Posts Tagged With: Air Asia

Japan 2020 Day 16+17: Niseko to Sapporo to Osaka to Kuala Lumpur to Sydney to Canberra! Phew

Posted on January 23, 2020 by Mel

I was so excited to see my fur babies again today!

Our trip home was a bloody long one! It’s always challenging coming home/going to Niseko due to the Japan domestic travel legs but because we were flying Air Asia it was even longer than usual. On the plus side, the flat beds were once again very comfortable and I had no knee issues because we didn’t spent 12-15hrs in economy.

We left our lovely Freedom Inn hosts with a parting Australian gift of caramello koalas. While we love this accomodation, I am not sure if we will ever return. The large attraction here for B is that you have access to Hanazono lifts early every day and there is very little accomodation on this side of Niseko so its super quiet until around 11am….however as of yesterday a GIANT Park Hyatt hotel has opened on this side of the resort. That, combined with the increase in smaller accomodation venues nearby, means those quiet lift days will be long gone as Hanazono just doesn’t have the infrastructure to support an influx of that many people. It’s just so pretty though! And I really like the small, no drunken idiots feel they accomplish most of the time.

We departed Freedom Inn for Sapporo using a 2hr private transfer as the coach was going to be problematic in terms of timing. It cost a fair bit more than the coach but the stress was hugely reduced around making flights etc. The transfer dropped us at Sapporo’s New Chitose airport and then we flew on a domestic JAL flight to Osaka.

We accessed the public landside lounge there and it was great for a few hours rest while we waited for the air Asia checkin to open. I really wanted to buy duty free in Osaka (ummm hello sake and umeshu!) but had read a lot of things online saying Australian laws now say it will be confiscated if you are transiting in between where you buy it and your Australian destination. Dammit. I used our 6hr stop over here to sit on hold to NRMA insurance in Australia as both our cars have been damaged in a hail storm back home. I did eventually get through. Position 20 was a great improvement from the day before where I was position 189 and the wait time was over 16000 minutes.

From Osaka we flew with flat beds to KL overnight, then had a brief stop before we transited on to Sydney. The air Asia lounge at KL is pretty shit, we highly recommend the SamaSama lounge if you can afford the $30AUD. You get bette power point access, free food and more comfortable chairs. Plus better toilet and shower facilities. This time around we stuck to our included air Asia lounge access since it was only a short stop over. We also got some duty free here – yummy umeshu (plum wine)!

At Sydney we had planned to try something new. Because our flight got in just as the last flight to Canberra for the day left, we were faced with an overnight stay and then an early flight the next day (lots of $$$) or the 11pm bus which meant a 3 hr wait, then a 3hr bus trip and then a 40 min Uber ride home at 2am. Ergh. So we were going to give RoadJet a go. Basically a private car picks you and your luggage up in Sydney and drives you to your house in Canberra. I booked and paid for it about 3 months ago and they have been great with checking in with me beforehand, reassuring me about road closures due to the fires etc. However when we landed, I got an email telling me our hire car in Canberra had been cancelled and there were literally NO HIRE CARS left within two hours of Canberra. So we cancelled road jet at the last minute, hired a car at Sydney airport for 3 weeks and drove 3hrs home.

We finally arrived home just before 1am this morning. Our next few days will be filled with continuing to sort out insurance as it seems there is a good chance both our cars are likely to be write offs….but at least no bushfires came through!

Categories: Japan Snow Trip | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

Japan 2020 Day 1+2: travelling to Osaka

Posted on January 8, 2020 by Mel

At 8am in the morning we dropped Bear and Jet off at their dog hotel (after I interrogated them about their very detailed smoke and bush fire management plans). They love staying at Hanrob and I love that they let them hoard together and manage Jet’s anxiety really well – it’s win win.

At the last minute we changed our 3hr bus Canberra to Sydney ticket to a 5pm flight – the road was open and closing intermittently because of the bushfires in NSW at the moment and there was no guarantee we would get through on time. I was already nervous about connecting to our AirAsia flight as it was! Yay for the flat beds again though. We elected to fly Syd-KL, 11 hr stop over, KL – Osaka over a direct Sydney to Japan flight because the cost for the flat beds was the same as it was to fly economy on qantas. We both felt the flatbeds were worth it.

