Air Asia to Malaysia is fail

I’m finally in Malaysia on holidays for about 3 weeks. However, the journey here wasn’t very pleasant though.

The night before my flight, I received an sms from Air Asia, the carrier I was flying with, stating that my flight was delayed by 8 hours due to aircraft technical issues.

Great. Flight delayed by 8 hours, and I have a flight from Sydney to Melbourne at 7.15am with the new take off time at 8.50pm now. What on earth am I going to do for like 11 hours in Melbourne?

I was contemplating on meeting up with people in Melbourne but unfortunately I ran out of phone credit and also I couldn’t be half-arsed going out to the city lugging my big luggage around.

So yes, I actually spent 11 hours in Melbourne Tullamarine terminal, sitting around wondering what on earth should I do to kill time. I started by going to the nearest news agent to read some magazines. Some 8 magazines later, I discovered my neck was starting to hurt so I gave that up.

I then decided perhaps I should buy a book to read. Unfortunately, the news agent didn’t have the book I wanted so I gave that up too. So I had lunch and took really slow bites, extending the time I needed to chow down a chicken parmigiana sandwich.

Then I walked around to all the shops, looking at every single item on sale, reading product descriptions and played around with electronic gadgets. After that, I went to get coffee at Hudsons which tasted a bit funny and took my time between sips.

Crap. 3 hours have passed. I still have 8 more to go. Repeat from step 1. Misery.

Come boarding time at 8.30pm, I then discovered that Air Asia’s plane was late and thus, the flight was delayed by another hour. OH MY GOODNESS! You must understand that I’ve been awake since 5am to hop onto my flight to Melbourne.

Air Asia’s plane is pretty budget. Very crammed seats which does not decline backwards. Whenever I tried to watch videos or listen to their music, the screen kept prompting me to enter my credit card. They wouldn’t even upgrade my seat to a larger one, but this Malay guy did get his seat upgraded with a big smile from the air steward.

I would’ve thought that after all the issues, they would’ve given everyone free movies/tvs to watch. I guess not. Truly budget airline. I wonder whether the oxygen masks are free if they come down due to the lack of oxygen. Perhaps it’ll prompt you for your credit card before allowing oxygen to flow through.

I then spent about a couple of hours chit chatting with an Aussie girl in front of me and an Aussie guy across the aisle from me. It’s interesting to note how their travel plans are to places like Bali, Vietnam, Laos and Thailand but none of them intended on visiting Malaysia.

Then I spent the next 5-6 hours tossing and turning trying to get some rest where I could with the super uncomfortable seats. Also, lucky I met a nice lady sitting on the same row as me next to the windows. Turns out that she lives near me and offered to take me back to my place.

How awesome is that? I didn’t have to spend like RM70 on a taxi. So yes, when I finally arrived back at my place it was like 5.30am. Once I got back, we immediately went to Taman Megah to grab some dim sum.

Ahhh…cheap and nice food in your tummy. What a treat. Ate there till 7.30am and went to bed at 8am local time. That meant that I was awake for like almost 30 hours.

I think unless Air Asia flies from Sydney, I’ll just fly with Jetstar to Singapore and catch a local flight to KL. Even then, that would require much consideration. No way am I going to fly Air Asia from Melbourne again.

With the super crammed seats, I wouldn’t recommend getting on flights more than 4 hours. It is simply outrageous how the seats don’t decline but slide outwards a little bit, giving you like a 10 degree decline. Try getting sleep with that.