Overseas trip- take off

 Tuesday September 11...

We caught the Jetstar 6.50pm flight out of Launceston to Melbourne on the 11th of September and stayed at the Formula 1 hotel, which was right at the airport so we could walk to and from it with all our bags.



The kids were pretty excited to finally be walking out into the tarmac.



We had two rooms which were extremely small but we only needed them to sleep and the kids had great fun running between the rooms and knocking on the doors, before finally excitedly falling asleep.




Wednesday September 12...

We headed to the terminal about 7.45am to meet Mum and catch our 9.30 flight to Kuala Lumpar (KL). Mum had been at Jessica's since Saturday.

The line to check- in wasn't very long but the queue at immigration was horrendous and we were really worried we were going to miss our flight. As soon as we were through immigration we started running, I was dragging Jonty (who didn't want to run) and Flynn under the other arm and I was really stressed.  I'm one of those people who three hours before a flight leaves, says, "lets get to the gate, incase we miss our flight".

When we got to the gate the plane had already started to board but the lady at the gate said there were about 100 other passengers still going through customs that had to board the flight so we had a bit of a laugh at how stressed we had been.



The flight to KL took 8 hrs and it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Flying budget with Air Asia, there were no TVs - how were we going to pass the time? I think this was a marketing ploy on behalf of AirAsia to get more money out of customers as they had Samsung Galaxy tabs and PSPs for rent for only $4!.

 The kids had no trouble entertaining themselves with the rented PSP and their own Ipods . Flynn hated being restrained in the seatbelt on take off, but once we were free to move around the plane he was fine just playing in the seat - walking up and down the aisle. 

For over half the flight we were still over Australia and it was amazing to fly over the outback and see flat and dry land as far as you could see with dry river beds running through it.

   

Jonty made the most of what little room we had, to have an afternoon sleep on the floor.

The air hostess moved me to a row where I had 3 seats to myself so there was heaps of room for all of us to move back and forth between our rows. Jonty was absolutely scared of the flush of the plane toilet and every time he went, I had to wait until he had left the cubicle before I could flush it - this theme carried all the way through the whole holiday for EVERY toilet stop  - "don't flush, don't flush" and he would sometimes run out of the toilet with his pants still down if he thought the toilet was going to flush before he got out.

The plane landed at 3.30pm - local KL time and as we hit the tarmac, the hot humid weather hit us like a blanket  - I loved that feeling after coming from our Tassie winter. As you can see from the clothes we left in, we quickly needed to remove a layer or two!