10 Tips For Flying AirAsia

Whoopee! We finally got to sit on the brand new A330 for our return flight from the Gold Coast to Kuala Lumpur by AirAsia. If we can survive the 8-hour flight on Asia's best budget airline, so can you. Here are some really useful tips:

1 Stick to your guns, do not buy the XL seats. Come to think of it, AirAsia never said what "XL" stands for. Clever, clever. If you think that XL stands for Extra Large, well, that's your problem. As far as I can see, the so-called XL seats - whatever its stands for - are normal seats for adults. Not worth the extra dough.

2 Slim down before taking the flight. The normal seats, in the economy section, are really XS seats. Go figure what "XS" stands for. These seats are perfect for children under 120cm and those with Kate Moss-like physique. Since we cannot grow young unlike Benjamin Button, our only recourse is to slim down - failing which you can pray for a half-filled flight so that both the left and right seats next to you are vacant and you can stretch out. Good thing the handrests can be raised - see, AirAsia does think of everything.

3 Practise sitting upright. I took my first aeroplane back in 1979 and I swear ALL the aeroplanes that I have taken since then had seats that can recline backwards at the touch of a button. (Pause) Not so on this plane. The seats are fixed. There is still a button but it is a dummy button, lol! Well, at least the good seating posture will make sure we do not get backache. Think positive.

4 Think the romance of travel. Most people do not understand the term "romance" - tut, tut. When applied to travel, it simply means anything rustic, simple, old-fashioned, natural - get the idea? Example: Boarding the plane via the air-conditioned, carpeted aerobridge is NOT romantic. Strolling down the tarmac, getting real close to the plane, listening to the engine whirring softly in the background, walking up the stairs with the sunlight kissing your face and the breeze ruffling your hair - ah, that's the romance of travel. Appreciate it. If there is gentle rain, all the better. Forgo the umbrella (courtesy of the airline) unless it is a thunderstorm.

5 Forget about eye candies. No offence to the AirAsia gals, but they are simply not SQ material. How can passengers expect them to be? Not fair-la... Common cents will tell you that if they were, they would have joined SQ for the big bucks. Another point, imo, Tony stinged too much on cloth for the girls' uniform. Their uniform always seems a wee bit too tight and the skirt a wee bit too short. Not very graceful or elegant - that's my humble opinion.

6 Travel with children. AirAsia is a very child-friendly airline. Those with children get to board first and they always get the best seats. If you don't have children, borrow mine.

7 Have fun on night flights. I really mean it. Don't try to go to sleep - you may end up feeling frustrated. What for? Instead, saturate your sleep quota the day before, fill up the night hours with activities - and have fun!

8 Remember to bring your USB-port cables. You can actually charge your i-pod or blackberry on board. Awesome. USB ports are available in front of the seat but cables are not. So don't kick yourself when your battery runs out and you sit staring at the USB port the whole journey (like what happened to some people I know).

9 Do not wear heels. Now where did that come from? Oh yes, this tip is probably only applicable when travelling out of Australian airports. If you are wearing anything other than 1-inch heels or flats, you will be required to remove your shoes and put them through the x-ray machine. It happpened to me. Give it to the Aussie customs controllers for being tops in vigilance - James Bond movies have shown that heels are the best hidden compartments for all types of gadgets.

10 Enjoy your flight. This is the most useful tip of all - and it can be done. Clueless? Take some pointers from these young fellas here:

- take camera shots of yourself

- eat

- play computer games on the laptop

- watch downloaded shows on the laptop


- read


- play Game-Boy or similar portable games while varying sitting position

- play Uno or similar card games


- watch the clouds and dream....


Finally, the REAL test - would I take AirAsia flights again with my family? ABSOLUTELY YES!

Okay, so I admit I am a cheapo. But that's alright. The budget airline takes me from Point A to Point B safely and it makes air travel affordable. That's what matters in the end :)

Day 7: Christmas Day

"And so this is Christmas..."

Christmas Day in Australia. The sky was overcast as we walked to the beach on Christmas morning. We were lucky to have caught the good weather the past one week. The overcast sky was somewhat a blessing in disguise as it meant that the children could spend a longer time at the beach. We were at the beach for three hours from 10am.

The children had, what teens would say, MEGASUPERDUPERFABULOUSAWESOME fun! They waited patiently for the strongest waves and as the waves rushed to shore - jump! It's splish, splash FUN!

