Congratulation to AirAsia! In recent Skytrax’s 2010 World Airline Award, AirAsia won for the 2nd consecutive year as the best low cost airline in the world. It was the winner in 2009 after beating all other popular budget airlines around the world such as Ryanair, Jetstar, Tiger airway, Air Berlin, Virgin Blue and so on. As the award was voted on by passengers, the result actually reflected the satisfaction index of passengers towards the airlines.

I’m so lucky to be in Malaysia who can fly whenever I like with AirAsia and I did fly in AirAsia for my recent tour to London as well as Phuket. I have had few flying experiences with them and my only comment on AirAis is that they are really getting better and better as a budget airline. From my first AirAsia flight to Bali to the most recent flight to Europe, huge improvement could be easily noticed, from the services they provide, the transparency of their pricing, the comfort of their seating and most importantly the punctuality of their flight.

I had 2 experiences of flying with Ryanair and Transavia recently in Europe. Comparatively and surely to conclude that, I had a better flying experience with AirAisa instead.

In fact, AirAsia had become the market leader in the local airline in terms of innovation. AirAsia always leads while other Malaysian airlines could only follow.

I love its transparency in terms of pricing. travelers can always get cheap or even free air fares if they decide where and where to go earlier, at least 6 months ahead. Every 6 months AirAsia will start a Zero Fare campaign for budget conscious travelers to grab a limited allocated seats to most destinations. After free seats have been taken up, price will progressively go up in stages, depends on number of seats allocated for each price stage until the ceiling price. Airport taxes are excluded. All other costs such as seats selection, check-in baggage and meal on-board are excluded. You have the options to buy or not. Other than that, there isn’t any hidden cost. This is called pricing transparency. Unlike other airlines who always rip you off with ridiculous pricing, passengers of AirAsia are the one to control the flying cost, not the airline. Check out my top 5 tips in booking Cheap AirAsia flights before doing so.

With the quality of their services being improved so much, I have more confident to fly with AirAsia for my upcoming worldwide travel and hope AirAisa can add more world’s destination into their map and long haul flights to US and Europe. Well done!

Again,  I’m not attached to AirAsia in any way. I’m just a budget traveler who loves to visit other parts of this world with limited budget. Because of AirAsia, I have more opportunities to realize my travel plan and travel wishes. – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog

I’ve been so busy for the past week. On top of fighting the jet lagged effect, I’ve been very busy flipping through my digital album. I’ve just added another 4,500 photos taken on my Europe travel into my photos collection. Now I have to work very hard to organize, backup, filter, edit and arrange them so I could use them either in my travel blog, Facebook, guest posts or my digital frame. Filling up 18Gb of my 4 SDHC cards was easy on travel, but manage them then after is a real headache. I had to buy another external hard drive to back them up! This is called the data redundancy in digital era!

While still sorting these thousands of images and videos, I picked these 7 photos here as an introduction to kick off travel stories of my Europe sightseeing travel!

1. London – The landmark of London is no doubt the The Big Ben clock tower and the House of Parliament, if not the Tower Bridge. Unfortunately we had bad weather during our 3 days visit. I have to wait for sunlight to come which only came for a short while between rains. You can notice the dark cloud masking most of the sky in the photo below.



2. Paris – The Eiffel Tower is definitely the landmark of Paris, the proud creation of French engineer, Gustave Eiffel. Weather in Paris during the period was a little better than in London with more sunlight, lesser rain but still plenty of clouds overcasting the sky.



3. Amsterdam – The wind mill and Tulips flowers couldn’t be separated from Netherland. Although Red light district is a more famous landmark of Amsterdam, no photos were allowed to take in the area. We went to the Keukenhof Tulips Garden in Lisse which was actually not in Amsterdam. A mix of cloudy and sunny day when we reached there and raining when we left for Venice.



4. Venice – When you are in Venice, other than walking to your destination, the only transportation you have is via their waterway or canals. If you see this kind of photo below with colourful buildings lined along canal, it must be in Venice! Finally we had some beautiful sunlight in daytime and pleasant weather of Spring. However, it still rained a couple of times when we were there.



5. Florence – The landmark of Florence is The statue of David, a masterpiece of the greatest sculptor in the Renaissance, Michelangelo. Everyone comes to Florence will sure look for the statue. Though the original work is well kept within the Academia Museum in florene, there are 2 replica where you could find 1 in Piazza Michelangelo and the other in Piazza Signoria. It was sunny one day and it rained the next day.



6. Pisa – The Pisa Tower, the tower that is leaning but still standing… need we say more? We had only half day in Pisa and it was raining!



7. Rome - The landmark of Rome, The Coloseum was used to be the gladiatorial contests venue which was the biggest stadium ever built during Roman Empire that fit in 50,000 spectators. We had the most beautiful sunlight for our Europe travel there on the last day in Rome! At least we had it once…

Follow up next would be all my even more exciting travel experience and travel stories happened on my Europe travel. If you wish to get all my story updates, don’t forget to subscribe to my blog feed via RSS Reader or email, it’s free!