We did experience a slight flight delay from Canberra due to the weather and bushfire smoke but we still made it to Sydney just in time for our international flight connection to Kuala Lumpur. After 8hrs of veeeeery turbulent flying and landing in KL at 3am, we spent the next 8 hrs at the samasama airport hotel which is awesome because it is in KLIA2 (the Airasia terminal) so there is no need to collect bags or clear immigration. The room cost about $110 AUD for the 8 hours and I prebooked online which got me a discount.

We had a lovely sleep in our queen bed and then some food in the attached lounge before boarding the next 8hr flight on to Osaka, Japan. The flights really aren’t that bad when you have comfy flat beds, USB ports, free entertainment devices and a quilted blanket. I still maintain I would rather deal with an 11hr stop over than for 16hrs straight in economy on qantas for the same price! B is less convinced haha.

We arrived at Kansai airport in Osaka at 10pm at night local time after a very long day and a half of travelling. We used our icoca cards which are still valid from 6 years ago and caught a train from the airport into the city (easy), swapped to the subway (also pretty easy to do) and then walked about 6 mins to our lovely little apartment here.

In total it took about an hour and cost us ¥1600 each versus what would have been ¥20000 in a taxi. Taxis in Japan are very expensive so we didn’t even consider that option.

I booked the accomodation in Osaka on booking.com and it is called “Osaka Umeda Hotel Apartments” which basically means it’s a dude renting out his apartment like on Air BnB. Considering the prices of surrounding hotels though, this was excellent value for about $100 AUD a night! His directions provided by email were very detailed and it has wifi which is not always a given in Japanese hotels so I’m happy. His detailed directions combined with google maps got us there with a 5 min walk from the local Umeda station which is a big transport hub.

Our plan for tomorrow is to recover from 30 hours of travelling with a sleep in and then do some low stakes wandering of Osaka since neither of us have been here before.

Categories: Japan Snow Trip, Kuala Lumpur | Tags: , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

A short visit to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Posted on September 6, 2017 by Mel

For some reason I’ve just discovered this didn’t post when it was meant to! Oh well, it’s published now.

We took a short holiday break to visit KL – a first time location for both of us. We were only here for a couple of days so see below for the highlights! As a plus, the aussie dollar has a good exchange rate here with $1 AUD buying about 3 Ringgits so most food and services were very reasonably priced. Tiger Beer was only $3-4 AUD a pint in most places which made B super happy! Food and drink outside of 5 star hotels is very reasonably priced.

One thing I wished we had done before landing was download the app GRAB, which is the rideshare app they use here. I had a horror experience with a jerk taxi driver who wouldn’t use the meter and grabbed my arm. I ended up using a chunk of my data to download the app on the spot. It’s well worth using as it is much more reasonably priced than taxis and removes the stress of when they try to haggle with you.

Highlight 1. Flying Air Asia (no joke)

I flew on Air Asia flat beds both ways and they were so awesome! Only a couple of hundred dollars more than economy and they made the 8 hr flight so much more bearable! I would absolutely do this again. The food and service is still the same but the seats, the entertainment devices and the blankets made it well worth the extra $$. In fact, we are doing this again on our next overseas trip!

Highlight 2. Hotel Capri by Fraser aka Mel’s first infinity pool experience!

Sooooooo pretty! Each room was like a little apartment with a TV, fridge, microwave, rainfall shower, desk etc. Then there was the amazing infinity pool and private spas on the roof! There was also a rooftop bar, included buffet breakfast and a shuttle into the city each day for just m $130 AUD a night.

Highlight 3. The epic thunder and lightning storms

Holy cow was I NOT prepared for these. Our first one was during the trip from the airport to the hotel and it was terrifyingly loud and raining so hard you couldn’t see out the windscreen! The second one was while staying on the 27th floor of the hotel! It was so loud it felt like it was overhead….glorious to watch on the balcony though. This article explains why Malaysia is one of the lightning strike capitals of the world and I have borrowed one of their images to show you what it looked like.

Highlight 4. All the touristy stuff we crammed in to such a short time

With such a short stay (only a couple of days) we managed to knock a fair few things off the tourist list and still spend plenty of time relaxing in the pool. Our first tourist stop was Central Markets. I was not super impressed with these to be honest. The building itself was very cool (it is heritage listed) but the markets were fairly expensive and it was all the same stuff. I get that it’s meant to be more of a boutique feel in comparison to the hustle and bustle of the street markets but the quality of the items was fairly similar to the street markets with prices 3 x as much. The outside markets in Kasturi Walk were cheaper and had some great food as well, I think they were more to my taste.

