KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia is expanding its “coverage” of India with flights to five more cities, including the capital, New Delhi, from April.

The budget carrier’s other new routes are to Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad and Mumbai. All flights will take off from the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal (LCCT).

AirAsia will also commence flights to Chennai from Penang beginning April 28. Flights from LCCT to Chennai will commence on May 17 (daily); Bangalore on May 20 (daily); Hyderabad on July 20 (daily); Mumbai on May 6 (Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday); and New Delhi on Aug 4 (daily).

The airline already flies to Trichy, Kochi, Trivandrum and Kolkata. Transport Minister Datuk Seri Ong Tee Keat said the new routes would further open up the Malaysian business and tourism market to India.

Low fares: Ong, accompanied by Fernandes, launching the new routes to India at Rootz in Lot 10, Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

“This tie with India will become increasingly more important, having enjoyed a long relationship with India and subsequent to the visit of our Prime Minister to India last week, it will gear us to further improve our political, trade and economic cooperation with India.

…click here to read more

Popularity: 51% [?]

Everytime I came across someone who had been to Sabah, their only comment about Sabah was the seafood – fresh and cheap.  As a Sabahan myself, I think Sabah has more than the seafood to offer. Well, here are my list of local cuisines that you must try the next time you visit Sabah:

1) BBQ chicken wings. You can get this at any night or morning market (tamu) in Sabah. It’s not difficult to find one. Just follow the smell. Yes, you can smell it from as far as 100m away. That’s how good they are. And don’t forget to eat them with the locally blended chili sauce. Yummy!

2) Banana fritters. I recommend you to go to a tamu for this one. Look for fan shape and golden colour banana fritters. The local people are very generous with the size – sometimes, you can get banana fritters as big as your palm.

3) Rojak mee. This is very similar to the indian rojak mee but with a strong javanese influence and minus the crackers and tofu. It is usually served with a bowl of soup. You can get this at any food court in shopping complexes in KK. But for the best one, head to Tuaran. There is a corner bajau kopitiam near the bank. It’s simply superb!

4) Soto. It’s basically vermicelli soup served with beef and lime. The best one that I had tried was in Tamparuli. I don’t know whether the shop is still there or not. It’s actually one of the food stalls at the tamu area which is run by a sino-kadazan. It’s a must-try.

5) Grilled fish. Believe it or not, the best grilled fish I ever tried in Sabah was in Ranau which is 60km away from the coastline! Go to the night market. Look for grilled fish wrapped in banana leaves. The size of the fish will surprise you but one thing for sure it will be enough for your dinner.

I mentioned about tamu. The best place to experience a tamu and the nearest from KK is either Tuaran or Tamparuli. Tuaran tamu is on Sunday morning and Tamparuli is on Wednesday morning.

Do drop me a line or two if you have anymore to add to the list.

Cheers!

Popularity: 92% [?]

If you have been trying to access Malaysian Airlines Information (MAI) in the last couple of days, you would have noticed that the website was down. Well, just to let you know I had been busy migrating MAI from Blogger to a more robust blogging platform Wordpress.

I’m also in the middle configuring my blog to use Blogomator service to give you more quality news content from around the region and specific to airlines promotion.

Thank you for your support.

– Jay Daniel

Popularity: 100% [?]