I just can’t wait to show more of my photos taken during the trip! See Ya! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog.

Starting today until 23rd of May or this coming Sunday, The world best budget airline, AirAsia of Malaysia is giving away Free seats to all destinations within its route map! This zero fares offer does not include airport tax, check-in baggage, on-board meal and seat selection. However, it is still tremendous value to have free tickets for most of its destinations especially for AirAsia X flights to Australia, UK or China.

Book your flights in advance during this period and fly to your destinations FREE between 3rd January to 8th May next year 2011 .

If you want to travel to Europe next Spring, grab your free seats now online! Last November, I managed to grab some cheap tickets, though not free, for my recent trip to London and subsequently other parts of central Europe countries last week. Spending RM1,900.00 on a AirAsia X Airbus A340 flight Return Tickets to London inclusive checked-in baggage, on-board meal and seat selections were truely fantastic value that I have just experienced!

Go ahead NOW and try your luck as the airline website is too busy to surf and book smoothly. You might need to try and try and try again to complete your booking process! Try to get access during midnight when traffic is lower. Good Luck! – Travel Feeder,  the ultimate travel blog

p/s: I’m not attached to AirAsia airline in any way. I’m just a big fan of budget airline which benefits people like me with limited budget but passionate to travel.

Perfect! Put aside the re-opening of Europe airports just a week before our flight to London and re-closing of London airports few days after our flight back to where I’m now, due to the Iceland’s volcanic ash, all my hard works in planning for my Europe trip have been paid off perfectly!

All planned and booked domestic air and train travels were as scheduled. Conditions of all pre-booked accommodations were as expected and safe. No single one of us (a group of 5) experienced any theft and loss of important travel documents. Not a single one of us fell sick during the period. No one from us gonna break the bank from this trip. What could I say! I shall call this an immaculate Europe sight-seeing self-travel trip! Hooray!!

Why planning was so important to ‘this trip‘ to central Europe? Off course, many backpackers may prefer to travel as they go, to plan as they travel. This is great when you have plenty of time and travel by yourself or with your couple. You can take your sweet time to relax and plan for your next stop. But not in our case. I had only 14 days and I’m bringing a group who haven’t been there, couldn’t speak English very well and hadn’t got enough self-travelling experience. For them, visiting as many travel sites as they could during these 14 days was their priority objectives. What could I do? I had to plan everything well ahead so we would not waste much time in sourcing cheap accommodations and transportation.

What’s more? We had limited budget. Planning ahead saved us lots of monies especially where London hotels are generally expensive especially in the city centre. Out of my expectation, this happened to domestic train and air tickets as well. The earlier you book them online, the cheaper you can get the tickets!

Furthermore, pick-pockets are getting more serious in Europe travel destinations and in public transports. Planning ahead means we were well prepared to take care of our belongings especially our travel documents. Less acting like tourists asking around for help made us less ‘attractive‘ to be others ‘target‘!

Lastly, because I planned for our complete travel itineraries, I had planned such a way that we always stayed where were convenient for our next stop. We stayed nearby St. Pancras International train station as we took Eurostar to Paris. I chose one of those Paris hotels near the Gard Du Nord train station so we didn’t have to carry our heavy luggage and walked too far to catch our next train to Amsterdam.

These planning was essential for such a tight travel schedule. We traveled to central Europe as scheduled and most things, if not all, turned out perfectly, except some of those little hiccup and unpleasant experiences….err… what…  SHHH. Subscribe to this blog feed via RSS or Email to receive upcoming stories on my Europe travel. – Travel Feeder, the ultimate travel photo blog

My Big Day is finally here. Labour Day? Nope. What I’ve been planning since last year is going to happen. I’m taking an AirAsiaX flight this morning to fly to London! London is my starting and ending point of this Europe tour. I’ll be in Europe for only 14 days and I would classify this trip as a Rushing European Sightseeing Tour! Within these 14 days, 4 countries and 6 cities would be covered briefly.

Here is my final Western Europe Sightseeing Tour itinerary:

1. From LCCT to London >
2. From London to Paris >
3. From Paris to Amsterdam >
4. From amsterdam to Venice >
5. From Venice to Florence >
6. From Florence to Pisa >
7. From Pisa to Rome >
8. From Rome back to London >
9. From London back to LCCT, Sepang.

Am I ready to fly? Flight is 9:20AM and I’m still here writing this at 2:00AM. I’m so excited to be able to visit Europe again after 13 years. I hope this would be a interesting and full of excitement kinda self travel.

Hopefully I have some leisure in the evening to log on this blog and update you guys. If not, I shall see you all in 2 weeks time from now! By then, I’ll show some of my photos taken during this trip. Until then…. Oh ya, you may subscribe to my blog feeds via RSS or email so you could receive free updates on my stories and photos of this rushing European sightseeing tour!

I’m ready to fly! – Travel Feeder, your ultimate travel photo blog