千里之行 始于足下

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

Jalan Alor was KL’s equivalent to Singapore’s Lau Pa Sat: hawker food for tourists at not-so-cheap prices.

The food was so-so for me and some of us had durians for dessert.

After dinner we went back to our hotel.

As the hotel that we stayed in was fully booked, we actually scored an upgrade to the suites.

It turned out that a koran-reciting competition was being hosted at our hotel (explained the fully booked rooms).

The next morning we had to be up early as our flight was departing at 8.40am.

The concierge helped us get a taxi for 130 MYR; it wasn’t so bad since it was split among 5 people.

The journey took almost an hour and all of us slept through the long drive.

The main terminal seemed like an oasis of calm compared to the zoo of LCCT.

The check-in was already open and it turned out that the web check-in counter was SLOWER than the ordinary counter.

After checking in we went to grab some cakes/pies before passing immigration.

Thankfully the queue wasn’t as long as entering Malaysia but it was still time-consuming.

Our gate was at the satellite terminal so we had to take the skytrain there.

The plane was already awaiting us at the gate.

While boarding I spotted a rather exotic airline.

HT and I scored row 4 again but this time I ended up on the middle seat and him on the aisle.

Thus no pictures of the clouds.

We were slightly delayed as our plane had to wait for its turn to take off.

I couldn’t remember much of the flight except of this paragraph written in the in-flight magazine.

We were back in SIN less than 24 hours after leaving it.

For HT he would be back in SIN less than 24 hours from then for his flight back to SYD the following morning.

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

After doing errands (helped my colleague pass some gifts to her friend in KL), checking in and having a snack at McD’s, we were finally on our way to the stadium by LRT.

The train wasn’t too crowded when we boarded and there was time and space for me to take the photograph below.

However it wasn’t long before the train got filled (with Liverpool supporters of course).

It was so crowded that almost no more passengers could board in the last few stations before the Stadium.

I was glad to get out of the overcrowded train but the platform didn’t provide any much respite either.

I only found out later that Bukit Jalil Stadium is the 9th largest football stadium in the world.

Between the LRT station and the stadium there were many stalls selling Malaysian food and drinks (nasi lemak anyone?) as well as not so authentic football apparels.

Definitely very different from a typical match day at Anfield.

Amidst the crowd somehow we managed to rendezvous with the rest of the contingent from Singapore.

By the time we entered the stadium the match had started.

Our 88 MYR　ｔｉｃｋｅｔ　ｓｈｏｕｌｄ　ｅｎｔｉｔｌｅ　ｕｓ　ｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｅｃｏｎｄ　ｔｉｅｒ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｔａｄｉｕｍ　ｂｕｔ　ｗｅ were not able to find our way in.

We ended up in the top tier of the stadium, closer to the sky than to the action.

From my position I could see some empty seats in the second tier.

Well we were feeling too comfortable to attempt getting there.

While it was almost full house at Bukit Jalil, the atmosphere while decent left me kinda deflated.

There were plenty of noise but hardly anything was synchronized. I believe that most of the fans (my travel companions included) were familiar with the songs sung at Anfield.

The performance on the pitch was typical of a pre-season friendly; kinda insipid in my opinion. The star of the first half was obviously Charlie Adam, the summer’s new signing from Blackpool.

Charlie’s retaking the penalty

Malaysia’s reply was a Bend-it-like-Beckham-esque freekick minutes later so both sides went into half time tied at 1-1.

Half-time was a good opportunities to take photos.

Liverpool reappeared in the second with an entire different team.

Start of second half

Second half was more entertaining with the sloppy Malaysian defence giving away cheap goals and Liverpool raced to a 4-1 lead.

However the Malaysians didn’t give up and gave Liverpool some scare with two goals of their own.

However more naive defending led to two more goals for the visitors and the final score was a more respectable 6-3 to the EPL side.

At the end of the match the organizers played “You’ll Never Walk Alone” which we sung with full gusto.

By the time we left the stadium was emptying out.

Outside the stadium it was still bustling with activities.

We didn’t head for the LRT station immediately as some of us decided to browse at the merchandises. By the time we were done there was still a large crowd at the stadium.

The security personnel at the LRT station had to implement crowd control and lock the fans out before the station became too overcrowded. We were stuck in the crowd for around 20 minutes before we were allowed into the station.

Then we wasted more time procuring the tickets before waiting to get up to the platforms. All the trains were too filled to the brim and we waited for a couple before we could get up.

Fans heading home

While waiting for the train Jaslin spotted a spelling mistake.

Two hours after the match ended we finally reached the Bukit Bintang area and went to Jalan Alor for dinner.

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

I was really happy that we chose an afternoon departure instead of an early morning one. I was able to sleep in a bit and had some decent breakfast at home before taking public transport to the airport.

