Date: 25 December 2014 Thursday
Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas to everyone! Our year end holiday trip to Kyushu was decided only a week prior to the trip since we had to cancel our Auckland, New Zealand trip. I had spent so much time with the planning and was forced to abandon everything because of accommodation issues :(. We ditched Auckland for Kyushu and re-planned our itinerary.
Our finalised itinerary looked like this:
Fukuoka 
Beppu Kumamoto Nagasaki Tosu Fukuoka (back)
We arrived at Changi Airport at 11+ PM to catch SQ656 to Fukuoka.
Family photo on the plane.
Inflight meal
R cried during the take off and only stopped when we were in the air. She fell asleep shortly after that and JR & I managed to catch a little sleep during the flight.
08:40 AM Fukuoka
We landed at Fukuoka Airport and proceeded to clear customs. We were quite disappointed that there was no priority queue for people with young kids. Anyway, R decided to scream and cry while we were queuing. One of the officers spotted us and pulled us out of the queue. We skipped the long queue! We got our passports stamped and collected our luggage shortly after. As planned, we tried to get our data plan SIM card at the arrival hall but we couldn’t find any stall selling it. Lucky I got one from ACB, who just got back from Fukuoka last week. Thank you ACB! BUT, we had another problem! JR forgot to bring the set up guide along and we couldn’t get it to work. 🙁
Ayway, that was not a big problem, we carried on to collect our rental car from Hertz at the airport and soon we were in our car that we would be driving for the next 9 days. Off we go for our short road trip in Kyushu.
Off to our first destination!
We stopped at one of the stops on the way for lunch.
Who is shopping?
Curry rice
Beef Udon
On our way again.. R enjoying her little snacks.
13:30 PM Kokonoe Yume Grand Suspension
JR managed to get us to our first destination – Kokonoe Yume Grand Suspension using the Japanese GPS on the car. It was a long ride there and we couldn’t wait to stretch our legs.
We got our entrance tickets and entered the attraction.
We were already on the bridge when we felt the COLD wind.
We didn’t expect it to be so cold and we weren’t wearing warm enough. R’s nose had became red and it was too cold to continue. We stopped halfway across the bridge and u-turned back.
Bought a Yume potato snack to try … It’s too sweet for my liking.
Driving on to our next destination…