Potato Queen travel and lifestyle: Dream Trip to Macau: Day 1 (Fly with Air Asia)

Hello loyal readers and travelers!

It's time to finally blog about my Dream Trip to Macau. No more procrastination. This trip is made possible by Nuffnang and Macau Government Tourist Office (MGTO). Huge thank you to Veron Ng from MGTO for all the arrangements in making this trip a success. If you have time you can read on my winning entry. It takes a lot of hard work and research for a great achievement. Macau in February has temperature around 18-20°C and can be a little chilly at night so long sleeves apparel, jacket or cardigan will come in handy.

Located 2km away from the Main Terminal Building (MTB), KLIA2 started operations on 2 May 2014 as a replacement of former Low-Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT). The terminal has a built-up area of 257,845 square meters with 68 departure gates and retail space to accommodate a total of 220 outlets.

My husband and I arrived at the airport on 1st February at 9:30pm. We decided to go just a few weeks before Chinese New Year coz its the biggest and most happening celebration in the majorly Chinese populated city. It's exciting to travel when your destination is having their local celebration. Some festivals needed to be experienced on the day itself like Venice Carnival while some like CNY is advisable to skip the actual day or you'll find all stores closed leaving streets deserted.

Online check in with Air Asia is so simple. Besides saving on the printing charges over the counter, you save a lot of time by just checking in your luggage. We were bought 20kg of baggage weight. total cost from PEN to KUL is only RM352 for 2 pax.

Now everyone can fly...

The boarding time was at 11:20pm. We picked a night flight so that we can have the full day of sightseeing on the next morning but its kinda tired and not recommended. In fear of missing your flight, you won't get much of a deep sleep at the airport during transit.

We didn't get much sleep on the plane either due to recent aviation incidents. We were much aware of our surrounding most of the time.

Approaching KLIA 2 after 45 minutes.

Arrived at 12.20am. Past midnight already hence now is considered as the actual Day1 of our trip. Damn it as a long walk from the arrival gate to the baggage collection. See, there aren't any travelators around.

Greeted by Chinese New Year vibes.

The new terminal is huge af.

So much cleaner and prettier than the old LCCT. Hope the management will continue maintaining like this if not improving the facilities.

Don't you just love the "mushrooms". The colour changes gracefully every few seconds. Ain't sure what the art symbolizes but they sure look like mushrooms to us.

It's too early to check in our baggage as our next flight was at effing 6:30am. Actually there's no need to collect and check-in your baggage again for connecting flights. Air Asia is not that cruel. I'll explain below...

So we had super at Kopitan at 1:20am lol... I ordered BBQ chicken rice.

Hubby had curry noodles.

You get to see a lot of travelers sleeping on the floor if you are taking night flight. Though it's an eyesore, there aren't any bench or couch to be seen. There is a capsule hotel (Capsule by Container Hotel) available for transits like us but we thought it wasn't worth the couple of hours. It wasn't a pleasant experience to be sleeping in a food court either. Yeah, I had a 2.5 hour nap on a cushion and luckily our table was enclosed by short walls like on the right side of this photo.

Woke up at 4:30am.

Next, we headed to the check-in counter. You know why our luggage isn't directly transferred to the next flight? It's coz we purchased our PEN-KUL flight separately from the KUL-MFM flight to avoid further expensive charges from the agent provided by MGTO. The tickets we purchased by our own is much cheaper than quoted by the agent.

Hmmm...I wonder what to be unveiled very soon.

My travelator pose at every airport which has travelators.

Very spacious duty free zone. I think it's open all the time coz I can see staffs at the cashier.

Wine or beer? Nah, I'll pass...

It's almost 5pm so we went down to go through the hassling security check.

Only I alone was sponsored for the trip. My husband has to pay for himself. And no, my ticket isn't 100% free either. I had to bear the tax and fuel charges as stated in the terms and condition. Both of us paid a total of RM792 for the flight from KUL to MFM. As my mum always remind me, there is no free lunch in this world. So true!

See you in 4 days, KLIA2! Thank God Air Asia didn't mess up anything. Everything went smooth with no delays. Since Taiwan, I swore I wouldn't fly Air Asia again but this time it changed my mind.