Two buses and slightly less than half an hour later I arrived at the airport.

SIN Terminal 1 was bustling on a Saturday morning.

I checked the screens for the check-in row for my flight.

It seemed that T1 was dominated by low-cost carriers, especially Jetstar and AirAsia.

Lewis and his girlfriend Jaslin had already checked in when I reached row 3.

Several Jetstar/Valuair flights were leaving within one hour of one another (for KUL, CGK, MFM and SWA) which explained the long queue at the check-in counters.

Luckily I did OLCI earlier.

The last member of the traveling party HT arrived shortly after and we joined the web check-in queue.

While waiting in line, one of Jetstar’s staff came around to make sure that I had printed out the confirmations of my OLCI. Although there weren’t many people in front of us, we still spent at least a good ten minutes in the queue.

After collecting our boarding passes and passing through the immigration controls, we were off to an early lunch at the airside Burger King.

To be honest it wasn’t the best time to do spotting.

Looking at the JT aircraft reminded me my flight with them from CGK.

The trip report wouldn’t be complete without a cliched shot.

On our way to our gate we caught a glimpse of our bird.

There was already a queue for the security screening at the gate. From my observation, more than a third of the passengers were wearing Liverpool replica jersies (us included). Seemed that we would all be heading towards the same place in Kuala Lumpur.

I took another picture of our aircraft at the holding area.

Route: SIN – KUL
Flight no.: 3K 685
STD: 12:50 (ATD: 13:20)
STA: 13:55 (ATA: 14:05)
Time taken: 0h45m
Distance traveled: 196 miles / 313 km
Aircraft: Airbus A320
Registration: 9V-JSB

We were slightly delayed in boarding and I only got seated in 3A at the supposed time of departure.

While waiting for our turn to take-off, I discovered that there were plenty of things inside my seat pocket.

Despite the many photographs we weren’t even air-borne yet.

Ahead of us was an SQ whale jet bound for LHR.

Twenty minutes after our scheduled departure our plane lined up for take-off.

While taking off we could see water spilling out from one of the containers for drinks (I don’t know its exact term) in the galley. Apparently some stuff weren’t properly secured and the crew had to clean up after the seat belt sign was switched off.

The flight time was only 35 minutes and land was always visible from the window. I vaguely remembered that the crew went through one round of sales shortly after taking off.

Our plane touched down at KUL at 2:05pm, 15 minutes behind schedule.

HT and I were out of the plane pretty fast since we were seated so up front. However we had to wait for Lewis and Jaslin who were seated further back. A short shuttle train ride brought us to the main terminal where the immigration controls were.

The queue were horrendous and we took almost 90 minutes before clearing them. The biometric scanning of fingerprints clearly slowed down the whole process. After clearing the immigration at around 3.30pm, we got a pre-paid taxi coupon to our hotel for around 75 MYR.

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

A couple of months before the end of last season, Liverpool FC announced that there would be a pre-season tour of Asia with matches in Guangzhou, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul.

It was only two years since Liverpool last visited Asia and Singapore. This time round there wasn’t any stadium capable of hosting the match on our island otherwise I was pretty sure Singapore would be one of the stops.

I chose not to go to the match in 2009 as I questioned the wisdom of paying 80+ SGD for a pre-seaon friendly match, especially only two months after visiting Anfield. I had spent a fair bit of money traveling to UK to catch the team live in action (3-0 win over Newcastle) and my head told me that it was probably wiser to give the friendly a miss.

The details of the tour was released in June and Liverpool’s match at Kuala Lumpur would be on 16 July, a Saturday. It meant that I could do a weekend trip for the match without taking any time from work. The date also coincided with my friend HT’s two-week break from his medical studies in Australia. Lewis, a recent convert to Liverpool’s cause, was most enthusiastic in organizing a trip up north and in all there would be a total of seven of us traveling.

The first phase of the sale was limited only to holders of Standard Chartered Bank’s cards in Malaysia and we would need to wait till the general sale period before we could get our hands on those tickets.

There were several places in Singapore where the local fans could get tickets and we got ours from the Adidas concept store at Suntec. Only the 108 MYR ones (45 SGD) were available and they came with the passes to the training session on Thursday (which we wouldn’t be attending).

Funnily the most prominent player featured on the ticket wouldn’t be traveling to Asia due to his rehabilitation from injuries.

After securing the tickets we would need to make some traveling plans. Naturally I volunteered for the task.

Accommodation-wise it was pretty straight forward. My mother has some time-share membership which I could utilize to get two rooms at Legend Hotel KL for free. Although each booking required a minimum of two-night stay, I somehow managed to get them to bend the rule and give me the rooms for just one night.

Three of the seven going for the match would make their own travel arrangement while I would take care of the remaining four. There are several different modes of transport between the two cities (car, bus, train & plane) and each has their pros and cons.

