Asia & Australia – Part 1…GLA-LHR-HKG-KUL with pics

In a moment of madness last summer, I decided to book a trip to Asia & Australia using a variety of airlines and aircraft. So I’m going to do a trip report detailing all my adventures, this post covers my first 3 flights.

27/02/09
BA1487 GLA-LHR
A320-211 G-BUSI Delivered 24/03/90 Gate 19
Scheduled departure 1400 / Actual departure 1356 / Take off 1401
Scheduled arrival 1520 / Actual arrival 1502
Seat 25F

Not much really to say about it, just the usual BA GLA-LHR shuttle. I did think the aircraft was a bit tatty looking, especially the seats where the blue leather was creased and cracked – is this aircraft due to be retired soon? Unfortunately the battery on my camera was flat, even though I charged it the previous night, so no photos for the first 2 flights. 😡

Load level looked about the 60% mark. We followed the Emirates 777 and took off from runway 23. After getting airborne, we were offered a complimentary drink and savoury or sweet snack. The savoury snack was what appeared to be a bag of seeds and the sweet snack was an Apricot & Coconut soft cookie – I opted for the cookie as I did not fancy the bag of bird seed. The cookie was really nice, although I was picking coconut out of my teeth for the rest of the flight!

The pilot welcomed us aboard and announced the routing – down the west coast, east to Birmingham, then over the city of London with a cruising altitude of 30,000 ft. On our descent, the views of London were amazing – the London eye, the O2 and what appeared to be a football stadium with an arch over it (Arsenal?). We landed a few minutes ahead of schedule and taxied to the gate, were we proceeded into T5 – this is my first time T5 and it’s quite impressive. My next flight is in 3½ hours, so have plenty of time to explore T5.
Got a Pret sandwich which was quite good then had a wander about T5 – shops everywhere and plenty of quiet spots at the gates if you want peace and quiet.

27/02/09
BA25 LHR-HKG
B747 G-BYGA Delivered 14/12/98 T5 Gate B39
Seat 57J
Scheduled departure 1840 GMT / Actual departure 1844 GMT / Take off 1917 GMT
Scheduled Arrival 1430 GMT+8 / Actual Arrival 1432 GMT+8

On checking the departure screens, it said go to gate B39. As this was my first time at T5, I was surprised to find that the B gates area was a separate “terminal” connected via an underground train. By the looks of it, the B terminal is used by BA long haul as the other flights that were leaving were to Lusaka & JFK and all I could see were BA 747s.
I grabbed a bottle of water from WH Smiths, then went to the gate where I found G-BYGA waiting for me and I watched it getting loaded with cargo. This aircraft is the first of last batch of 7 B747s delivered to BA in late 1998.
Boarding started ontime and the BA cabin crew were very welcoming. I went for seat 52J as it is on one of the last 3 rows which have a 2-4-2 config as opposed to 3-4-3. With this window seat you can stretch your legs out to the right out of seat 51J in front and I was hoping that no-one would sit in 52H next to me. My plan worked as the seat next to me was left vacant – one disadvantage of this seat is you can’t put your head against aircraft wall as the gap is too big, but there was plenty of leg room. On the seat was a cushion, blanket, headphones and an amenity pack with socks, eyeshades, toothbrush and toothpaste.

Pushed back a few minutes late and began taxiing to the runway. When we were almost there the aircraft stopped and I noticed a vehicle driving the length of the runway. The captain announced that a previous aircraft had “an incident with one of it’s tyres” and that the runway had to be checked for debris. We were 5th in the queue now, but it wasn’t long before we started rolling down the runway. It’s been a while since I’ve been on a 747 so I had forgotten the amount of runway it uses and seriously thought we were never going to get airborne.

The cabin crew were introduced, I think they were 15 of them, then they proceeded with the bar service. I got a bottle of red wine and a packet of Worcester sauce flavour pretzels. Not long after polishing off the wine and pretzels, the food service began – a choice of Beef Lasagne or Chicken in pepper sauce. I opted for the lasagne…and another bottle of red wine. It came with obligatory roll & butter, a mange tout, roasted pepper & rocket salad and winter fruit frangipane with a Lily O’Briens chocolate crispie cluster to finish – I have to say that this was the best airplane food that I’ve ever had. It was nice to see that the frangipane container was made from sugar cane fibre which, according to the label, totally degrades in 3 months as I have always wondered how much waste aircraft food produces as every item seems to be individually wrapped. I wonder if any of my upcoming flights can beat BA’s food.

After dinner I had a play about with the AVOD – it had a wide variety of films and TV programs and I ended up watching Burn After Reading with George Clooney which was quite poor. The journey progress map showed that we were flying over Siberia and Mongolia with a lot of familiar place names from Ewan MacGregor’s Long Way Round – Irkutsk, Novosibirsk and Ulan Bator
I tried to get some sleep, but kept waking up and before I knew it breakfast was being served. The choice was omelette or English breakfast – I went for the latter. It consisted of scrambled egg, sausage, bacon, tomato & mushrooms along with a Rachel’s organic Greek yoghurt, a mango & orange smoothie and a seeded muffin, followed by tea or coffee.

