Travel Talk

From Sri Lanka to Malaysia and back in Splendid Singapore

overnight_klia_transit

Greetings,

I’m writing this to you from a friend’s house in what could best be described as splendid Singapore. A place filled with billionaires, bright minds, sci-fi like technology and streets clean of litter and debris. Besides cold weather, old buildings, great golf courses and a plethora of pubs; not much transpiring in Europe this time of year for a gent like myself. It’s a Saturday night and lots going on about town but I’m playing it cool and laying low as next week is going to be hectic…

First, let’s discuss the trip here from Sri Lanka via Malaysia. For starters, whenever you get into a new airport and have a long layover be sure to check out where you check in. I have a weird habit of becoming increasingly lackadaisical about this task the longer I have and some of my longest layovers turn into the most stressful occurrences. Long story short, arrived in Kuala Lumpur at LCCT terminal and thought it was KLIA; whoops.

I was walking to the hotel called “Tune” as they offer reasonable rates when I decided it was just too far to go considering I’d be checking out about 5.5 hours later. I resigned myself to my fate, took a seat and closed my eyes after some small talk with the Aussies next to me. I couldn’t sleep and went up to the Air Asia gents to ask how I check in for Jetstar when they told me I was at the wrong terminal. I’m super glad I did this at 2am and not 6am… There are shuttles between the two terminals until 12:30AM at night.

Seeing how it was in fact 2am, I changed some money and feeling like a loser, went to McDonald’s for a Big Mac as nothing else was open. It was disgusting, just as I last remembered it and I paid the $20 or so for a cab to KLIA. What a difference! LCCT is grotty to say the least while KLIA is actually quite nice and spending a night there was more of a treat than a terror. I made my flight and I’m curious how some of these airlines stay in business? My flight from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore cost me $65 and the entire plane as basically empty…

Now I’m in Singapore and I’ll be here for the next week or two or who knows? I do have a 30 day visa and I have some interesting things transpiring over the next week which I’ll discuss at their conclusion. Meanwhile stay tuned for a plethora of posts from Mauritius as it’s high time I publish them and for the next few days will be resting and recuperating.

I will note that the more miles my body accumulates,  the more taxing long transfers are becoming.

Something can be said for doing what you want while you’re young(ish)… What would it be like at 55 or 65?!

Tips hat,

P.S: The death of print guidebooks is upon us; I saw my first “Lonely Planet” outlet store in KLIA…

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