Apparently AirAsia is now taking reservations for a new London – Kuala Lumpur route. For 200 pounds round trip. I’m not kidding. Check it out.

Of course it’s for a select period of time and doesn’t include food during your 12 hour flight. But I’m willing to pack a couple meals. And looking at times when I would actually be able to fly to spend a bit of time in Malaysia I think I would end up paying something like 450-500 pounds. That’s still about half the cost of a normal flight.

Hat tip to my house mate for pointing this out. Apparently it’s only been available since yesterday.

I was sitting in my living room on a rainy Sunday in London bemoaning the weekend’s terrible weather and my resulting weekend indoors watching movies. One of my neighbors ran into the house the rain and upon hearing my reaction to the weather told me: life isn’t about weathering the storm, it’s about learning to sing in the rain.

That might be some of the best advice I’ve ever received, and you can rest assured that I’ll repeat it. It also happens to have been the perfect advice for this weekend as I walked around Amsterdam in the snow and wind with nothing even close to proper clothing. Toughing the cold paid off though. The city of canals was beautiful in the snow.

Photo: Amsterdam this Sunday during a break in the snow.

Rather than fly straight back to London from Amsterdam this weekend, my buddy and I caught a cheaper flight to Birmingham. Before you call me crazy for going to Birmingham, think about all the fun and interesting things between Birmingham and London: Warwick Castle, Stratford-upon-Avon, Oxford, Nottingham, etc.

From Birmingham we hopped a train to Warwick and spent a beautiful afternoon strolling around the castle and feeding the peacocks. We then jumped another train to Oxford, where we made our Tolkien pilgrimage and visited the Eagle and Child for dinner.

If you’ve only got a limited time for a trip, see what airports are close enough to your home or destination to make ground transportation from the airport feasible. In this case we were looking at a couple hours on trains with an added cost of about 35 pounds per person. Then check out what’s between the airport and where you’re going. Never know what cool new thing you might find.

Photo: The afternoon sun from Warwick Castle ramparts.

During the last bit of my trip to Panama, we managed to miss our flight to the San Blas Islands (aka Paradise), on the Caribbean coast. Thanks to some quick thinking and a can-do team spirit we turned disappointment on its head and took a great trip to Isla Taboga (Island of Flowers), an Island just off the Pacific coast from Panama City.

When we returned to the mainland at the end of the day, we were relaxed to the sounds of gentle waves and the sight of a mellow sunset. Just goes to show that if you keep your feet under you, you’re bound to find something beautiful no matter what potholes you may cross in your travels.

If you have a picture that you think would make a good background, send it to me at weldon [at] questingforadventure.com with the story and I’ll put it in rotation.

Outdoorzy.com is taking votes for the 2008 Gearzy Awards. There’s not much of a statement about what winners receive other than bragging rights, and there’s little in it for the voter as well. As such, I wouldn’t promote the vote except that you get to see the results after you vote, and by beloved backpack maker is in a close second. I won’t tell you who that is since that goes against the democratic process, but if you go and vote now then you’ll likely find out.