Wash DC to Kuala Lampur and Aus/NZ

[madsquopper]

Just starting to plan this for next summer and welcome opinions/suggestions mostly for the air travel part. We're at a conference in Kuala Lampur for about 6 days and are figuring sice we're already going that far and have always wanted to visit Australia/NZ we'd also stop at one (or possibly both) on the same trip.

We've never done a flight of more than 8-10 hours; spouse hates longer flights in general but no help for that, plus she's terrible with time changes. There seem to be two main choices, do a "3 leg", out to Kuala, then to Aus, then back to DC, or something like fly to Aus on a round trip ticket, and then from Aus go to Kuala on a round trip from there. The second one would allow a rest day or two in between. Spouse also brought up flying to the west coast and staying a night or two there to visit friends and then do the overseas bit.

Any thoughts on flight strategies, or what airlines to definitely avoid? Or anything else we need to consider. Up until now our overseas travel has been pretty much to England and a bit of the continent; also Morocco.

Larry

[Bigdawg]

DD just got back from a year in Melbourne. We went with her on her original flight. We flew SW out of BWI to LAX then United business class to Melbourne. DD came back a total of three other times during the year and used the same formula each time. Actual flight was 14 hours from LAX. Her comment when she flew business class was something like "it felt like a 2 hour flight dad". When she flew economy plus she said it felt like the full 14 hours. I literally felt like I was getting out of bed in the morning when I got off that flight. Basically, spring for the business class. Good luck and enjoy.

[Totoro]

Just a small remark: from Aus to NZ is at least three hours of flying one way.

[brett]

We flew from KL to Gold Coast Airport (just south of Brisbane) on AirAsia. It was about a 10 hour flight. We have flown quite a bit on AirAsia. They are a budget airline but are very similar to any domestic North American economy class service.

We rented a car and took our time driving south to Sydney. Great beaches. Spent time in Sydney, picked up another rental and drove through Melbourne to the Great Ocean Road. That was fabulous. Dropped the car in Melbourne, flew back to Sydney on a low cost TigerAir flight. Australia is huge. I think we were in the air for almost four hours flying from Perth to Sydney on one trip.

We booked Jetstar Australia Sydney to Honolulu. It was a code share with Qantas. The difference was the identical seat was several hundred dollars less than the Qantas seat to Honolulu.

Two days/one night break in Honolulu, then picked up a fare home to Canada.

The one way ticket direct home from Sydney was very expensive so breaking it up was also very cost advantageous for us.

We are planning to take the same flight to Gold Coast Airport when we visit friends in Brisbane. We spend winters in Thailand and SE Asia so we usually find ourselves in KL at some point during that time.

As an aside, you also have lots of other options from KL. The southern Andaman coast islands in Thailand are wonderful depending on time of year. An hour or so away on AirAsia. Also Cambodia and Vietnam.

[97guns]

I hate long flights, I can’t sleep on an airplane so I usually watch 5 or 6 movies, getting ready to fly out of SFO to Shanghai in an hour, this flight will be especially rough because I didn’t sleep well last night, hope there’s no one hacking up a lung next to me getting the whole plane sick with SARS.

We may or may not make it to KL this trip but I did look at hotels and they were very cheap

[5j404]

Looks like we will be heading to a conference in Kuala Lampur this December, also thinking about tacking on some extra vacation time, but haven't even begun to plan. Your so far ahead of us.

[BeachOrCity]

If you are trying to break it up, I would fly IAD NS to Tokyo or Seoul, then take a short break. Then a slightly shorter flight to KL. Then nonstop to sydney from there. For Sydney home the stopover in Hawaii can be nice, and there is a UAL nonstop back for HNL to IAD

No way to do all this on one ticket, the KL to SYD leg can be all by itself, the other maybe an open jaw will work for you.

Def do NOT fly RT to Sydney and in and out of KL. Its much longer. Also assume you are in coach, if so avoid 9 across 787 and 10 across 777 as much as possible. They are brutal. You have to check airline by airline and flight by flight for this.

[friar1610]

I don't know how this would work for you (or even if you have to pay your own way.) We flew Air NZ from LA to Aukland. Premium economy - it was great! You get these little modules for two that are 100x more comfortable than regular airline seats. Maybe not as great as biz class but damn close and much cheaper. I can't say enough good about Air NZ!

Also, as a previous poster mentioned, Australia ("West Island" to the Kiwis) and NZ are further apart than many people realize.

We did a 2 week tour of NZ and figured since we were in the neighborhood it'd be a shame not to go to Australia. But Australia is such a HUGE country and we didn't want to add 2 more weeks. We solved that by only going to Sydney where we spent 3 full days/4 nights. There's plenty to do there for that amount of time and we weren't spending all our time getting from point A to point B. So we punched our Australia ticket w/o running ourselves ragged. Dont know if that would work for you.

[madsquopper]

After poking around a bit, I think what we'll end up doing is making our stopover in Dehli and doing our extra sightseeing in India. Main disadvantage is time of year (monsoon season) but apparently in the north part of India it'snot quite as bad as further south. Biggest advantage seems to be flights - we can get nonstops for both legs and it's not terribly far out of the way great circle-wise.

So main question is now "how bad is Dehli in August?"