Some people are “morning” people and love getting up in the early dawn. I do not. When my alarm went off at 2:30 a.m. I felt as if I was shoving my body up through mounds of earth to get to daylight! We left the apartment at 3:30 am and drove along ghost city highways straight into a bustling airport. Perth airport does not have any “quiet time” such as in Toronto, it is 24 x 7!
So, at 4:30 a.m. in the morning we checked in to Air Asia to be told we had to pay $1120 in excess baggage. We were allowed 20 kilos each and we had 69 kilos. Yes, we have two bags each – that is about 20 kilos plus 15 kilos for our backpacks. I just about landed flat on my back on the floor. So, trying to remember you achieve more through being respectful than releasing a barrage of expletives at the airline attendant, we told Air Asia what we thought of that. But what could we do? It wasn’t as if we could dump our luggage in the middle of the departure hall and head out with one bag. Anyway, we moved on to the counter where we were supposed to make the payment, and an angel appeared from the heavens and said she would reduce the amount by about $1000. She explained that our travel agent should have booked the two bags in at the time of making the flight booking and then we would have paid a little extra for the second bag…which is of course as it is with most airlines. We still had a ridiculous amount to pay, but it was $1000 less!! This was also the airline that asked us for our security questions on the credit card at the time of booking. Have you ever heard of that before? Personally, I think it is one big sham on the part of Air Asia, and needless to say, we will NEVER fly with them again.
At 5:50 a.m. we loaded onto the A330-300 and powered up into the skies for our 5 ½ hour flight to Kuala Lumpur. We had a 2 ½ hour lay-over during which I think we walked every inch of the corridors in the KL airport leaving us about 25 minutes in which to eat breakfast and lunch….oh yes, you had to pre-book your breakfast on line with Air Asia which of course we hadn’t done so weren’t able to get anything for breakfast on the plane, and then caught our connection to Kota Kinabalu in Borneo. The other negative issue with Air Asia is they give you the choice of emailing your boarding pass, or printing it when you get to the airport – you know, how they do it in Canada. Ray checked the box to have it emailed. When he received the email it said to print the boarding pass and if you had asked for the boarding pass to be sent by email there would be a charge to print it at the airport. Really! If there is any sense in that, I fail to understand it. The attendant in Perth told us that in Perth they did not allow the use of an electronic boarding pass so she had to print it out anyway. She also printed out our KL boarding pass, so we never got to find out if we could use the electronic boarding pass in KL or not. By the time we got on the plane we were feeling pretty silly!! We have travelled around the world and never had these issues previously…..but I guess there are always new things that come along to challenge the brain!!
The flights were uneventful, reasonably smooth, and on time. We unloaded in Kinabalu around 5:45 p.m., our baggage was waiting for us on the baggage turntable by the time we walked to the baggage hall, and as we walked through the doors after customs, a guy approached us and it was the driver for our transfer to the hotel. All very smooth……..and hot!! We were hit with a wall of heat and hmidity when we walked out of the air terminal, I think the temperature was around 33C but with the humidity the “feel like” must have been pretty high. It will take a little time to get accustomed to that and we are hoping that up at 12,000/13,000 feet the temperature will feel a little cooler!
We sorted ourselves out in our room and then decided to head out for dinner. We asked the front desk for some suggestions and along with an Italian restaurant, and some pubs on the waterfront, the chap mentioned local food in the market. So we headed out and found the Seafood Market within about 10 minutes slow walk from the hotel. This was a huge big covered square, with fish tanks around 3 sides and tables and chairs set up in the middle. The various vendors displayed their brightly coloured awnings over the fish tanks, and there were people, and vendors, and tables, and chairs, and live fish everywhere. What a cacophony! So we walked in, and took a look around; we saw menus on the tables and there were chicken and vegetable dishes too. A “batista” came up to us and in a mixture of English and sign language he explained the set up. We sat down. I ordered fried chicken with ginger and spring onion and rice, and Ray ordered 100g of tiger shrimps with rice. A woman approached us with a beer menu and the first one I saw was “Royal Stout”….I chose that and Ray chose Carlsberg. The stout was delicious, but after our experiences in Australia I have taken to checking the alcohol content of beer before I order. Too late, I checked the bottle and it was 8%....now to me, that is high for beer. Ray’s was 5%. We had a great evening. The seafood market was eclectic, colourful, and the food tasted amazing.
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