Little swimmer

Little swimmer

Thursday 23 October 2014

KLIA2 - a better welcome to KL

There isn't much choice when flying from Brunei, especially if the trip needs to be under $500, so mostly holidays start with an Air Asia flight to Kuala Lumpur. Before the new low cost terminal opened a couple of months back, the crappiness of AirAsia experience was duly carried out of the aircraft onto the ground and all the way with transport into the city centre. 

Now the airport is clean bar from the obvious, the toilets. (I decided to wait until my hotel...) The snaking queue to immigration is gone and replaced with modern booths. Someone might say, though, that the old one queue system was less stressful as you're always bound to pick the wrong queue! But the best improvement for me, even when I was travelling without an infant and all the accompanying parafenilia in tow, was the gate arrival. If you ever landed at the last gate of the old transport and lugged the said toddler and all items for what felt like kilometres you'll know why. I'm currently sat on the KliaExpress and haven't broken into sweat yet! And that is the other major improvement. Not cheap compared to Singapore but the express train will now take you from KLIA2 straight into Sentral Stesjen withouth the old trains, planes, automobiles malarkey - ie bus and train combo. 

I could also write about the massive chocolate shop at the arrivals terminal! Coming from Brunei I had to stop and just admire all the beloved chocolate brands in various flavours... You know you've been to Brunei too long when.... 

To follow the arrivals' shopping, there is now much more space to shop, eat, and browse for free in the departures. The choice of eateries isn't varied but the full package of KLIA2 is such a massive improvement to the old Air Asia experience that I don't mind having a McDonalds.... Especially after the 5 minutes it took us to check in. More travelling coming up! 

Sunday 19 October 2014

Telunas - A small piece of heaven

After Singapore we opted for a relaxing holiday, and chose to go to one of the islands off The city for the ease of it. There are several Indonesian island's just 1-2 hours' boat ride away, biggest of them being Batam and Bintang. However, they didn't really inspire me. I looked further, and found amazing private islands, some of them already fully booked months before our trip. Phil stumbled across Telunas private resort, a newly opened island-getaway further on from Batam within the Riau Islands in Indonesia, and we decided to take the risk as at the time of booking the resort wasn't opened yet.

Sunday 12 October 2014

Our F1 experience

The long anticipated trip to Singapore Grand Prix finally arrived at the end of September. It seems to be one of the things to tick off whilst living in Brunei, and I can see why. Singapore is always a pleasure and the GP with all of its entertainment did top it off. It was a great chance to sample a bit more of its nightlife too as we had Eleanor with us to look after Sofia in the evenings - a rare treat!