All aboard!
On May 16, my friend (FT) and I left on Royal Brunei to Kuching. I haven’t been on Royal Brunei Airlines since I was like 10 years old, but I had always wondered with flying on Royal Brunei was so cheap compared to other airlines. Was it dodgy? Did it have an unsafe flight history?
Fortunately, it is none of the above. The service was really friendly, the food was good (plane wise), and they had in-flight entertainment! Not too shabby after all! I think the only downside was that you had to wait for a few hours in Brunei airport to catch your next flight. We had a 3 hour wait, which wasn’t too bad. We were allowed to leave the airport if we paid a certain amount of money… but we found out if we had to wait 4 hours for the plane we would have been eligible for a free city tour and food. 
Instead, we decided to go look around the airport… which had like, 4 retail outlets, a mini-mart, and 2 cafes. One thing I really noticed was that there were no currency changers – instead, the outlets accept the currency you have on hand at a set exchange rate. Quite handy, but I reckon that they make money out of the currency conversion.
Finally, the 3 hours ended and we were late for our plane… we didn’t hear that they had called the plane to Kuching nor did we heard the 4 or so announcements that FT and I were supposed to board the plane. Oops! How embarrassing!
We arrived at the brand new Kuching International Airport, which was really nice and modern. We were only staying in Kuching for a couple of hours during the wee hours of the morning before heading off to KL, but we were advised by people on the Lonely Planet Thorn Tree Forum that we shouldn’t sleep at the airport cos it was really bad. They were so wrong – we should have. Instead, we paid RM$80 (approx AUD$27) for a private twin room at the Pinnacles Kuching Lodge in the city plus about RM$17.50 each way for a taxi. RM$17.50-$18 is the set taxi rate between the airport and the city.
Slightly worried that our taxi driver had not heard of the hostel before and that he was taking us up a winding route in the middle of the night, we finally arrived at our well-lit destination. The hostel turned out to be situated above a 7/11 and opposite the Hilton Hotel. And in true hostel style, you have to walk up 3 or so flights of stairs to get to the hostel entrance.
When we got to our room’s floor, it was kind of weird because they have shoe lockers because you’re not allowed to walk in the hostel hallway or room are with shoes on. We found our room, which was simple and actually pretty good compared to some horrible hostels I’ve stayed at (namely in Amsterdam). The bathrooms were shared, but they were quite clean. We also had air conditioning in the room, which was a luxury!
The worst thing was that morning, there was some kind of a bar fight nearby and there were cars screeching and everything… that was awful. But we still managed to wake up in time at 6 to have breakfast… which was toast, really bad fake strawberry jam, and coffee and tea.
The Pinnacles was quite good for a hostel, with friendly staff and clean rooms with air conditioning. The only bad thing would be the noise at night… I don’t know whether that is a one-off thing or a regular occurrence. As most of my friends know, I can sleep through almost anything – so the fact that this particular noise was so loud to wake me up says something.
Pinnacles Lodge
Level 1, Lot 21, Block G,
Taman Sri Sarawak Mall,
Jalan Borneo, 93100,
Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia
http://www.pinnacleskuching.com
p.s.: You can pay your room fee by PayPal, or give them your credit card number as a booking confirmation… but I had an issue where I gave them the CC number but they didn’t email me back. I ended up calling them before my flight to confirm that they had received it. I paid by cash to Reception… I’m not sure whether they actually have an EFTPOS or Credit/Debit Card facility though. On the good news front, no one had used my credit card for fraudulent purposes.