[Fourth picture down is one of my favourite pictures - Three against the World :)]

[Picture story above, clockwise: Mummy enjoying some solitude at the beach, Son No 3 came to complain about something to do with his brothers, wanted some sympathy and action, no action forthcoming but still walked away smugly, satisfied at last ....!]

The boys were most reluctant to leave, but eventually they had to say farewell to the beach. Son No 3 had revised his timeline for the next visit to the Gold Coast. Instead of of 5 years, he was saying that we should return in 3 years' time instead :D

For lunch, we had our own home-cooked HarMee instant noodles from home. Slurp, slurp!

As all the attractions and shops were closed that day, we just stayed in and enjoyed the in-house facilities. It had been Son No 3’s constant grumble that the facilities here did not include a children’s pool. There was an outdoor lap pool and jacuzzi and an indoor heated swimming pool with a jacuzzi. The depth for both the pools was a minimum 1.1m. Not much fun for a non-swimmer like him.

Due to the wind factor, we only went to the indoor heated pool (below). I loved the warm water - if only we had a heated pool in KL, I promise I would go swimming everyday - nghahaha!

The first time we went for a dip in the pool, both hubby and I were in the pool to hold on to the two younger boys. But I guess it was not much fun to be clinging on to parents all the time. So, Son No 2 eagerly learnt to swim with the help of his daddy and elder brother and coupled with his own determination and guts, he SUCCEEDED. Hurray!

Son No 2's achievement spurred him on to practise and practise… These holidays must be very special and memorable for him.

Son No 1 showed maturity and responsibility in taking care of his younger brothers. Son No 2 literally trusted him with his life.

Below is a another favourite picture of mine.

This was our last night at the Gold Coast - we would be flying off early the next morning. In the best "tour group" tradition, we decided the last meal should be the best meal to erase previous bad memories of food. And so for dinner, we went to a proper Chinese restaurant. Why Chinese food? Actually, there was not much choice because, as far as we know, only the Chinese restaurants remained opened on Christmas Day. The hardworking restaurant owners added a 10% public holiday surcharge to the bill and the workers got triple pay. Why not?

The Mandarin Court Restaurant was obviously done up with westerners in mind. In our part of the world, its interior decoration, with dragons, red and gold arches, would be totally out of place. The restaurant deco was probably more suitable for a Jackie Chan movie in Hollywood! The food was a-oh-kay. I had not had plain stir-fried chye sim with ginger and onion for a week and I realised how much I missed the greens. The kung-po chicken, however, was a disappointment - done western-style with a sweet red sauce. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

After dinner, we took a short drive to Broadbeach Central to get breakfast. To our surprise, there were a few shops that were opened, including Starbucks and 7-11.

That night, we tackled the astronomical task of packing to go home.

Day 6: SuperBee/Xmas Eve

As we had already experienced Australian wildlife in Dreamworld, we decided not to go to the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary as originally planned. We had also earlier considered going to the Tangalooma Dolphin Resort and the Catch-A-Crab tour but they were too far away and did not seem good value for time and money. So now on Christmas Eve, we decided to visit the nearby Super Bee Honey World.

We reached Super Bee at 10am. It was essentially a retail shop that stocked bee-based products and it also offered a live bee show at 11am. In the shop, we tasted different types of honey, including Macadamian honey, Yellowbox honey, Eucalyptus honey, Raw Australian honey and Floral Blend honey. The type of honey made depended on the type of flower pollens collected by the bees. Thus, bees that collected pollens chiefly from macadamia plants would yield macadamian honey and so on. Son No 1’s favourite was the Yellowbox honey. We got small bottles of different types of honey, gift-packed with miniature koalas, as souvenir gifts for hubby’s colleagues.

We were a little early for the Live Bee show and we filled the time exploring the flora and fauna in the natural world outside. We saw creepers which gripped their host trees, an unidentified flower and a four-inch pregnant spider.


For the Live Bee show, we stepped into a giant hive and saw thousands of live bees, housed behind glass. We learnt about the three types of bees:

• The Queen Bee whose main function is to lay eggs. There can exist only 1 Queen Bee in 1 hive at any one time. If there were more, one of them (the most powerful) would kill the rest. It feeds on a special diet of royal jelly produced by the Worker Bees.


