This was the first part of the actual trip. Commentary on the flight booking process and the accomodation selection process has previously been published.
Before getting to business here is the forecast for the first few days we are away.
Before getting down to the trip, here are a few words about
travelling to Sydney to catch an international flight. The airlines charge about $200 a return
ticket, so for two people that is $400 (plus you make the Snow family feel
good). The car hire companies have
realised that they have a low bar to straddle so they now charge $330 for the
two ways (plus you pay petrol and have
to drive in and out of Canberra twice).
So for us the best bet was to use Discount Airport parking who are
charging us $220. (The bus doesn't work
because of the taxi fares to get into Canberra to catch the bus.)
Jumping forward Discount Parking worked out brilliantly. The took us from their yard to the airport within 10 minutes of us getting there and on return had us picked up and heading back to the yard no slower than it would take to pick up the keys for a rental car.
We set off about 7:30 to drop the small dog off at Reedy
Creek Kennels. This was done and she
seemed to settle down satisfactorily. We
rumbled down the road to Sydney with no dramas.
The range read out on the Jetta suggested we could cover 1400 km before
refuelling! The parking lot was found, the car deposited and ourselves shuttled
to the airport. After about an hour we
were through the formalities and a further hour later were in the Malaysian
Airlines A330. They seemed to have a relaxed view about the stowage of
hand luggage, but did get it all stowed eventually before take off. Bird of the day was Little Black Cormorant,
seen as we took off.
There were many kids on the flight and several of them didn't
seem to settle at all. At one point it
looked though the worst offenders were also coming on the flight to Amsterdam
but fortunately they didn't turn up.
This one – in front of us - was very well behaved.
We saw – but couldn't photograph due to the position of the
sun and humidity- brilliant scenery in the Kimberleys (view of the day) and
around the Ord, and again some of the islands to the East of Lombok. In passing, a contender for bad taste of the
day was the Oxford Landing Shiraz served with the evening meal. It was rather close to undrinkable and won the “sensual" division..
The most interesting part of the 3 hours in KL was going into
the Jungle Boardwalk. There were a lot
of bird calls in there but they all seemed to be recordings.
The palms etc were very pleasant however and
it scores Garden of the Day. The bad
taste – artistic division - award went to an ice cream stall, rather than the
bromeliad shaped supports for the boardwalk.
A near disaster occurred when I saw a KLM flight moved to a new
gate. This also implied the flight had
been shifted back 30 minutes.
Fortunately some other passengers said that KLM sometimes have two
flights departing close together, so we didn't report to the wrong gate after
our flight had left!
Bird of the Day: Little Black Cormorant (last bird in Australia)
Building of the day: No nominations
Garden of the Day: Jungle boardwalk in Kuala Lumpur
Bad taste of the Day:Ice cream stand in Kuala Lumpur
View of the Day: Kimberleys from 10kms above.
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