I had been worried about the 8 hour flight home with our 1 and 2 year olds but it was fine.

Z is very cute sitting on the plane

I was a little bit worried, because I thought travelling in the day would be more difficult than the overnight flight on the way over.  I wasn’t that bothered though, as we haven’t had many problems flying.

Getting to the airport

We left our lovely lovely hotel in Port Dickson about 10am.  There was a little bit of drama when J realised his main credit card was missing!  He went back looking for it, but couldn’t find it.  Annoying,  but at least it was our last day.

We took a private transfer from the hotel to the airport.  It was a bit pricey, but we weren’t sure about other options and were too busy trying to enjoy our last couple of days to want to stuff around working out other options.  It took about 45 minutes and soon we were dealing with LCCT yet again.

Flying home

It was a painless experience at LCCT as the Air Asia X staff were nice enough to take us out of the line and straight to the front.  Before we knew it, we were on the plane.

We tried the same trick as had worked for us on the way over – splitting the four of us over two rows of three, leaving the middle seats.  Unfortunately, the plane was nearly full and this didn’t pay off, although of course the people in the middle seats were happy to move to the aisle ones.  We kept an eye on things, and as soon as the doors were shut, Z and J moved to a spare row of three on the opposite side of the plane.  We got extra lucky when it turned out the guy next to us was travelling with the guy that had been next to J, and he moved to sit with him, so S and I also got our row of three.  Yay! So much less stressful when there is no one next to us.

Z can be a bit trickey on the plane.  He doesn’t want to sleep or stay still.  It is hard to get him to sleep, but once he is asleep, he usually sleeps pretty well.  Not this flight.  The flight was eight hours departing at 1:30pm and he only slept for one hour of it.  He had slept for 20 minutes in the taxi ride to the airport and that is all he slept that day.  So he was tired and reasonably hard work for J for a fair bit of the flight.

S is actually very easy, except for the toilet thing.  She happily goes into an ipad fest (she would never be allowed to have it for so long normally, so she laps it up).  I can leave her and do whatever on the plane and everyone’s happy.  The toilet thing was annoying this flight though. She needed to go right before we took off, when obviously she can’t.  Lucky I had a spare nappy for exactly these situations on me and the guy next to us had moved seats.  Later in the flight, we also had an “accident” all over the seat.  Joyful!

S sleeping

Anyway, it is actually kind of nice sitting on the plane with S.  It’s basically 8 hours where I don’t have to do anything and can’t do much except read and watch bad tv on my laptop.  It’s awesome!

S did a fair bit of sleeping on couches in the second half of the trip, and I think this helped us – S actually laid down across the seats by choice about 6pm Malaysia time and fell asleep for about an hour (at which point they turned on all the lights bright and did a meal service).  It does show how quickly kids get used to travel.  7 weeks ago she barely slept at all, and it took ages for her to get to sleep and our flight didn’t leave until after 1am.

Arrival in Melbourne

We arrived on time at 11:30pm, and it was all very smooth.  Well, it would have been very smooth if S hadn’t decided she wasn’t wearing underpants on the way to immigration and kept trying to take them off while holding her dress up high and flashing everyone :-O

There were many tantrums as I wouldn’t allow this.  Fun fun.  It was a big relief when we got to the baggage claim area, and she could sit on a trolley and stop being silly.

Soon enough, we were out and in the cars with my sister and mum (it takes two cars to pick us up as they both have smaller cars and we, of course, have to use two car seats here).  It was great to see them and have an easy ride home.

It was weird to be back in our house!  Thanks to my family, it was nice and clean and even stocked with some basic food items including milk for the kids (thankfully).  We put the kids straight to bed, and it was so nice to have the kids in their own rooms.  Well it was nice for a couple of minutes.  And then Z started screaming 🙁

Sick Z

I gave Z more milk, to see if that would pacify him.  It worked for a few more minutes and then J went in.  He’s screaming and making horrible choking sounds and soon J is screaming too, worried that Z is choking to death.  I go in and there is big, horrible, smelly, chunky vomit all over both boys and the ground :-/  Z is screaming his head off as well as making choking sounds and looks so white with massive red areas around his eyes.  I strip Z off and send them both to the shower and start cleaning up.  I am worried, as I have never seen him like this.  He is very easy going and not one to scream like that.  Given we have just got back from overseas, there is even more to worry about.  I suggest one of us takes him to the hospital. J starts getting dressed, and then we remember the car seats not in the car, it is all locked up and the battery is probably dead. Ahhhhh!  These things always seem to happen at great moments.

So J goes out to the car to see what he can do.  While he is gone, I cuddle Z and he not only calms down, but is suddenly happy and trying to crawl away from me!  It is a very quick, very bizarre turnaround.  When J comes back in, we put him back to bed, and he sleeps no problems and even wakes up the next morning wet through… wtf?!  all we can think of is that maybe he just had too much formula/soy milk in him.  J had given him a fair bit on the plane to try to get him to sleep, and we had given him more at home for the same reason.  Oh well, all’s well that ends well!

Overnight or day flight?

This is actually a tough questions.  Neither was that bad.

The overnight flight was slightly easier with the kids, especially Z who slept pretty well once we got him to sleep.  However, this easiness is probably cancelled out by the fact that we were very tired ourselves, and this made the first day in Kuala Lumpur hard work.  It also took longer to recover from this flight.  The other negative about an overnight flight on the way home would be that you are without a room for most of the day.  That wouldn’t suit us as we would not want the kids to not have their day nap before an overnight flight, so that would mean booking a night in a hotel that we wouldn’t really use which also makes this option pricier.

I’d probably just book whichever flight was cheapest or fell on the most convenient day and not be too fussed about what time it actually departed.  The only exception to this is if I wasn’t going to buy Z a seat.  It would be really tough having the four of us sitting in a row of three, so I’d go for whatever flight was more likely to produce sleep for Z, so an overnight one would win.

Practical Information
The original flight had only cost RM1904 for 4 seats, bags, seat allocations, food etc.  Very cheap!!  We paid about this again though when we changed the dates.

Read about our overall wrap up of our 7 week trip to Asia.