This past winter vacation was spent in the tropical climate of Malaysia, enjoying the food and sights that the country had to offer. It was a very nice break from one of the coldest winters in Japan in recent years. The following includes some brief highlights and impressions from the trip, along with a few pictures.
A Wild Beginning
The trip started off with a real bang! When my girlfriend and I arrived at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) we grabbed our bags and looked for signs for the terminal carrying AirAsia flights, the airline for our flight to Langkawi, an island in the northwestern part of the country. Our flight was not listed anywhere though, so we asked around and found out that the LCC (low-cost carrier) terminal that we needed was not only separated from the central terminal (we assumed this much), but that it would take a 30-minute car ride to get there. It was about 8:15 pm, and we needed to catch a 9:15 flight. We ran out of the airport to catch the next bus, only to find that the next bus to the terminal wasn’t for a half hour, so we had to take a cab. To stop cab drivers from making up ridiculous rates to charge, KLIA has a system set up where you purchase a ticket from the airport taxi desk for where you need to go beforehand which you then give to the cab driver. A very good system, but it does require a little more time, time we didn’t have…
First, we had to go back into the airport and find the taxi desk. There was a line, of course, and when we finally get our ticket it was nearing 8:25. We had less than an hour left. We needed to hustle. We ran to the taxi area only to find that this well-organized system included a well-organized (and well-developed) queue. We ran to the front and told one of the workers that we had a flight to catch Continue reading