Can't wait...

It's the sound of those jets at high altitude that does it. I woke to the sound this morning and was instantly transported into the aircraft, looking down at the clouds and landscape below.

I can't wait for our next trip to begin, though it is two and a half months away. We booked our hotel in Kuala Lumpur for four nights. Then what? We are thinking of Bangkok. It's sounds fascinating and exciting, though not an easy relaxing city. The other idea we were thinking of was staying in a beachside resort at Penang. B was born there and her family had holidays there as well. I was not particularly impressed when I visited, although the walk up to Kek Lok Si temple was fun, if sweat-inducing. Still, a real resort holiday would be nice as we haven't had a real relaxing holiday in years, and the prices are quite decent.

An episode of Jetstar's Going Places documentary was screening today. It featured Osaka and the scenes were instantly recognisable to me. They were up at the top of Osaka Castle on a wet day: the scenes looked just like our photos! I would love to go back to Japan right now. I miss it a lot.

Shorthaul international flights from Australia

When it comes to international travel Australia seems like a long distance away from anywhere else.

Actually, that's not strictly true. New Zealand is about 3 hours away from Sydney. Papua New Guinea is not far off the northern tip of Queensland. And Darwin is closer to Asia than much of Australia's South. And that latter fact is why Jetstar is setting up a base in Darwin for shorthaul flights to Asian destinations.

For those of us in the south almost all international flights other than to New Zealand and the Pacific islands involve big "widebody" aircraft ranging from Airbus' A330 to Boeing's 747. Internally we usually catch the much smaller "narrowbodies": Boeing's 737 and Airbus' A320. Jetstar's plan is that we could now fly the narrowbodies all the way overseas from Darwin and Perth to destinations that could not support a larger aircraft's worth of passengers.

Jetstar Asia already to fly to quite a few destinations in Asia from their Singapore hub, but Singapore is too far from southern Australia. Darwin, however, is within the range of smaller aircraft flying from all cities in Australia so you could have quite a large catchment to support flights onwards to Asia (or inwards, as the case may be). Hopefully this means cheaper flights to our Asian neighbours.

There is little argument that widebody flights tend to be more comfortable than their smaller counterparts, however I think there is something almost romantic about a transit stop in one of Australia's tropical northern cities, especially late at night.

I admit that it's difficult for me to back up that above statement. But I did enjoy the stopovers in Cairns on our way between Sydney and Japan (see the photo), as well as our time in Bangkok's Don Muang airport on our honeymoon flight to Europe. Maybe it's the contrast between the cold and dry aircraft cabin air with the warmth and humidity of the tropics.

And I've never visited Darwin before, so this could be a great excuse!