In Reply to: Hi Cyberbirth posted by LMJ on Sunday, 6. November 2011 at 03:17 Bali Time:
.. last year from NZ as we got cheap seats in their opening specials. We flew down to Chch from Ak in the morning - had a few hrs to kill so checked out the Antarctic centre (good but too rushed in the time we had). Our flight to KL was a bit stressful as due to the earthquakes Chch airport was low on fuel so there was talk of having to fly back to Ak to re-fuel then onto KL adding 3hrs to the flight - eek! Luckily it was sorted and 1 hr late off we flew. We found Air Asia X to be awesome - just as good as other airlines we've flown with (hint: definitely pre-order the food as we got served first & got better meals / larger servings). We arrived at KL at around 3am NZ time (having left home at 4am) so it was a long trip and the drive into KL (1hr) was almost the straw that broke the camels back (we were travelling with 5 children) but it was worth it as we really enjoyed KL. I would suggest at least 3 nights to see it all (we only had 2 and my husband and I ended up recently having another 2 nights there as part of another trip to see some of the things we had missed).
Coming home we flew from Bali to KL and checked into the Tune Hotel at the airport for 6hrs before our next flight back to NZ which was so worth it (however next time I would take an earlier flight from Bali to KL so we got a longer sleep!) We then flew back to ChCh and that was fine but when we got in we were the last flight of the day and ChCh airport was basically closed down - there was only 1 coffee stall open (no food - only bananas & cookies) and he had 200+ customers off our flight waiting for connecting flights the next morning so he was a busy man and closed an hour late! (And oh boy did the prices hurt after we'd got used to Bali prices LOL) We spent the next 5hrs trying to sleep on the floor which was awful as it was cold (snowing outside!) and every 30min the speaker system did a loud booming security announcement LOL We finally got on the connecting Air NZ flight back to Auckland dying of hunger and got a cookie for breakfast (apparently Air NZ don't do breakfast on weekends - what the !!!)
Despite all this would I do it again - definitely!!! The $$ we saved meant that 9 of us (my sisters family & mine) could fly for the price of 5 in previous trips. However I would change some of our plans to fit better around the flight times as it was a very tiring trip :-) Plus if I could ever afford to Id upgrade to premium as those lie-flat seats looked bliss !!!!
Feel free to email me if you want me to answer any questions :-)
Our trip photos are online at: http://picasaweb.google.com/cyberbirth
Cheers
Sheryl