Breakfast in Bintulu

This is the standard breakfast food in Bintulu and most northern Sarawak towns. It's the equivalent of Sarawak kolomee, but Foochow style. Unlike Sarawak kolomee, you can find this only during breakfast. Kuching ppl eat kolomee for breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper. This is the best one i've found in Bintulu so far but i think it has little to do with the taste. More to do with the presentation. It's like Sarawak kolomee taste better when it's served in a ceramic chicken bowl compared to a plastic bowl. Anyway, i think we should call it Kuching Kolomee since you can't find it anywhere else. Maybe except Miri.

First look at FAX

FAX (short for Fly Asian Express) http://www.flyasianexpress.com is a sister company of Air Asia to provide connectivity between the rural places in Sabah and Sarawak. In other words, FAX took over the RAS (Rural Air Service) previously served by MAS.

I had a chance to sit on FAX on the very first day they began their operations, 1st August 2006. I wanted to travel from Miri to Bintulu so i called MAS hotline the previous day to make a booking.

MAS: Good morning, how may i assist you?

Me: Mornin'. I'll like to book a flight from Miri to Bintulu tomorrow.

MAS: I m sorry sir, we don't any more flights for Bintulu.

Me: What do you mean no more flights? As in fully booked or what?

MAS: No sir. You misunderstood. WE DON'T GO BINTULU ANYMORE!

Me: WTF. What did Bintulu ever done to you?

So i called Air Asia instead. I don't mind flying air asia or whatnot but i just don't particularly like their policy on not allowing any changes if your flight is 48 hours away. It makes life so much more difficult for business travellers. You can't book an open ticket anymore so you need to get a confirmed ticket. And if some unforseen emergency comes up, you can't change your ticket so you'll have to forfeit and buy a new one. So anyway, this guy handled my call rather professionally and he's got access to my infor since i've got an air asia account. The funny thing was he had problems pronouncing my email address so i had to teach him to say "goeygoo". HaHa. Hilarious.

So on the day itself, i showed up slightly earlier coz i wanted air asia office to print out the iteniarary for me so i could make claims. They emailed me one copy but i have no access to printers so might as well get it done by them. Being the first day, everything was slightly chaotic.Can't really blame them really.

Hopefully things will get better as time passes. Here's a picture of the Fokker 50 aircraft i took to Bintulu.

Seems like they not only took over the service, they took the airplanes as well! Some more don't have time to spray paint them properly so they just put stickers over the MAS logos .Wah lau eh. Like that also can ah? Maybe they could put more wild and colorful stickers. Pimp my flight baby! HaHa. Everything still looks/feels/smells like MAS inside except they don't serve you drinks anymore. You have to pay for it. I do hope that in the future they will upgrade their Fokkers to Air Asia's signature leather seats. Maybe a couple of bucket seats would be a nice aftertouch.

Welcome to my Xanga Site :-)

Hi. Welcome to my blog. This is my second blog after friendster's blog. Apparently the one on friendster wasn't so friendly. Anyway, i suddenly find myself with too much time on my hands hence my return to the blogging community. So hopefully you will find what you are looking for in here. Happy reading!