Air ticket and Kermasse

With Aelig going to school, organizing a trip to Malaysia is becoming more and more complicated.

I got the approval pretty easily, and my company allows me to pre-use my annual leaves.
It took hubby a longer time to get a go from his work, and since he couldn't pre-use his leaves, we have to leave in Juin. In France annual leaves go from 1 Juin to 31 May the year after.
Another constraint, hubby doesn't want Aelig to miss school for too long, so we have to go in July.
The best time to go was in August, as Aelig would be on summer holiday, we could celebrate Hari Raya in Malaysia, the baby sitter is on holidays.
But, starting from 1 Aug, prices go double or triple.
By taking in all these considerations, I almost booked the ticket from last week of Jun to first three weeks of July, until I popped up the million dollar question.

"When is the Kermasse?"
I actually don't know what is a Kermasse, but my MIL and hubby had discussed about the fact that Aelig would miss her first Kermasse and it seems that it was a big deal. Turns out, it is just an end of school year party. I didn't grow up having it so I didn't really think it is important. But hubby said it is a memorable moment for Aelig and we shouldn't miss it. So, we have to leave on the last day of Juin and everything changed.

1. We have to pay 250€ more
2. We have to let go of direct flight and take the one with a stopover and traveling time increases 5 hours each way.
3. We have to leave on Sunday and arrive in Malaysia on Monday when everyone works. It is less convenient for my family to pick us up.
4. There is no early train on Sunday to go to the airport. They have it from Monday to Saturday except Sunday. That means we couldn't take the earliest flight but have to take the one that depart in the afternoon.
5. This one is for me: I have to let go of Malaysia Airlines who propose yummy hometown in flight food.

Frankly, does anyone one really remember what was going on during a Kermasse when he or she was 3?

99 euros Paris Orly - Malaysia

In October 2009 Air Asia annouced that they got the landing rights in Paris. This is for real as they are selling the ticket online now for 99 euros one way from Paris Orly to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia, or RM499 KL - Paris Orly. Good deal eh!

The trick is, you need to book between 22 Nov to 24 Nov and travel between 14 Feb to 10 Nov 2011. From what people told me, to grab the promotion, you need to be perseverance to try their website constantly during these 3 days.

Still, 200 euros round trip Paris-KL, is a steal.

Excellent guide service at Paris Charles de Gaulle

My aunt has arrived safely in Nantes. Despite the pain in the booking process, the escort interpreter and her colleagues from the guide service at Paris Charles de Gaulle have provided us excellent services.

The person in charge called me three days before her arrival to confirm about the service reservation. Once my aunt touched down at Charles de Gaulle Airport, she was immediately greeted by the escort interpreter, Miss Cecile Mo, who happens to be a Malaysian. She was there since 5am even though the flight was schedule to arrive at 6.40am. Well, the flight arrived earlier than expected at 5.45am. So, she brought my aunt passing through the immigration and custom check point, then brought her to check in for her next flight. When she called me at 7am, my aunt was all set to board for her next flight. Since she has no job assignment after, she stayed and chatted with my aunt until 9am. What an excellent service she provided!

I would strongly recommend you to use this service if your friends and family are visiting you in France but have no confident to find their own way in the airport for the next connecting flight. Unfortunately, this service is limited to Air France passengers, I hope they would open up to every Airlines in the short future. This service was established about one year ago. Miss Mo was very surprised how I managed to book the service from France. According to her most of the requests are from Mainland China or Hong Kong. Well, I paid 88 euros + 4 euros transaction cost (I have to pay in HK dollar), but it is worth it.

No, you don't say no to a customer like me

I have a long battle with Air France about their guide service at Charles De Gaulle Airport. Of course, with a customer like me, they lost the battle. I got what I wanted, from Air France Hong Kong. Well, I still lost to Air France in Nantes though.

The battle starts with:
My aunt is coming to France. Initially I arranged that hubby goes to Paris to pick her up. Since she arrives early in the morning, that means either hubby has to stay overnight in CDG airport if he takes train, or he will have to drive overnight to Paris (round trip 10 hours). I found both solutions are inconvenient to hubby, plus I don't want him to be too far away from me in case the baby decides to arrive early.

