Day 1: Melbourne – Penang via Singapore
After a big night of last minute preparations, we awoke early to a message from TripIt Pro that our Jetstar flight would be delayed 2 hours. This would give us 35 minutes to change in Singapore, which wouldn’t be enough, especially if it was further delayed (which in our experience is not uncommon!). We ummed and ahhed about what to do. DH looked up other flights on his iPad, while I eventually got up and started on the few last minute things we had to do. Eventually we decided that it may be worth considering booking a Scoot flight all the way through to Penang. We continued umming and ahhing for a while, but ended up deciding that we weren’t confident to rely on Jetstar to look after us, and we didn’t want to risk missing that flight, so we started the booking process on Scoot. Just before pressing the Pay Now button, DH called Jetstar to check whether they were going to offer us anything. They were still playing dumb at that stage and said they weren’t aware of any delays, so we went ahead and bought our Scoot flights and headed off to the airport!
About half an hour later, DH got a text message from Jetstar advising of the delay. He checked his emails on our way to the airport, and there was an email from them too, advising him to call them regarding our flight, so call he did. Apparently we had been bumped to a Qantas flight to Singapore! This was of course great news, but now we had a Scoot flight to deal with lol! DH looked up the Tc and Cs, and discovered that Scoot are actually pretty flexible, so he thought it was worth calling to see if we could salvage that flight to use for next year’s anniversary trip! DH got onto quite a helpful lady, who was happy to change the date in the end, but couldn’t give us the dates we wanted because they weren’t available yet. We decided to go with Grand Final weekend, since worst case we will still get a long weekend there (I don’t have any leave left after booking in all this year’s trips, so I’ll struggle to get more than 1 day off now), but we’ll still try to change it again once next year’s dates are available. This was all at no extra cost, about 2 hours before the flight was due to depart! We were very impressed, and are now looking forward to experiencing their in-flight customer service!
At the airport, check in was a little confusing. We went to Jetstar first, but we’d already been removed from their database, so we were sent over to Qantas. Unfortunately Qantas had rather a long line for check-in, and we were unable to use the bag drop queue even though we’d already checked in online with Jetstar. Still, the line moved fairly quickly, and soon enough we were checking in with Qantas. We were given seats towards the back in the middle section, but we were really in no position to complain and at least I would get an aisle seat (which I wouldn’t have in Jetstar with their 3-3-3 seating configuration). This was actually quite an important consideration as I had walked 20km of tough hills the day before, and my legs were pretty stiff!
Security and passport control were pretty quiet, and we got through nice and quickly. It was kind of a weird experience using the automated passport gate, but it certainly seemed to help get people through nice and quickly. We had no lounge to get to, so just wandered through the airport at a leisurely pace, browsing a few shops as we went. We only had about 20 minutes sitting at the gate, and it went quite quickly connected to the airport’s free wifi. With seats so far at the back of the plane, we were in the first group called to board.
We were on one of the newly refurbished planes, which looked so sleek and modern. Much better than the old ones, even in economy ;-) Plenty of storage pockets in the seat back, good quality entertainment unit and screen, decently comfortable seats. It was actually a wonderful flight with really great service, nice meals, and so much entertainment to choose from, I didn’t have time to watch everything I wanted to! Smooth as glass too. Probably one of my favourite flights so far, despite being in one of the last rows of economy lol! I got up to stretch my legs about every hour, and was about to just wander to the back of the plane and do a few stretches in there. Between that and covering my legs in compression wear, they didn’t get too sore.
Because we’d flown with Qantas, our bags were checked all the way through to Penang, so all we had to do in Singapore was make our way from one gate to another and relax! If we’d have stuck with Jetstar, we would have had to collect our bags, go through immigration, and check in again. We leisurely wandered through the airport, checking out some of the shops and the London/Chinese New Year display, on the lookout for somewhere to sit and relax with a drink. We found an English style pub that looked ok. We ended up getting some spring rolls and a bowl of chips to share too, knowing we wouldn’t be eating again until we landed in Penang after 9pm.
The next flight (with Jetstar Asia) was certainly a step down from Qantas, and I found myself quite glad that we didn’t have to spend our entire trip to Singapore like that! The seats were so close together, and there was only room in the seat pocket for a couple of smaller items. Being such a short flight, and Jetstar not allowing us to use devices during take off and landing, I didn’t even get through one episode of Once Upon a Time on my tablet! The landing was pretty rough through some thick clouds. There was one drop big enough that it made several people in the cabin shriek. I was quite glad to get down back onto solid ground!
After picking up our luggage and making our escape from the airport, we lined up to get a taxi to the hotel. It was quite an organised system – we lined up inside the terminal to purchase a taxi voucher, then were directed to the pick up area where there was a taxi waiting for us. It was a pleasant enough drive to the hotel in the dark, and I was looking forward to exploring some more in the daylight.
At the hotel we checked in and freshened up quickly in our room before heading to the rooftop terrace for some refreshing beverages and free popcorn and ice-cream! The rooftop terrace was a very pleasant place to while away the time, and we pretty much had it to ourselves when we arrived. Two very small gripes were the darkness – the waiters had to shine a torch on the drinks menu – and the noise level of the movie. Sitting in a comfy chair with a beverage, we suddenly realised how tired we were. There seemed to be more and more people arriving too, so we called it a night and headed back to our room. The room was pretty amazing, with light industrial style décor, and a funky modern bathroom.