We also stopped in at the Aquaria at KLCC where I saw the cutest sand tiger shark cuddle pile ever and patted a baby bamboo shark. The aquarium wasn’t as big as advertising makes out but for 60R ($20 AUD) it’s great value and the animals appeared happy and well cared for.

Near the Aquauria is Petronas Twin Towers which are an iconic landmark here and very impressive to look at….but a pain in the ass to go up! You have to pre-book a ticket (80R so about $26 AUD) and then you just shuffle along in a giant queue to get your trip up in the elevator. If you rock up on the day, they are nearly always fully booked with no tickets available and a very long line. The crowds moving towards the lift, up, across the sky walk and down are HUGE and I would have felt immensely claustrophobic so we gave it a miss and satisfied ourselves with pretty daytime photos from the KLCC Park which is an amazing open air water park next door. Maybe next time.

On another day, we went to the KL Bird Park which was pretty impressive….despite my fear of birds!! It was only 63R per adult (so about $21 AUD) to get in and it’s the largest walk through aviary in the world. There were lots of different birds and opportunities to interact with them, plus some SUPER DUPER cute little monkeys. Most of the birds seemed happy and well looked after but we did note the ostriches were missing feathers and appeared quite distressed.

When asked what he wanted to do in KL, B said all he really wanted was to seek out some Hawker Centres as he loved the food in those places in Singapore…so I did some research and discovered Jalan Alor and Lot 10 Hutong Food Court. We didn’t end up going to Jalan Alor but stopped by Lot 10 while I was cheap suitcase shopping at Sungei Wang Plaza shopping complex. Lot 10 is definitely very tourist oriented but still had lots of cheap food stalls in one accessible location and was great as a middle of the day option.

We visited the KL Eco Park Tree Canopy Walk which is free and very pretty. Our suggestion would be to get dropped off at the KL Tower car park if you’re not very fit as the whole canopy walk is then downhill….but it’s still doable going the other way. See image below for the two potential drop off points in red (upper end near KL Tower, all downhill) and yellow (uphill but only slight + short bursts of stairs, the yellow drop off is the entrance point).

As we started at the bottom of the KL Eco Park we ended up at the KL Tower at the end. We visited the KLTower mini zoo (31R each so $10AUD) which was really interactive and a great example of a zoo trying to help out those animals inadvertently finding themselves in the city with no other options for rehab. They had monkeys, turtles, a goat, alpacas, snakes, ferrets, prairie dogs and even baby emus!

Since we were standing next to it, we then went up the KL Tower which had a 49R observation option and 99R skybox option….where else in the world can I do a sky box for $35AUD? Be warned the wait times are long at the top though, they don’t police the photo times enough and people can be jerks. We went on a non-busy day with a short line and it was close to a 90 minute wait for a photo with no chairs in sight. Kinda worth it though.

My last touristy activity was Chinatown. For the Chinatown visit, I left B at the hotel with his computer for company and went with my friend Fiona. She is a mad-crazy shopper and had a great time filling her extra suitcase, I’ll admit I filled in all my extra packing space as well 🙂 I got replica Nike’s for 90R, some very cool sunglasses with rubber arms for 100R, Birkenstock knock offs for 30R and a new travel shoulder bag for 30R. All up that’s about $85 AUD.

Places I want to see next time we visit: Petronas Towers, elephant sanctuary, Batu Caves, the firefly dance, the butterfly garden, Jalan Alar (Wong Ah Wah – roast pork dark noodle and BBQ chicken wings get repeated mention. Satay from here also gets a good write up. My extensive research also brought up repeated mentions of Meng Kee next to Wong ah Wah which does all sorts of grilled seafood, Pin Chen Haianese Chicken Rice – the best of many in the street – and Gou Lou who make infamous Tom yum soup and fish head noodles), the FRIM tree top canopy walk (when it reopens), Sunway Lagoon fun park, LegoLand (it’s only an 8hr drive away dammit), the palace, maybe the hop on hop off bus annnnnd I’m sure many others I haven’t thought of!

Categories: Kuala Lumpur | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

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