And so begins our journey.

Catching ZZZ's at Malaysia

KL International Airport

We left Cairns at 4.30 pm on Monday the 18th March and steeled ourselves for the next 36 hours in transit to Europe.  We would have 24 hours of flying time and 12 hours waiting for connections.  The first part of our journey, from Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur was excellent.  We boarded the plane in Brisbane at 11.55 pm and because we were really tired we slept the whole 6 hours to KL and arrived very refreshed at 6.30 am (KL time).  The next leg took us from KL to Amsterdam.  We left at 9.30 am and we settled into our seats for the next 12 hours to the Netherlands. Because we were flying from East to West we had sunshine all the way.  We watched lots of TV and movies but then strangely enough we both got really tired and slept for many hours.  We flew on a "jumbo jet" - 747 and our seats were upstairs.  We were grateful for the seats that lay right down and as there were only three of us upstairs so we were well catered for by the stewardess.  We arrived in Amsterdam at 3.30pm (Netherlands time)  and had to wait until 9.30pm for our flight to Budapest.  This was the hardest stopover. It was so very hard to keep our eyes open for this length of time.  Thank goodness for the business class lounges!  We drank copious amounts of coffee to keep ourselves awake until our flight departed and as soon as we boarded the plane to Budapest, we fell asleep.  We finally arrived at our destination at 11.30pm.  At baggage collection our worst nightmare, one suitcase missing - mine!  Thank goodness we had taken the advice of Scenic Tours and split our clothing and toiletries between the two suitcases so it wasn't really a worry.  We gave the airline our hotel name and address and also told them that we would be boarding the Scenic Pearl ship the following day.  They said that normally lost luggage arrives within twelve hours.  The next day we were transferred to our ship (still no luggage) only to find that the ship had been changed to Scenic Diamond.  I informed the ship tour director that I was missing luggage and that there might be a problem having it delivered because of the change of ships.  He said no problem he would sort it. He obviously didn't because I still had no luggage after 36 hours.  Finally someone tracked it down for me. Yes the name of the ship had KLM confused so my suitcase was still waiting at the Budapest airport.  It would cost me $50 euro to have it delivered to the ship by taxi!  I will fight this one when I get back to Australia!

Air Malaysia

Like the leg room on board the Jumbo!