HT would be going back to Australia the following Monday and he made it clear that he didn’t want to spend hours on Malaysian expressways the day before he was to fly back to SYD. So flight it was.

After a bit of research, we finalized our choice of flying with Jetstar Asia. Our outbound flight was scheduled to depart at 12.50pm which would get us into KUL before 2pm. The inbound flight was a tad too early at 8.40am but we chose it as the later flights were much more expensive.

In total we paid 72.50 SGD each. Not too bad in my opinion.

Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Long Haul LCC
Pt III: Rotten Eggs
Pt IV: Volcanos
Pt V: Animals & Auckland
Pt VI: 3K 402
Pt VII: Epilogue

My thoughts on…

Jetstar

My initial fears about flying long-haul on LCC were unfounded. Jetstar’s A332 had comfortable seats and adequate seat pitch and I didn’t feel as cramped as I thought I would be. The IFE on overhead screens was a pleasant surprise too and the programming did seem interesting on the inbound. Meals-wise I didn’t have much exposure but the sandwiches were fine. While the idea of providing drinking water and allowing passengers to consume their own food might not earn extra revenue for JQ/3K, it certainly earned goodwill from passengers (like me).

There are certainly things that they can improve on. The crew could do better in terms of both friendliness and responsiveness. Another issue was the cleanliness. With the amount of people on the plane, the conditions of the lavatories would definitely deteriorate over time. Again it was down to the crew to maintain the basic cleanliness.

Will I fly Jetstar long haul again? Yeah but only if the price’s right. If there’s no promotion a return ticket to AKL is around 1,000 SGD which is more expensive than EK’s price (albeit with much longer flight time due to stop in BNE) and only marginally cheaper than SQ’s promotion price. EK’s price to Melbourne is also quite competitive so if the prices are comparable my choice will be a no-brainer.

NZ

NZ was a tourist-friendly country and my family and I had a good time there. There was hardly anything that I disliked there but if pressed hard for one I would say the weather. It was kinda erratic and I could do with less rain. There were too many good things to list though: open spaces, nice scenery, friendly people, interesting attractions etc.

The entire tourist infrastructure was well set-up and it had been a long time that I’ve visited a hassle-free destination. The admissions fees for the attractions were kinda on the high side but they did provide quality experiences in return. Cost-wise it was still manageable; both accommodation and car rental were cheaper compared to similar standard in Singapore. Food wasn’t as expensive as imagined; probably around the same level as eating out in the more finer eating places here.

I will like to return to NZ one day; preferably to the South Island whose scenery is rated higher than the North’s. C’mon Jetstar! Make me an offer that I can’t refuse.

Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Long Haul LCC
Pt III: Rotten Eggs
Pt IV: Volcanos
Pt V: Animals & Auckland
Pt VI: 3K 402
Pt VII: Epilogue

The check-in counters were already open by the time we arrived.

It seemed that it would be a healthy load back to Singapore.

There was a group of firemen soliciting for donations at the escalators going up to the departure level and one of them was wearing his full gear going up an escalator in the reverse direction.

The fundraising was all part of the Firefighter Sky Tower Challenge which donated the amount raised to the Leukaemia & Blood Foundation.

We donated our spare change to them before going on to browse the shops on the landside.

At one of the shops we bought some duty-free kiwifruit chocolates; not terribly cheap but they made good gifts back in Singapore.

After going through the immigration, my sis and I were randomly selected by the Airport Security to test for traces of explosives.

I wondered how random the selection was but complied anyway with their requests (they were very polite though).

Our plane was already at the gate.

The crew for our flight were already air-side by then and were having an early lunch at Burger King.

There was still some time before boarding commenced so we sat and waited on the rather comfy seats.

Noticed the kiosk in the photograph? My mom did more shopping there (some healthcare products).

I went to the washroom just before proceeding to the gates and found this poster inside the gents.

At the gate, there was a lady from Tourism New Zealand asking visitors (my sis and I inclusive) for contact details so that they could collect feedback about our trip.

Boarding was done in an orderly manner with StarClass passengers, families traveling with children and passengers sitting in the second cabin invited to board the aircraft first.

Coincidentally the three of us had the exact seats as on the outbound.

However this time round I wasn’t so lucky as I had a seatmate in 47G.

Route: AKL – SIN
Flight no.: 3K 402
STD: 11:25
STA: 18:00
Distance traveled: 5225 miles/ 8409 km
Aircraft: Airbus A330-200
Registration: VH-EBF

The plane took off on-time and the crew got into action as soon as the seat-belt sign was off.

First up was once again the rental of IFE units.

Then it was followed by the first hot meal service.

The crew also distributed Singapore’s arrival cards to those who needed them.

Ten hours on the plane was a long time and I needed to occupy myself.

First I re-read the in-flight magazine cover-to-cover while flying over the Tasman.

