Flying Air Asia

I haven't blogged for a week! We just came back from a 5 day, 4 night holiday to Hong Kong. Hubby and I brought Annie, Claire and Eva. Poor baby Solomon had to stay at Grandpa's place with Paula the maid. The way we see it, he's too small to understand and appreciate most things anyway. He'd be much happier at home with his toys and familiar food and surroundings. Besides that, bringing 3 kids on holiday is already a test of physical and mental/emotional stamina. Throw in a puking, pooping 7 month old baby into the equation and I'd rather stay at home, thank you very much.

Hubby and I have already been to Hong Kong once, so we've done the mandatory tourist spots, like The Peak, Victoria Harbour, Kowloon Street Markets, etc... This time around, I planned a no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point, specially-for-kids, theme-park-only holiday. Days 1 and 5 were spent travelling, day 2 at Ocean Park and days 3 and 4 were dedicated to Hong Kong Disneyland.

Before the trip, hubby asked me, "Why only 4 nights?" On the last night of the vacation, he said, "Now I know why!" Essentially, the children are the ones on holiday. We just tag along to serve them. It was seriously exhausting work, we must have walked a few kilometres a day, pushing strollers, carrying too lazy/tired to walk, pre-obese toddlers (Eva aged 2+ is 18kg and Claire aged 3+ is 26kg!), bringing them to the loo every hour and basically trying to squeeze in as much entertainment as we could into a day. I don't think we could have survived another day at the pace we were going. But I guess it's all worth it when you see the kids having the time of their lives!

Well, physical torture aside, we didn't have such a bad time ourselves. The shows at Disneyland were particularly spectacular. Hubby was drooling over the fireworks display, he has a thing for fireworks, firearms, explosives and basically all things destructive. He was 'helping' Annie at the dart gun, fun fair game and fell in love with the Tommy gun-like, battery operated, automatic soft dart gun. Never mind that it was bright yellow. Claire has inherited this love of guns from him. For their presents, Annie chose a Tinkerbell toy, Eva a Mickey Mouse spinning light thingy, whereas Claire chose a Buzz Lightyear gun which shoots soft discs. Let's just hope Solomon doesn't develop a preference for Barbie Dolls in the future.

Anyway, this whole vacation was conceived about a year ago. It was one of those Air Asia 0 fare promotion drives. I managed to buy tickets for us from Kuching to Macau, with the intention of then taking a ferry to Hong Kong. It didn't matter that I had to book a year in advance because hey, zero fare okay? Well, far from RM0, the tickets cost me around RM1500.

Anyways, months later, they cancelled the Kuching-Macau route! After hours waiting on their help line, I discovered my options were to either get re-routed for free, or to convert my RM1500 into credit (nope, no such thing as refunds). Being re-routed would mean flying to KL, then flying to Macau, then taking a ferry to Hong Kong. All the while towing 3 kids, a back pack, a suitcase and a stroller? Bad idea. Therefore I opted for the credit. By then the children were already excited about the prospect of going to Disneyland Hong Kong, so I couldn't change the destination. I did not want to change the dates either, because it was appropriately during the school holidays. So in the end I booked from Kuching to KL, then KL direct to Hong Kong. Since these were no longer 0 fares, the credit didn't even cover the KCH-KL fare; I had to top up another RM3700++. Furthermore, there was a time limit on the validity of the credit, so I couldn't dilly dally. Oh yes, and also booking using credit could not be done online, so I had to line up at the Air Aisa counter at the airport. What fun!

I purchased express boarding as well, because I detest queuing, pushing, shoving and running ala Amazing Race to the plane. Then, just last month or two, they did away with express boarding! Now you can purchase seats at RM20 or was it 25, for hot seats, and RM5 for regular ones. This is a good move, as boarding Air Asia planes is now a bit more civilized. Anyway, I was not informed of the change and when I inquired later, I found out that 'the system' had already allocated seats for us. We were given first row seats most of the time (I must be the sucker who booked the flight the earliest!), but were separated for 2 flights and had to rely on the grace of the other passengers to change seats.

After all this aggravation, guess what? They have now resumed Kuching-Macau flights! Talk about dancing around the coconut tree! All that said, I guess the important thing is we went on a holiday and we enjoyed ourselves. If it weren't for the Air Asia promo in the first place, we most probably wouldn't have gone on this vacation. I have now learnt my lesson though; I shall not book flights more than 6 months in advance. Well, I did book a Singapore flight for November, zero fare ma... Will start after this.