BERPETUALANG KE ACEH: Flying from Sepang to Surabaya

Peace be upon you all. While the storytelling for the East Coast trip made 26 March-4 April has entered its middle phase I've already started a new series in my main blogspot CATATAN SI MERAH SILU. It is about a more recent trip where me and family went round the Indonesia island of Java 1-14 May. So now I'm starting the supporting articles here.

Afternoon Tuesday 1st May. It was Labour Day holiday. Me and family embarked on the aircraft that would take us from the Kuala Lumpur LCCT in Sepang to the Eastern Java city of Surabaya in Indonesia.

The trip has been booked and planned since a year before. For our two and half year old son Muhammad Al-Aminul Rasyid this is his 9th trip overseas (or anywhere for that matter) by plane.

But it seems to me that it was only starting with this trip that he realised he was riding a plane. His previous flight, Banda Aceh to Sepang was made when he was just over 2 years old.

Unlike that flight and before this one has our new addition to the family, baby Muhammad Alauddin Johan who was then just two and a half-month old. Here we should be looking at the Melaka coastline.

I'm very sure of the location as I recognise the shape of the island called Pulau Besar situated off the Melaka coast.

I can see that the flight path followed the Straits of Melaka between the island of Sumatera and Peninsular Malaysia...

Soon we were in a part of water I could not recognise. But a check using Google Earth, time during flight and estimated speed shows this should be above the part of the Riau archipelago of Indonesia between Singapura (I prefer this spelling rather than the Anglicised Singapore) and mainland Riau, at the island of Sumatera.

This is Sumatera 27 minutes later. I almost lost where I was until I noticed the location of the jet engine to the right which is enough to show that I took this picture on the right side of the plane.

For the record most pictures here were taken from the left side as that was where we were seated at.

Soon heavy cloud began to obscure the view. Time then was 6.04 (Malaysian time).

Still I could surmise where we were. You see the flight was on schedule to land in Surabaya at 5.25 pm local time which is equivalent to 6.25 pm Malaysian time. So I know we have arrived at the island of Java (pronounced Jawa by the locals and also people of Malaysia).