Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing

So, here I am sitting on a Thai airways flight.  It started with a "bump" on the ground that got everyone a bit rattled.  The captain said something about, "oops, my bad" but I think he meant that they were still connected and he had to full hit the brakes.  Well, the flight is smooth and although we just took of, we're landing in about 30 minutes.  (Correction: We have about 90 minutes left... although it's a mostly northward flight, we change time zones going from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok.)

14 hours earlier

We landed from a long flight out of Cape Town via Jo'berg.  The first stretch was about 2 hours and the second stretch was about 8 or so hours.  We also had about 1.5 hours in the plane at the Jo'berg airport.  We both took some sleeping aids to try to sleep on the flight.  That worked OK for me and not quite so OK for Laurie. 

So, by the time we got in to KLIA (Kuala Lumpur International Airport) we were exhausted.  It was about 0630 local time.  Luckily, we spotted signts to an internal hotel within the wing of the airport we were in.  Although not cheap, they had reasonable rates starting with 6 hours of time.  We checked in, showered, watched some National Geographic channel (one of the few available, discovered the free KLIA WiFi was in range, checked email, and crashed with the TV set to 4.5 hours. 

4.5 hours later

Having gotten some much needed rest we decided to check-out of the hotel and go in search of food.  After some meandering, hitting up the ATM (we couldn't change in our spare Kenya Shillings that I still have in my wallet), and scouting out the options we decided on a noodle place.  One large, shared bowl of noodles and two teas later we were ready to go shopping (have you seen a large airport without a mall lately?).

We found some fun stuff as well as some stamps for our postcards that we didn't have time to mail while still in South Africa.  Prices were not too bad, considering we were in the secure section of the airport and the international terminals.  That said, things like soda were about twice what they were in the SA airports, so it's all relative.

I found the Malaysia version of the T3 gadget magazine for just over US $2.  It's normally about $9 at a borders, so that was nice.  Laurie found a great shirt that looks absolutely wonderful on her.  It's a great color of green in an asian style.

It was a while before we were able to check-in to our flight (one that our luggage was checked through to).  That made me a bit nervous (come back 3 hours before ... now come back 2 hours before, etc.) but all was well.  Who knows about our luggage; it could be anywhere still. ;)

Present

Now, I'm going to run off to other, older posts and see what I can prepare for when we get a net connection again.  I've been a bit behind on the writing so I'm trying to write current stuff before catch-up stuff, but I need time for both.  This should mean I'll be able to get up some of the SA stuff now as I think I've posted most of the Kenya stuff that I've written.

I still have some Egpyt and Kenya stuff to write, but I think doing the most recent stuff will result in overall better posts... who knows, though.  Besides, it's all relative and it's not like anyones reads these. :)

Well, food time on the plane now...

Posted by Shane on September 26, 2006 6:09 AM | Permalink