I am who I am: Aussie Adventure [Part 1/12]

Friday, 26 September 2014

Aussie Adventure [Part 1/12]

This will be a long series (of maybe 12 sections? to sum up my 14 days of Australian Adventure).

Let's start from the very beginning on how this trip came about.. I have always wanted to do Australia and even more so my friend keep persuading me and I keep putting it off... for more than seven years I postpone it..

When I broke off this middle of the year, I was thinking to myself, "this is it, Australia it is!".. and frantically began searching for flights..

The cheapest at that point was RM1.8k for the route I wanted (Brisbane/Melbourne) for a return flight on Malaysia Airlines, I didn't buy.. I waited.. then the fare dropped to all time low of RM1.3k (KUL-Brisbane, Melbourne-KUL only this route) and right away I booked it and took the next 1-2 months to pay it..

Once that was done and out of the way, I then proceed to plan for domestic Australia flights, and spent weeks looking at the cheapest fare, and including a stopover in Sydney as well..

So once all that is done and my flights were booked, things looked set, and I still left the pettiest of things - that is to ask for discounts to help me mitigate my expenses..

I flew out of KL to Brisbane with Malaysia Airlines on 9.40am on 11 September, then from Brisbane to Sydney with Jetstar Australia at 1pm on 16 September, and from Sydney to Melbourne with Tigerair Australia at 2.40pm 19 September, finally from Melbourne to KL with Malaysia Airlines at 7.40am on 24 September.

My flight route

This is the fare breakdown:
KUL-BNE / MEL-KUL on Malaysia Airlines RM1300
BNE-SYD on Jetstar AUD57.50
SYD-MEL on Tigerair AUD87.00
... for a total 14,500km

And in Australia, ground movements clocked another thousand km plus, all in all, this trip alone I clocked over 16,000km ground distance..

Day 1: KUL-BRISBANE
I left home about 5.30am by taking the taxi to KL Sentral and caught the KLIA Express train to the airport. On arrival, I headed straight for Plaza Premium Lounge for a quick bite - it was full thanks to the peak hour morning departures.

Before long, it's time to board. It was a 8.5 hours plus flight to Brisbane, arriving at 8.20pm, past schedule due to the congestion in KLIA and BNE, by the time I got out of the airport, it was almost 9pm, thankfully my friend was already waiting for me in the pick-up area.

We then drive to a McDonalds drive-through near his place in Bracken Ridge and bought the $2 chicken and mayo burger. I was surprised there's such cheap burgers, which will then be my easiest-to-get meal fix over the next 2 weeks.

After that, went home, freshen up, chatted a bit and called it a day.