Day 01 - Friday 13th May

I’d booked a taxi online yesterday for 10:30am with Taxis Combined. Suzy later told me that she prefers to use Silver Service because they are more reliable and so I was even more nervous about whether the taxi I’d booked would arrive. As it turned out, it arrived five minutes early.

This morning, a man had climbed onto the Harbour Bridge causing the bridge to be closed. So, the next worry was whether the bridge traffic had recovered in time for our trip to the airport. When we got to the Warringah Freeway, the traffic was still banked up almost to Cammeray – almost like peak-hour traffic.

Although it was a little slow, it didn’t turn out to be a big problem. In fact, we arrived at the airport soon after 11am. I’d allowed plenty of time - our plane wasn’t due to leave until 2pm.

The queue for economy class was very long but because we were travelling business class we walked past this queue to the business class queue. There was nobody in this queue and we walked straight up to the check-in counter. My guess is that we would have been waiting in the economy queue for more than an hour.

Even at the customs departure area, we were able to use the Express Lane and saved more time. So we were in the Malaysia Airlines business lounge soon after 11:30am. This gave us plenty of time for a Scotch and a snack.

They called us 20 minutes because departure time. Once again we did not have to queue with everyone else but walked past the queue to the business boarding gate.

When the plane pulled back from the gate with a jolt, it felt as though we really were on our way for our big adventure holiday after all the planning and anticipation.

The plane was a fairly old 747. The service was good and the meals were good but not as good as some other airlines were have used. The seats reclined a long way back. However, they weren’t completely flat. We managed to get a rest for two or three hours despite a screaming baby nearby.

Although, the flight was supposed to be 8 hours 30 minutes, we arrived almost 30 minutes early. Normally this would be good news but our next flight didn’t leave Kuala Lumpur until just after midnight. It gave us more time to relax in the Malaysia Airlines lounge.