Leaving Kuching With a 1050 departure to Kuala Lumpur, connecting to Bali, we left our apartment around 0815.  Traffic was bad and Wayz directed our Grab driver through some rather unusual routes.  We got to the airport around 2h prior to departure. Kim’s bag was tagged all the way to Bali and for such connections, […]

I didn’t get any sleep on the flight to Singapore. I had started to take pride in how well I’ve slept on flights recently but this time the sleeping pill didn’t quite work. Perhaps my single economy class seat wasn’t reclined enough and had the feel of sliding down a little. It’s fortunate though that I […]

With a 2355 departure for Singapore, I took my time checking in at the kiosk around 2115 and dropping off my bag. While I normally travel with a cabin bag weighing 7kg including laptop, this time I had a checked-in bag weighing 23.2kg (the limit is 23kg for this flight). It was loaded with cheeses, […]

Having left Saigon on time, I was surprised we landed in Auckland around 30 minutes late. With no luggage I was out in no time but had to wait for Kim who was expecting that I’d endure a bit more processing. That concludes a cheap little break. The total cost of airfare upgrade, taxes, hotel […]

It’s a long story but I had two free trips to use up, so it was a quick trip to Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City) and a couple of weeks later to my homeland Borneo and then Bali. The Borneo/Bali trip had been planned in advance but the Saigon was a last minute decision after […]

We landed in Auckland at 0500 which was 30 min ahead of schedule.  Despite airbridges being available, we had a remote/bus gate.  The airport had subcontracted the tarmac buses to Skybus which meant that we finally had decent buses.  They’re still street buses rather than airport tarmac buses but at least they’re nice and modern. […]

The 777-200 was very noisy on the ground even before the engines started.  It was largely the ventilation noise.  We were seated in Premium Economy which was very comfortable and it was at a small surcharge to the Economy standby fare. We took off a little ahead of schedule.  The catering out of Buenos Aires […]

Today we fly from Guayaquil to Panama City on Copa Airlines,on a 22h42 overnight transit to Buenos Aires.  This would allow us to go see the Panama Canal tomorrow before continuing.  Long transits like this are a good trick for getting a glimpse of some cities at virtually no cost.  Often indirect routings are cheaper […]