In Reply to: AA posted by nessbali on Sunday, 9. August 2009 at 18:41 Bali Time:
Early this year, I flew from the Gold Coast to Bali via KL.
Because the flight to KL left early in the morning, I stayed at a motel opposite the Gold Coast Airport.
I turned up at the Air Asia Check In Counter in Coolangatta 80 minutes before the scheduled departure time and was given a boarding pass like a supermarket docket. After waiting for security to open, I checked out the selection of goods available from the Duty Free Shop which was quite poor. The cheapest spirits were $A25.
The plane was a fairly new Airbus A330-300. There was enough legroom for my 178 cm height, though the width of the economy seats would not suit obese passengers. There was no free entertainment, though for an additional 30 Ringgits you can use the video in the headrest in front of you. The video has not been properly set up and none of the passengers bothered with it.
We flew over Darwin and West Timor before arriving at the Low Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT) in KL at 2.55 pm. There are no airbridges at the LCCT, so we had to walk down the steps and across the tarmac. There is no transit lounge, so we had to go through Malaysian Immigration and Customs. There is no visa fee when you arrive in KL and your departure tax is already included in your Air Asia ticket price when leaving KL.
I grabbed a free trolley for my luggage and bought a litre of Gordons Gin in KL Duty Free in Arrivals for 48 Ringgits. Next, I took a long walk to Departures which involves leaving the LCCT and going back in again. Before you pass into the Departures area, there are various fast food restaurants. Above the entrance to the Departures area is the Departures Board where I worked out the location of my Air Asia Checkin Gate for my flight to Bali.
I took another walk through Malaysian Immigration to leave the country. From there, I went to the Air Asia Departure Gate and waited. The atmosphere was like a train station with rows of seats facing a series of locked glass doors. Eventually, the Air Asia fellow opened one of the glass doors and we walked across the tarmac to the steps of the plane.
My plane to Bali was a new Airbus A320 belonging to Air Asia Indonesia and all the staff were Indonesian. Being an Indonesian aircraft, all transactions were in rupiah.