Today is departure day! We were up at 6am getting ready to leave our home country Australia for an entire year. The girls slept in the loft at Harpsdale (my uncle Ric’s place) with their cousin Luke and decided to have a late one up there, so there’s some emotional girls this early! It has been amazing being able to stay here at Harpsdale – we are able to just do stuff for the year away return home and we go to bed and have the best sleep. We don’t need beds or doonas or pillows of our own, they are all packed away, so it makes our life a lot less complicated with the amount of ‘hectic-ness’ going on at the moment.
Our flight with Air Asia was due to depart at 10:35am but we got delayed refuelling. It departed 50 minutes late. Both our parents came along to say goodbye at the airport as well as Steve’s sister Andrea and her son Luke. Three of Charlie’s close girl friends from Gisborne Secondary School caught the bus from Sunbury to the airport early to see her off – Annalea, Madi and Tylah. There were lots of tears coming from them, but it was such a lovely thing to do for Charlie.
The Air Asia flight was a good reminder of flying cheap. It felt more cramped than usual, limited service – the flight attendants were constantly looking at the menu and working out the prices on their menu items. Then when we were served the food packs Steve had ordered online, it took over an hour to get the rubbish cleared. But that is Air Asia and we are grateful we can get cheap flights with them and travel as much as we do as a large family of six.
Note: Our Air Asia flights x6 = $500 each to Langkawi Island. No need to say anything more!
Steve and I managed to sneak in 2 episodes of Game of Thrones. A beautiful friend and work colleague Con had them copied onto a USB for me the day before leaving, as Steve discovered that headsets on our Air Asia flight were all booked out. But when we were on the flight, only a handful of entertainment units were provided…so not sure if Air Asia is keeping up with technology on its planes. The Game of Thrones was good; not sure if I’ll become addicted to it just yet. Stay tuned Con!
We arrived at KL airport and went straight through to the domestic leg for our flight to Malaysia’s Langkawi Island. It was a short wait, and a short flight. All up an hour or less in the air. Dace was in a very foul mood boarding, but she was so tired. She had a kip while cuddled up to me for half an hour on the flight and woke up refreshed and pleasant. Lucky for all of us!
We caught a taxi from Langkawi airport which was only a short drive to our accommodation – Adina Motel. We have a three-bedroom apartment on the second floor, 2 bathrooms and a small balcony and kitchenette. It’s perfect for our stay here. Steve has done a great job finding this place and it’s so close to the main street. It seems Langkawi has one long main road – up and down. That’s easy to navigate. We took all our belongings up to our first floor apartment and checked in. We were all tired, and hungry. Plane food just didn’t cut it so we tiredly and rather gingerly ventured out to find dinner. We stumbled across a place that had air-con (tick) and easy ordering (tick). All good. Charlie nearly nodded off and face-planted into her empty plate towards the end of dinner. We returned like the walking dead back to Adina Motel and all enjoyed a magical sleep.
Day 1 has been a long day of travel, but we’re here and the journey has begun. Thank you Langkawi you have been awesome already!
Leave a Reply