That last time, my flight got delayed by a few hours, and I ended up stuck in that lounge for longer than I wanted. However, I do remember that it was possibly the nicest airport lounge I have ever been in - I remember enjoying a silver service dinner, some very comfy sofas, and being extremely tempted to go for a haircut! Admittedly that was the first class part of the lounge, thanks to the upgrade privileges of the people I was travelling with. Sadly, that must have been at the other terminal at KLIA, as the lounge here is frankly disappointing. Just one room with a few rows of chairs plus a side with drinks and snacks (and yes, I know, how tragic am I - complaining about the hardships of business class travel!).
The journey to the airport went smoothly. I'd booked a taxi, and it picked me up at the hotel at 2.30, and took about 50 mins to get here. I continue to be amazed at the amount of building work and development that is going on. I remember reading that KL is a city of about 6 million people, and it seems like a large proportion of them live in high rise apartment blocks - there are hundreds of them, with many more being built. It isn't uncommon to see buildings with 20+ floors of living space, and they tend to be built on top of parking garages of 5 or more storeys, making each building extremely tall.
Driving out of the city, the oil palm plants start to appear, although there were several instances where the plantations didn't appear to be particularly well looked after, and some cases where they appeared to have stopped cultivating altogether - I expect that these were ones which had been sold for redevelopment for other uses. As we approached the airport, there was one area that was obviously previous plantation land (given what was all around it) but which had been cleared and had hoardings up advertising an outlet mall coming in 2015. It may be a false impression from my brief stay, but I get the feeling that shopping may be a national (or at least a city) pastime. Where I was staying (which was in the Petaling Jaya district) there was a large mall connected to my hotel - the 1Utama mall - which had 100s of stores, and where we met our colleagues on Monday evening - the Pavilion mall - seemed even newer, larger and shinier. And now that I take a look at the front page of its website, I was probably right - it claims 1.37 million sq ft of retail space and over 500 stores. (By the way, for comparison, Bluewater has about 300 stores, but is a little bit bigger by square footage. However, KL likes to boast that it has 60 or more shopping malls!)
The other noticeable thing about my taxi journey to the airport was the radio station, which was playing my kind of music. Now that I have looked it up online (thanks to googling 'Kuala Lumpur 105.7'!) I discover that it is called "Lite FM" - probably tells you all you need to know about my tastes in pop music! Mind you, I am willing to defend it, as it kicked off with one of my very favourites by Stephen Bishop. Maybe I'll add it to my favourite stations on TuneIn, and listen to it on Sonos at home!
Having arrived at the airport, I was clearly one of the first for the evening flight to Singapore, as they were just opening the check-in desk, so I was front of the queue. Gatwick and Heathrow could learn a lot from this airport, as I walked straight through the boarding card, passport and security checks within a single pause or wait in line.
Earlier on today I enjoyed a bit of a lie in, which was a very welcome luxury, before heading down to breakfast at about 9.15. I took more advantage of the buffet spread than over the last couple of days, including getting them to make me an omelette. Then I packed up and checked out (I was quite pleased with my packing skills - normally that's Nicky's domain, but I seemed to manage ok! Mind you, maybe I should keep that quiet - my carefully cultivated air of incompetence has enabled me to stay in charge of books and chargers only when packing for recent family holidays!) before setting up camp in the hotel lounge with a coffee, a laptop, and a full up inbox to sort out. I didn't do too badly, and got the number of messages down to single figures.
A quick stroll into Utama to grab some lunch, and back to hotel for taxi.
I'll leave you with a few pictures. They are, in chronological order:
1. Where I spent the work day yesterday.
2. The view from the terrace outside our restaurant where we went for dinner yesterday.
3. A grainy and poorly focused zoom in on the Petronas Towers.
4. My hotel room.
5. The chocolate twist I had with my lunch - 60p well spent!
By the way, thanks for the comments on previous posts, and Mum and Dad - great to hear that you are heading up to Kent to see N & J, and Dad - enjoyed your comments about the maths problem - you do like to complicate things! Yes it's a quadratic equation, but bearing in mind it was set for a year 9 group, chances that the solutions would be complex are pretty slim!
Right, next stop Singapore!