After that I read up on the other parts of NZ which I could go next time. (Provided if Jetstar has another similar promotion.)

There programming on the overhead screens was quite interesting throughout the flight.

It also showed the movie How Do You Know? which seemed quite bland.

I preferred the one that was uploaded in my iPod.

Being awake on the flight I could observe the service (or the lack thereof).

The crew disappeared after the first hot meal service and didn’t emerge until hours later.

When it was close to Singapore’s lunch time, we pressed the bell for assistance and the crew took ages to appear.

The Japanese air-crew was apologetic that hot meals would only be available two hours before landing and suggested that we could get some snacks from them in 10 minutes’ time.

So we used our last 30 NZD to buy these to share instead.

After seven hours we were still three hours away from our destination.

By then the trash bin near the water dispenser was filled with used paper cups but the crew didn’t seem to notice.

As promised another hot meal service was performed around two hours out of Singapore.

However it was at quite an awkward timing for us so we didn’t check the hot meals out.

While flying over the Riau islands the captain made an announcement saying that our landing might be delayed for quite some time due to “rain in northern Singapore.”

In the end the delay wasn’t as lengthy as I had afraid but our expected time of arrival was already 30 minutes later than scheduled due to headwind.

Finally after a loooooooong time…

The landing was smooth but the aerobridge took some time to be connected.

SIN was buzzing as usual and the lines to enter Singapore were long.

Luckily we were able to use the automated gates and were at the duty-free shop in no time.

Even after we were done with our purchases, our luggage still hadn’t appeared at the carousel.

After quite a lengthy wait, it finally appeared but with a jammed handle.

One of the ladies working at the CIAS counter attended to our issue and filed a report.

Their service was swift; someone collected the luggage the next day and returned it repaired one day after.

Good job indeed!

Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Long Haul LCC
Pt III: Rotten Eggs
Pt IV: Volcanos
Pt V: Animals & Auckland
Pt VI: 3K 402
Pt VII: Epilogue

Bleah. Online check-in wasn’t available on this flight.

Since I didn’t pay for seat allocation, it meant that I had to arrive early to check in.

I managed to negotiate an hour and a half early off work and scuttled back home for a shower before arriving at Changi T1 at around 6pm.

We joined the short but not very fast-moving queue.

Four counters were open to passengers of the evening’s three Jetstar flights: my 3K 401 to AKL, JQ 8 to MEL at 21:00 and JQ 58 to DRW at 22:10.

An additional counter was dedicated to Jetstar’s StarClass passengers.

The agent took her time checking the three of us in but we still had plenty to do dinner at the basement food court.

Passing through immigration was a breeze and T1 was buzzing as always.

Our plane just landed when we arrived at Gate D36.

In fact we got to see the arriving passengers departing the plane.

While watching the gate filled up with my fellow passengers, my sister and I logged on to SIN’s free WiFi and did some last minute surfing before our long flight.

The free WiFi is probably the best thing in SIN (among lots of things) and there are even computer terminals for passengers who don’t have the devices to tap on it.

Then it was time to board.

We were allocated 47 D, E & F so no window for me.

Luckily 47 G remained empty although 80% of the plane was filled.

To be honest I was quite impressed with the amount of leg space available considering I was flying on a LCC.

However the cleanliness was kinda questionable with the flight being a turnaround.

Let’s see what were in the seat pocket.

The flight took off almost half an hour after schedule.

Route: SIN – AKL
Flight no.: 3K 401
STD: 19:50
STA: 09:55
Distance traveled: 5225 miles/ 8409 km
Aircraft: Airbus A330-200

Although the plane is Australian-registered, the crew were all Singaporeans.

The arrangement is quite controversial due to the differences in the aviation safety standards and labour costs between the two countries.

Anyway from my observation the crew weren’t really smiley throughout the flight.

Not long after take-off they went about peddling the rental of inflight entertainment units for 15 AUD.

Headphones were also available for 3 AUD and they could be re-used for all other Jetstar flights.

From time to time there would be my favorite programming.

Soon after sales/rental of IFE units, hot meal service (buy on-board) started.

I didn’t get anything as I was still full from my earlier dinner.

I was also trying to get used to NZ time and attempted to sleep.

The extra space afforded by the empty seat allowed us to stretch out a bit more but my sleep was fitful at best.

Woke up two hours outside Auckland and found myself…

Couldn’t get back to sleep so ended up watching this on my iPod instead.

I didn’t get to finish it though because the last part of the video was corrupted.

Didn’t really matter since I had watched it countless times already.

The second hot meal service was performed somewhere over Tasman Sea.

We discovered that there was a water dispenser in the middle of the plane and filled up our bottles with it.

Finally after almost 10 hours of flight…

Verdict? Premium travel it ain’t but no complaints with the price and relative comfort.