy born in Vietnam but brought up in Italy who was off to spend time with his wife in Vietnam his first wife, an Italian, having died from malaria 3 years ago.  He showed us pictures of his new bride who looked as stunning as a model but who is a gyaenacological surgeon specialising in oncology but not qualified to work in Europe.  So he has a long distance marriage with frequent trips between asia and europe.  Fascinating glimpse into someone's life and an example of the kindness of strangers when he tried to give us the software for his transaltion programme we were using to comunicate by (he in Italian, we in Spanish).