Given this was a much longer plane trip than I’ve done since my back quit being supportive (both literally and figuratively) we decided to fly with Air Asia and have an airside stopover at KLIA2 including the samasama transit hotel. We also like air Asia as it is cheap with lots of upgrade options so I could get priority boarding, extra legroom, priority check in etc…and as always we found the service and airline pretty good.
The first leg was 5.5hrs Perth to KL. I had paid for priority check in, boarding and extra legroom seats which was a very good call as Air Asia seats are teeny tiny! We were able to snooze for small parts of that flight but as anyone who has been on a plane and is over the age of 10 can attest to…sleeping on planes is hard.
We then had about a 10hr stopover at KLIA2 in Kuala Lumpur so around 8hrs of that was used to sleep at the airside hotel (it takes 6 and 12 hr bookings). I woke up feeling pretty good from that sleep and being able to have a shower also helped. We had lunch at Ah Yum in the KLIA2 food court and I gave my chopstick helpers their first try out. I’m a fan, hopefully they mean I can eat food without wearing half of it now! I also like that these ones are a little more subtle than the cute panda and dinosaur ones they make for little kids.
Second leg was 7.5 hrs from KL to Haneda Airport in Tokyo. I did try for a flat bed “bid” upgrade but no luck. I’ve upped my bidding budget to try again on the way back lol. We had a sonic themed hedgehog themed plane! Both inside and outside.
Before leaving, we did online immigration registration and got a QR code to get through a bit quicker. However as I now use some fairly strong painkiller medications, it turned out some of them are illegal in Japan. I had to do a customs import request. It was a huge ordeal – specifically worded med cert, 4 page application, attaching photos of all meds and their boxes. Then having to wait to see if they would approve. Then when it was approved, I still had to go through the “naughty line” on arrival! Stressful but definitely not worth pissing off Japanese border control / police by bringing them in sneakily…and we were still through in under 2 mins. Just had to show the correct boxes to match to the paperwork.
As we arrived quite late into Tokyo (and had to deal with the customs narcotics declaration debacle) we did a private car transfer to the hotel (argh the cost was obscene) but it all went smoothly with Tokyo Porter.
We checked in just after midnight at the Hotel Risveglia in Akasaka. It’s a great area to stay as it’s cheaper than some of the more central locations but only a 5 min walk from the hotel to multiple train lines. So many good food places around here as well!
If you’re ever wondering how peri menopause makes brains do weird things….I researched our Tokyo hotel for ages for this trip. Read blogs, read online reviews, looked at train lines and access to places we wanted to stay, bed sizes (poor 6ft Brad), pricing and so on.
I finally settled on one after hours of research.
We arrived and B says “this is the exact same hotel we stayed in when we came here in 2020”.
Me: noooo I researched it so much, no way.
He was right lol.
Shout out to this hotel as it is affiliated with the Yamamoto luggage transfer service. So with 2 days notice we were able to fill out a slip, pay at the hotel and sent Bs rather large ski bag on to our accomodation in Nozawa. That will make the transiting part on trains a lot less stressful
Japan tip: We pre loaded our suica cards into our iPhone wallets before we left so that should make things nice and easy to get around. Just tap and go! Easy to add credit with Apple Pay as well
For now it’s sleep catchup time!
Mel's Travel Blog 