I did some research online and I found a better solution:
Guide Service at CDG provides by Air France.
With this service, someone who speaks Mandarin can go pick up my aunt, guide her through immigration and custom, and bring her to the gate where she is going to take a plane to Nantes.A perfect solution that would only cost 88 euros, and she will be taken care of once she touches down in Paris.

Now, the challenge is how to get this service. I practically never call any services here because you need to pay for each call. I sent an email to Air France but after 2 weeks I didn't get any reply. I went to Air France office in Nantes, first they had never heard of this, and when they discovered that my aunt was not taking Air France from Kuala Lumpur to Paris, they immediately refused to serve me. I didn't give up and researched further as I don't think any reasonable person would refuse business. Then only I discovered that the service is listed in Air France Hong Kong website with a phone number. I know with my internet provider FREE, I can call Hong Kong for free and usually in Hong Kong the service line is free. So I called up Air France Hong Kong, they told me it is not possible to provide this service without any reservation. I told them that if I'm not sure they could give me this service I will not make reservation for the Paris - Nantes flight and they will lose business. I insisted that if they give me what I want, they will have my business: Paris-Nantes flight + the 88 euros services. The agent was kind of convinced, she gave me a number to contact the service provider directly in Paris.

Apparently Air France has partnership with an independent agent in Paris for this kind of service. I talked to the person in charge, he said no problem, he will take the order. However, he said I just need to twist a bit my reservation, don't tell Air France that it is for the arrival since my aunt comes with another airlines, just tell them that it is a service to assist my aunt for the departure to Nantes. Since he couldn't take the payment directly, I still need to pay in any Air France counter.

So I went again to Air France Nantes and printed out the website. The assistant was very confused as she has not heard of this service but she can't refuse as it is listed in the website that it was an Air France service. This assistant was actually quite helpful, she called here and there for information. It seemed that nobody knows about it so she called the independent agent in Paris. She got confirmation that I could get this service, and she was told how to handle the payment. Well, it seemed that there were still some procedures she couldn't figure out so she asked me to go home and wait for her call.

Two days later I still get nothing from her. I called the agent in Paris to check if they have received any order from Air France Nantes. No they didn't and they actually had sent all the necessary instructions to Air France Nantes for the payment operation. Well, I decided to call Air France Hong Kong instead. This time she told me to have this service, my aunt needs to take a long haul flight with Air France and Paris-Nantes flight is considered a short distance flight. I reasoned with her that the service provider in Paris has agreed to this service, now just let me pay. She kept asking me to hold on so that she can asked her superior for approval. Eventually she gave me a solution: she would request this service to Paris, if they agree, she will let me pay through Air France Hong Kong.

And I got a call this morning from Hong Kong! The guy called me and spoke to me in Cantonese, saying that the service has been approved, now I just need to pay. It was so weird, for some reason I lost the ability to tell my credit card number in Cantonese, but the guy has been very patient. He nicely explained that I will get a confirmation email once the payment goes through.

And I got the confirmation email 20 minutes later. Such a wonderful service.

My philosophy: If there is a business, they will find you a solution.
Well, this probably only works with Asian mentality, as until now I didn't get any call from Air France Nantes. Anyway the business amount is probably too small for them to even bother about it.

Air Asia gets landing rights in Paris!

This is great news! The French president has agreed to grant landing rights to Air Asia in Paris after his official meeting with the Malaysia Prime Minister. Air Asia always offers good deal with attractive price, hopefully going back to Malaysia is less costly when Air Asia starts operating the KL - Paris leg.

Well, the flights will land in Orly Airport, less convenient to take the direct train to Nantes, but still, this is a good news.

Grab a deal with Malaysia Airlines

Recently I signed up with Malaysia Airlines grab a deal program which targets at student and expatriate. Since then I have been receiving email alerts about their promotion and this one sounds really interesting: go home for Hari Raya Puasa (Ramadan festival) for 756.82 euros.


Well, it is a good deal considering that it is a direct flight. I was paying around 640 euros in 2006 but for this kind of price you have to book 9 months in advance.

Now I'm struggling between going home for Raya 2009 or Chinese New Year 2010? It has been ages (8 years?) I haven't celebrated Raya. I'm all for the Ramadan Bazaar and open house with the Muslim friends. Besides Hubby has never experienced Raya, I even told him that he could shake hand with our Sultan at the Palace during the open house, he didn't seem to be impressed though.