Flying to Sabiha Gokcen

Above:  Our cheap but awesome flight.

Walking to the airport

We set the alarm for 0615 and left the Tune Hotel at KLIA Terminal about 30 mins later, and walked to the airport terminal to get airside.  Unfortunately, I misdirected Kim to the manual immigration desks when he could have used the kiosks.

Regardless of that we had about an hour in the lounge before heading through security to get to our boarding gate for our 1000 flight to Istanbul’s Sabiha Gokcen Airport (SAW) on AirAsia X.

Flying to Sabiha Gokcen

Fortunately, it wasn’t a very full flight on the 377 seat A330-300.  That’s about 70 more than most airlines and about the same as a B747-400.  We managed to score 3 seats each for a lie down.  It was a restful flight with no entertainment and complete ban on using power banks.

Because we had eaten in the lounge, we chose to have our pre-booked meals at the end of the flight.  The crew worked hard doing 3 rounds hot meal services plus ad hoc hot meal requests in between upon request. Despite having no spare seats or bunks for rest on the 11h05 flight, they were chatty and friendly.

We did have to buy some snack and drinks to tide us till our meals before landing though.  AirAsia’s drinks barista coffee/tea pricing are strange.  They’re pricey but are the same price or cheaper with a snack like a brownie, cake, chicken tenders or toast.

Overall, it was an awesome flight, with me being horizontal for a couple of hours but not being able to fall asleep.

We often prefer flying budget airlines on confirmed commercial tickets rather than risking staff standby tickets. Not only was it cheap (similar to staff standby price on Turkish Airlines) but it was paid for using credits leftover from the Covid-19 pandemic which have another two years left to run. These prices were an introductory special when they launched ticket sales for the route about ten months ago.

One of more senior crew, who formerly flew for Malaysia Airlines and is amongst the first at AirAsia to wear the hijab, came to personally say goodbye to me before landing. When flights aren’t full, it is easier for the staff to live up to their claim “World’s Best Low-Cost Airline for 16th Consecutive Years”.

We arrived at SAW at 1600 with a 5h time change.  There was no queue at passport control and we were landside in minutes.

Commute saga

It was a hike to the metro station.  I was still fuming from having discovered that both our Istanbulkarts were not with us despite all the care I had taken:

• Hiking the same route last year to top up the cards in anticipation of this trip.
• Ensuring that the fare for our route today doesn’t exceed the balance on the card, due to Turkiye’s high inflation.
• Transferring the pouch where the cards are meant to be in from my backpack to my small easily-accessible bag before we landed only to find that they weren’t there.

I must have accidentally left the cards at home after checking the balances in a moment of confusion or a distracted state.  I take care to have the Istanbulkarts as Visa/Master are sometimes unusable due to unstable connection with the transport system.

We easily got on the M4 metro line with our credit cards, riding for nearly an hour.  We had a choice of going to the end of the line to Kadikoy where we would change to the intercontinental ferry to Eminonu.  Alternatively, we could change at Ayrilik Cesmesi for the intercontinental underwater Marmaray train that takes us to just outside the hotel.

I preferred the ferry as it seemed like a nice on-arrival sightseeing experience on a beautiful sunny day.  But I then realised that the next few ferries arrive at the far end of Eminonu waterfront rather than near the hotel.

So, we opted to take the Marmaray train.  Changing at Ayrilik Cesmesi, our credit cards didn’t work at the turnstile due to the connection becoming offline.  This was exactly the reason for having the Istanbulkart with us.

We had trouble working the self-service kiosks to buy the ticket:

• Initially, with the credit card machine instructions in Turkish, until we realised we could also use a separate contactless reader.
• Then the instructions for buying multiple cards referred to buttons that we couldn’t find, meaning we had to make two separate purchases.
• After the first successful purchase, the second one could not dispense after making a charge. We changed to another machine to make a third purchase successfully, but only had two cards dispensed in total.  Wish me luck claiming a refund.  Fortunately, I have an error receipt.

Overall SAW arrival and commute experience

We got to the Glamour Hotel at 1800, which is only 1h25 after arriving at the immigration desks and 2h after landing at SAW.

Overall, the arrival and commute wasn’t worse than from Istanbul’s main airport IST because the walking distances and immigration queues at IST are much longer.

I hadn’t used SAW for visits to Istanbul days since when there were EUR5 shuttles running from the city, taking an hour.  With the new IST airport in operation, the number of passengers isn’t adequate to support that kind of service, I’m guessing.

First night in Istanbul

Even though I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been to Istanbul, it was still lovely to be here.  That’s despite how rapidly prices have gone up, every year that we pass through.

We shared a simple meal plus a snack and two soft drinks, outside the post office. That set us back NZD40.

Our room at the Glamour Hotel, which I had stayed at several times, was disappointing.  As prices have risen drastically, we went for the economy room.  Perhaps because it was summer, the both of us had one small thin blanket to share.  But we managed to ask for a second one for the next night.

We went to bed at 2100.  I did wake around 2330 but was surprised that I was able to fall back asleep.