Day 1 - KL

Scott passed his exams!!!!!! Although he didn’t receive the results until the afternoon it was a reason to celebrate and what better way than to spend 13 hours on a plane flying to Malaysia??? After an incident free journey to the airport (thanks mum and dad!) we tried to see if we could get seats next to each other for the plane. Earlier in the day the online check-in attempt was a farce which left us sat on opposite sides of the plane about 15 rows apart! Some of you may say that this was planned by Scott but he denies this vigorously! The very nice check-in lady decided that we were worthy of an emergency aisle seat with the associated extra legroom which was very much appreciated! A celebratory pint and burger was called for but Deb managed to say “chicken” instead of “beef” for Scott’s choice. It is good to know that she is so much more careful in her professional life! Within 15 seconds of Deb sitting down “her” blue-cheese burger arrived to much surprise. It is possible that it “may” have been destined for the table behind but she was hungry! After what seemed like an eternity to board we had about 10 minutes to get on before we were late. Inevitably it took longer than this and we didn’t depart until about 11pm (about an hour late).

The flight wasn’t too bad and seemed to fly by with trying to sleep and the nonstop drinks they brought round including a beer just before bed time! The staff were really organised and put BA to shame! The meals were tasty (??) relative to other airplane food with a Chicken Biriyani as we left the UK. Then for “breakfast” (no idea what the local time was whilst flying over India/Pakistan!) a Thai style chicken curry with coconut rice! It felt wrong having a curry for breakfast but wait until we had breakfast in KL.....

We landed about 18:35 local time after circling for about 20 minutes. The airport was a painless exercise and is really ultramodern with a quick efficient monorail system connecting the international departure gates with the arrivals building. We were out before we knew it and had queued for a “budget” taxi. Exactly the same as the misnamed “premier” taxi which is 25RM more expensive! The airport is about 10 minutes from the location of the weekends Malaysian Grand Prix as we went passed on our way to KL. The approach to the city was exciting seeing what appears to be two space ships on the horizon brightly lit as if waiting for a countdown to begin. The true size of them is unclear until you are underneath them and can really place them into proportion with their surroundings. (The Petronas towers are 452m tall and were the tallest buildings in the world before Taipei 101 and the new tower in Dubai were built.)

We arrived at the Renaissance hotel at about 8:30pm through the grand ‘East wing’ entrance. The reception area is huge and it was nice having the ‘bell boy’ collect the luggage to take to our room! We are the 14^th floor of 25 and this building is small compared to some of it’s neighbours! As we were so tired Deb decided it was necessary to organise a tour of the nine bars and restaurants to find some food and drink. A quick ‘toe dip’ in the Olympic sized pool for Deb we finally made it to one of the bars. We ordered two pints of draught lager (Carslberg for those who care!) and were quickly relieved of 90RM! A quick calculation puts this at about £18 in GBP!!

After this we headed back to the room and ordered room service of a very tasty club sandwich and went to bed as we needed to get up for about 6am to have breakfast and then head to the Petronas Towers for tickets to go up the skybridge.

Check out the photos on the Picasa page!