On the road again - in the sky again!
We left Saskatoon Thursday October 19 around 5:45 pm for Kuching, Sarawak Malaysia. The 2 1/2 hour flight to Vancouver in a Dash-8 turboprop was almost the low point of our trip. Air Canada now has free beer and wine onboard to drum up business. We had an 5+ hour layover in Vancouver, then off to Singapore on a Boeing 787-9 aircraft for the perfect 16 hour flight. When we landed in Singapore we breezed through customs. This is due to having already filed our SGAC. All travellers are required to submit the SG Arrival Card with Electronic Health Declaration before arriving in Singapore. We had a very short wait for the luggage and then stepped outside to transfer from terminal 2 to terminal 4 via a shuttle bus. In no time we were in terminal 4 and had our bags checked on discount airline, Air Asia. We ended up with time to spare. It’s awesome when you plan something with no idea if things will work out and they actually work out flawlessly.
We found a lounge in terminal 4 and had something to eat. Our flight departed at 11:45 am for Kuching. Technically it was almost lunch time in Singapore which is 14 hours ahead of Saskatoon. By now we were 24 hours into the trip and about 35 hours since we got out of bed.
We arrived in Kuching on a jam packed A320 where our knees rubbed the seat in front of us. Air Asia discounts on leg room the most. This flight AK1776 was not as cheap as previous flights on Air Asia due to the need to buy a flex ticket, just in case our Air Canada flight was delayed.
We purchased SIM cards at Hotlink for our phones getting the fastest speed and largest download amount for the next month. It was around $34 CAD for both phones. Good price! We booked a Grab using our phone with the new SIM card for Malaysia. The fare was about $6.15 to to the hotel, around 12 km away.
Check-in went smooth mainly because we know the idiosyncrasies of Malaysian tourism. The booking includes a 10 Malaysian ringgit tourism tax per night. The proof of payment is sent by email which you must save in order to prevent getting charged twice. Yes, we have the emails and the downloaded receipts, all three of them as we are staying 14 nights in this hotel. We made 3 separate bookings in order to have the opportunity to cancel if something went wrong, God forbid. The first 2 bookings of three days each were made through agoda.com and the third booking for 8 nights was made through Aeroplan. We made use of the Aeroplan promotion to get a free night for every 3 nights paid for. That’s 8 nights for the price of 6 plus we made use of the 33% discount on Aeroplan points and the 2,500 Aeroplan bonus on top of it all. Almost free you might think. Wrong. Aeroplan is our rewards program of choice for a reason. We have much time invested in figuring out the different angles to milk the rewards. It’s hard work.
Our first night in the hotel was great. The air conditioning was just the right temperature and the bed was dreamy. We even got a complimentary plate of fruit consisting of 3 bananas, 2 apples, 1 orange, 1 kiwi and 3 beautiful big strawberries. Gary’s total sleep was 8 hours 45 minutes plus another hour and 43 minutes of being awake. Over 10 hours in bed and we were going by 7 am. Breakfast was an oink-fest of coffee, yogurt, pastry, watermelon, oranges, noodles and Gary had his favourite, Sarawak Laksa. Laksa is a spicy, curry-coconut-based noodle soup that originated from the Peranakans, who are of mixed Chinese-Malay heritage. It comes with chicken, shrimp, strips of fried egg and vermicelli noodles. It’s a spicy way to wake up!
Our first day in Kuching was pretty good, we walked about 8 km, had a one hour massage for 65 ringgits each, that’s $21 each, for one of the best massages we’ve had. We wandered by the Ceylonese restaurant and had a mango lassi, it was really good so we decided to head back for supper. Our supper cost us 51.80 ringgit, $16.60 CAD. We had lemon iced tea, Tikka chicken, Aloo Gobi, Garlic Naan and some assorted sauces like mint chutney. Aloo Gobi is a simple Indian vegetarian dish made with potatoes, cauliflower, spices and herbs. Supper was excellent! We headed back to the hotel in a blustery 28º wind with a few drops of rain. We tried our umbrella and they turned inside out. It was windy so we walked fast and didn’t really get wet. Off to bed for another great sleep. We are tired and no where near recovering from the jet lag.
