I woke up feeling sad to leave Indonesia again. I hope to be back but I’ve heard great things about other Indonesian dive destinations like Raja Ampat and Nusa Lembongan. So much to do and so little time!
I grabbed a breakfast of biscuits and canned iced coffee from Alfamart across the road before heading to the airport far away at Praya, which takes about 45 minutes.
Check-in took only seconds, so I had time to grab some capcai for breakfast airside. The flight left 15 minutes late but got us into KL on time.
Onboard, my pre-ordered meal arrived sans trolley and the crew didn’t want to validate it against my boarding pass as is the normal practice. It dawned on me that it was the first day of Ramadhan and I was the only one eating.
My meal looked burnt as it was probably the only one in the oven. It was nice and hot and the highly-caramelised sambal was tastier than normal. The coconut on the chicken had become toasted too. I can’t recall a better inflight meal in all my travels!
I needed a cuppa tea later in the flight. I’ve always joked that the best sideline income for budget airline cabin crew is to peddle coffee/tea from their own secret stash of coffee sachets and teabags (and keep the cash received). At 6x the street price, it will be a good margin! I wonder if it finally happened today when my cuppa came with a tagless tea bag; perhaps the 7-Eleven ran out of Lipton this morning.
Suspicious unbranded tea bag. Crew could charge MYR5 and use their own secret stash of tea bags from the convenience store.
I had allowed 4 hours to self-connect to my next flight to Kuching. I reckon 90 minutes is a safe minimum if everything goes well (normally does on AirAsia). As I have lounge access here at KL, it is better to be safe than sorry and cry over having to buy a new ticket if the first flight runs late.
I couldn’t help but smile when I heard this announcement on my second flight of the day “This is flight AK5218 bound for Kuching. The commander of this flight is Captain Hare Krishna, assisted by First Officer Vijay.” We left 10 minutes early and landed in Kuching on time for my 8 nights with family.