• The Worker bees are all female bees and they do all the work. They collect pollen, make the honey and the beeswax to protect the honey, clean the hive, embalm dead bees by making a special ingredient called the propolis and provide food for all, including the Queen Bee and the Drones.


• The Drones are the male bees who do nothing but fertilize the Queen Bee. In times of food shortages, the Worker bees will push the drones out of the hive – the Drones are the lowest in the bee hierarchy. Drones are born from unfertilized eggs while Worker Bees come from fertilized eggs.

We found the show educational and interesting. We also learnt that the bee has an acute sense of smell – it can smell a single flower from 2 km away - and it has 5 eyes – 2 compound eyes at the front of its head and 3 simple eyes at the back. And we also confirmed the fact publicized in the cartoon The Bee Movie - that once a bee stings another creature, the bee will die shortly after.

The Bee-keeper was friendly and knowledgeable. We were the only audience for the 11am show and we asked a lot of questions. In the end, the half-hour show was extended to a 40-minute session. During the last part of the show, we were introduced to a type of honey called Manuka honey that could be produced only in New Zealand. Manuka honey is said to possess strong antibacterial activity and has been known to benefit general health. We were told that it is actually used as antibiotics in some hospitals. We bought a 500g jar as the proposition was too appealing – imagine, if we were under the weather, all we needed to do was to take a spoonful of honey, instead of medicine!

On our way back, we passed by a suburb called Mermaid Beach and stopped to have lunch at a Chinese restaurant called Jimmy’s Kitchen. We all showed a healthy appetite and gobbled up the steamed duck with chinese mushrooms, brocolli with scallops and jumbo prawns and chicken with salted fish. That afternoon, we made a last ditch effort to do some shopping. We allowed Son No 1 to stay alone in the apartment while the rest of us went down to Surfers Paradise to look for the Duty Free Shop as my mom has asked me to buy duty-free Elizabeth Arden skincare products for her. We had no idea where DFS was located but we asked around and finally found the store. The store was small, by DFS standards, and it stocked only 5 cosmetic lines and EA was not one of them. So it was a futile effort.


All was not lost though as we managed to grab some souvenir items from a souvenir shop next to DFS. I told the two younger boys that they could each choose one Australian soft toy for themselves as well as one for Faidu. There were koalas, kangaroos, wombats, platypuses, crocodiles, frogs, dingoes and so on.

The two boys went about their task excitedly. Initially, Son No 2 chose a koala for himself but just before we paid, he changed his mind. He said he already had his jaguar soft toy and did not want another soft toy - what a loyal little guy! Son No 3 got for himself a koala and together, they chose a kangaroo for Faidu (above left). I noticed that there were very few T-shirts of Australia on sale here – unlike in the past. Could it be it was now passé or tacky to wear those t-shirts to show where one had been to? Remember those that printed “My so-and-so went to XYZ and all I got was this lousy t-shirt.” Lol!

Along Cavill Avenue, I saw the engine-red signboard of the Royal Copenhagen Ice Cream (above) – the outlet was still around after 20+ years! I recall the first time I was in the Gold Coast in the mid-80's, with my younger sister, we were traveling on a shoestring budget. But we dipped into our pockets to buy this delicious, creamy, irresistible ice-cream. Ah, memories… light the corners of my mind….

That evening, Son No 3 and I walked to the Broadbeach Playground (below) by the beach. Son No 3 did not want to join his brothers to swim in the indoor heated pool because he had grazed his knee the day before.

Son No 3 and I enjoyed some quiet one-on-one time that beautiful summer evening. It was a time I treasured. Sometimes, when Son No 3 was with his brothers, we tended to treat him a lot older than what he really was – a 5-year-old little boy. He himself was also constantly in a rush to grow up so that he could be like his elder brothers.

As we passed by a campervan (left) parked near the playground, he was fascinated when I explained to him what was inside the campervan.

I am sure he enjoyed himself that evening at the park, especially the bicycle-for-two on tracks (below). I pedalled behind him and after two laps, I was totally out of breath. But I think he would have enjoyed the playground much more if he had his elder brothers with him.

T'was the night before Christmas. The restaurants were charging exorbitant prices and the smaller eateries were closed. We had a pizza take-away dinner and played Uno in the apartment. On TV, there was a live telecast of an outdoor candlelit concert from Melbourne and the singers sang well-loved Christmas carols.



Silent night, holy night...