Melbourne Holiday Day One

The month of November is full of excitement, as you can see, we have had 4 days of break in Jakarta, then two weeks later just as our bums get a little more itchy we are off to Melbourne for 6 days excluding the flight days.

Wednesday, 20th November 2013

Almost a cancelled trip - a testimony

We departed KL at night via aircraft no D7214 at local time 1030pm.  We did a web check in earlier, and had one luggage to drop off at the counter.  When we were checking in our luggage, we were asked by the ground crew for our visas - which we then discover that we needed but had NONE!  No panic yet, as we asked the staff a few questions - is there a possibility of exemption, how to obtain the visas the quickest way, and we were then adviced to use the Premium Lounge internet access to apply for our visas.

We logged into the website provided, keyed in the necessary information and credit card details for payment of AUD20 per visa.  As informed by the ground crew, each visa took only 5 minutes to apply and approval was immediate once payment is received.  Total time taken was 30 minutes.  Thank God for the Australian government efficiency and fast internet.  Otherwise, getting to the airport would be as close as we got to Melbourne.

For those who intend to visit Australia, this is their Immigration Website to apply for visa.

Before we were told that we didn't have our visas

Walking to our aircraft.

William enjoys reading the brochures and manuals

Dawn.  Was told that I can see dophins and whales from up here but didn't see any.

Night flight is not easy, and I asked myself a couple of times why I picked the night flight as I tossed and turned and tried to keep my eyes closed, psycho-ed my mind into sleep in the plane.  The flight was full and a big group of boisterous Malaysian students were sitted in the rows behind us.  We didn't order food on flight this time but just in case the kids get hungry, I bought a red bean loaf and some buns just before entering the gate.  Both kids polished off the buns and a few slices of bread before dozing off.

It was obvious the kids were not very comfortable, neither was I but we all tried our best to take 40 winks.  Daddy sat across the aisle had a harder time because of the chatty students behind him.

They didn't sleep like this the whole flight...

Sometimes the boy was like this... and I was too cold to sleep

Other than this, flight was uneventful and we arrived at 6am local time on Thursday, 21st November, however we waited 15 minutes for the shuttle bus to ferry us to the terminal.  Sunny weather greeted us as we walked out of the terminal to wait at a convenient place for our friend Kelvin to pick us up.