The cabin crew handed out immigration forms before landing, which is required by all non Hong Kong ID holders. The landing was smooth and it was a short taxi to the gate. Being seated at the back, it of course meant I was one of the last to disembark, which meant I was at the back of the queue at the visitor’s immigration counters. Once cleared immigration, it was a short walk to baggage collection where my case was already going round the carousel.
Next I bought a single to Kowloon on Airport Express train from the automated machines which cost 90HK$ which is about £8. 20 mins later I was in Kowloon, where I got a taxi to my hotel (40HK$), The Langham Palace in Mongkok.

The next day I went on the MTR from Mongkok to Central on Hong Kong Island where I proceeded to get totally lost – because the buildings are so tall it is hard to get your bearings and the streets are so busy that you end up being swept along with the crowds. I managed to locate the Star Ferry Pier and caught the ferry back to Kowloon for 20p. Next I went on the tourist bus – what a rip off – £25 for an hours trip, being choked to death with fumes on an open top bus. I then hung about Tsim Sha Tsui and watched the light show across Victoria Harbour.

Did not have my tripod with me when taking these photos, so it was extremely difficult.

02/03/09
Malaysia Airlines MH75 HKG-KUL
A330-200 9M-MKV Delivered 06/10/99 Gate 27
Seat 37A
Scheduled departure 0905 GMT+8 / Actual departure 0857 GMT+8 / Take off 0912 GMT+8
Scheduled Arrival 1255 GMT+8 / Actual Arrival 1252 GMT+8

Got the airport express train early in the morning to catch my flight to Kuala Lumpur. I heard somewhere (maybe on the tourist bus) that 90% of the HK population use public transport everyday – I tell you, I think they were all on my train this morning – what a squeeze and that was at 0615.

There are both a Cathay Pacific and Malaysia Airlines flight to Kuala Lumpur leaving within 15 minutes of each other and on checking flightstats.com I noticed that on some days my flight was cancelled and presumably the passengers were transferred to the Cathay Pacific flight. Today my flight went ahead and it looks like the Cathay Pacific passengers were put on my flight.

At the Malaysia Airlines check-in desk, they were confused as to why I only had a one way ticket to Malaysia. I explained that I was travelling onward to Australia, also with Malaysia Airlines, but she ended up having to check with a supervisor. Once that was sorted, I was assigned the seat I requested when I first booked the flight and was also given a Malaysian immigration form.

I didn’t have much time to visit the shops, except I did go and buy a Sun – I never read the Sun at home, only when overseas – don’t know why. I had a laugh to myself as the paper was in a cellophane pack which said “this article contains material which may offend” and “not to be shown to a person under the age of 18 years”.

The departure gates are very spacious, well laid out with very little clutter. You can get a good view of aircraft at the gates, although photographing through windows is not ideal.

The aircraft I’ll be going on

While waiting at the gate, our boarding cards and passports were checked and the boarding card stamped. When it came to boarding, it was just a matter of handing over the boarding card which decreased the boarding time considerably.
The seats were nice and colourful and everything was very clean. Load factor must have been about 70%. Masses of legroom – I could actually fully stretch out my legs with doing any contortions.

The flight left a little ahead of schedule, but the islands were so misty there was little to see after about a minute. But I manage to get a photo of part of the airport.

There was no bar service, but after being issued with a hot towel we were served a glass of fruit juice – I’m unsure what it was, but it was pink.
Lunch was served about an hour after take-off, with the choice being steamed fish & rice or pasta. I opted for the pasta and it turned out to be spaghetti with a tomato & vegetable sauce. The person who thought up this menu must have been having a laugh – spaghetti with a sauce is difficult to eat on terra firma without splattering it everywhere, but 10 times worse on an aircraft where you don’t know when the next bump will be.
Along with the pasta was an extremely flaky croissant (same chef presumably) & butter, 3 types of fruit (one of which I’d never seen before), a coffee flavoured sponge, an orange juice drink (not fresh orange) and a cup of tea. With the metal cutlery was a napkin, which I duly used to wipe the tomato sauce off my t-shirt and croissant flakes off my iPod.

Never made use of the inflight entertainment, except for the map – I’ll get a chance on my next flight.
The flight was pretty smooth (except when I was eating my spaghetti) with a cruising altitude of 40,000ft and the routing was over the South China Sea then Ha dong & Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.

After a bumpy landing, when taxiing to the gate I noticed there was probably only about 3 other aircraft anywhere – all Cathay Pacific 747s.
It was a long trek to immigration and baggage reclaim as we had landed at the satellite terminal which is for international flights. The terminals are on the opposite sides of the runway, but there is a monorail which goes under the runway.
There was a short queue at immigration and when I approached the counter the immigration officer said “Welcome to Malaysia” – which was a nice touch.
I had been warned about the taxi drivers in Kuala Lumpur and you should always buy a coupon at the taxi counter rather than going directly to the taxis as they have been known to charge whatever they like, especially to tourists. I ended up getting the KLIA Ekspres train to KL Sentral which cost RM35 (£7) and takes 28 minutes. In KL Sentral, got a taxi coupon RM20 (£4) and got my taxi to Trader’s hotel, which is overlooked by the Petronas Towers.

This is the view from my hotel room on the 29th floor

Next stop Australia…