SOUTH ASIA BLOG September 30th, 2024 - KUALA LUMPUR

 

9/30/24– With around four hours left before landing, the dome lights illuminate and the final meal quickly is served. The time change places us just after midnight local time as we virtually skip over Sunday the 29^th. Always crazy to cross that international date line.

Unfortunately, the last few hours go very slowly as I’m now fully awake and ready to tackle our first layover.

Our plane lands around 4:30am and we dart to get our bags (which are waiting for us to pick up and recheck). Unfortunately, we need to change to the Domestic terminal for our next layover in Osaka. It quickly dawns on me that we'll have to go through full customs and fill out a landing card with declaration, even though we have connecting flights out of the country.

We race through the lines once more, take several moments to locate the free shuttle to our next gate, drop off our bags at the departures desk, and feel déjà vu with security once more. Luckily we have a two and a half hour layover as we still manage to get to our gate with an hour to spare before boarding.

This flight to Osaka is on a smaller plane; however, we have the entire three seats to ourselves. Less than an hour later we land quicker than expected, wait for the doors to open and hope that the next gate will be close. Again, we are not so lucky as now we are expected to leave the airport area once again to go to their International terminal for our last leg of our flights.

We are fortunate that our bags will continue to Malaysia without us having to retrieve them again, so we skip the departures desk, go through security and customs for a third time, only to find we have to still take a shuttle to our gate. Ugh! Our layover time is much shorter this time, but still arrive with about fifteen minutes to relax.

The flight is bumpy for the first hour. Flight attendants are told repeatedly to not serve anything and take their seats, which doesn’t calm my nerves any. Maybe I actually shouldn’t have picked Malaysian airlines for this trip (considering the famous MAH 370 flight which disappeared over ten years ago). Lightening couldn’t happen twice, could it? 

As the turbulence subsides, I dig into my supplied blanket and catch a bit more sleep during the 7.5 hour journey. The meal is also very good and we enjoy a two-seater (window and aisle) to ourselves making the flight bearable. As we are landing, the sky is a perfect blue with nice puffy, white clouds but quickly goes dark as the rain beats on our window like a drum. Eerily, it feels as if we are entering Kong Island.

Once on the ground in Kuala Lumpur, we are thankful to finally be done with our 26 hours of flight time. Our elation doesn’t last long as we power through the entire airport it seems to exit, take a shuttle to get our luggage, and once again walk through immigration. The good news is our bodies are still in one piece. The bad is that our minds may not be. We still have an hour long taxi ride to our AirBnB in the KLCC area, which is at least made easy and affordable by using the GRAB app (similar to UBER), and exhaustingly follow the self check-in instructions to our room on the 11^th floor.

Once inside, we feel all the emotions of traveling hit us at once. Tired, hungry and anxious, we manage to settle ourselves in and check out the 51^st floor infinity pool that overlooks the city and the Petronas Towers. The fog continues to roll in making the view not the best, but still a reprieve from being in a rain storm which was predicted.

We retreat back to our room to wait for dark, and around 8pm trek back to the pool for a completely clear shot of the city and towers with everything lit up. Now this is the view I was hoping for. We waste no time getting into the infinity pool (cold at first but warms up quick) all while dodging the many other tourist who have the same idea we do. Luckily, everyone was respectful. I do have to protect my camera in the pool as I carefully make my way to the opposite end. Wasn’t going to miss the opportunity as this is what drew us here in the first place.

Now the exhaustion is weighing in as we board up in our room for the night. The host only provided two towels, so we’re careful to air dry as much as possible. They have a washer/dryer in the unit but don’t trust that option just yet.