It was a sophisticated journey.  I flew from Jakarta to London via Abu Dhabi with Etihad Airways.

A touch screen gave me access to no less than six views of the flight and it’s route – including live cameras showing images from under the plane – shame it was a night flight!  This was on top of a sizeable number of games, movies, tv programmes etc.

I watched the film Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which I highly recommend, as well as a promotional film about Abu Dhabi.  So now that I’ve seen all it’s highlights I don’t feel inclined to go there – I will stick to Bali.

Although my seat was in the economy section there were plug sockets for laptops/mobiles and even a phone was available on the first leg of the journey.

The free wine with dinner went down well and, to top it off, just before starting the descent there was mood lighting that changed through a rainbow of colours.

For me, it was a little disconcerting to see so many women covered head to foot in black with only a small slit showing their eyes in Abu Dhabi – in the same way that I find it uncomfortable talking to someone with dark sunglasses on.

I feel that both situations only give a fraction of the picture or story – but hey, that’s none of my business and maybe they feel it is disconcerting to speak with people who show their face!

I will be in London for a 3 week holiday – catching up with family and friends which I’m looking forward to – then back to Bali and to Rumah Jepun ahh.

In March I mentioned that I’d received blog visits from a whopping 53 countries.

However, in just three months that figure shot up to 73 (i.e. 37% of the world’s countries) and today it is a staggering 92 countries (47% of all the countries in the world!) .

The new visitors have come from:  Austria, Barbados, Benin, Bhutan, Croatia, Cyprus, Finland, Hong Kong, Hungary, Kenya, Lithuania, Malta, Nepal, Serbia, Sudan, Sweden, Taiwan, Turkey, Venezuela, the Virgin Islands, Trinidad and Tobago (I thought that maybe I could tick off the ‘W’ from my list, but apparently the West Indies isn’t classed as a country, but as a group of islands).

Bulgaria also made an appearance and since then Moldova, Guam, the United Republic of Tanzania, Haiti, Chile, Lebanon, China, Bulgaria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Costa Rica, Guadeloupe, Iceland, AP, Tunisia, Maldives, Mauritius, Brunei Darussalam all came to visit – welcome and thanks for stopping by.

This map, courtesy of WordPress, shows where all you guys have come from:

Map of countries July 12

So, to complete my A-Z collection of visitors, I’m still hoping to get people from countries beginning with the letters:  O, Q, W, X, Y and Z  such as: Oman, Qatar, Western Sahara, Xanadu, Yemen and Zambia (ok, ok, I know that Xanadu isn’t real but there isn’t a country beginning with X).

Of course, it would also be great to get more visitors from around the world, wherever they may be – so please use the ‘Share this’ option at the bottom of my blog – lets colour this map ORANGE!

Meanwhile, I should mention that, aside from having 1410 virtual visitors from Indonesia since these records began, in February, I have also had ‘real’ visits from… monkeys recently!  Take a look here if you want proof.

Thank you for stopping by.