Article 17
Kuala Lumpur (Where muddy rivers meet)
Managed to get some photos uploaded onto the journal pages and the last Article (No. 16). Then went up to the room and finished packing. All packed and waiting in the foyer and, guess what, Our pick-up man was almost half an hour early…He explained that the traffic was very bad! So it was, bumper-to-bumper for the first half hour before we finally started to get going.
This all meant we were at the airport three hours before our flight but! The do not open the check-in desks until two hours before your flight. Mucking around, filling in time, we had a coffee and walked the airport from one end of the concourse to the other. Once the gates were opened we jumped on a short queue, only one man and his two daughters being served/checked-in. He was making a lot of noise, waving boarding passes around, finally throwing them back at the check-in Hostie. We don’t know what the argument was about except it centred upon where his two daughters sat…Rag-Heads and their funny religious views! We were processed by the business class hostie and were on our way through Immigration and they were still arguing!
We thoroughly ‘did-over’ the Istanbul Duty Free…we had a whole AUD$20 worth of Turkish currency to unload…I bought some beer (well beers at a bar) and Patricia spent the remainder on yet more cosmetics.
I am not sure about the rest of the airport passenger gates at Istanbul Airport but Gate 119 is the first Passenger Gate I have ever seen, anywhere in the World, which has a BAR at one end! The plane was on the tarmac, all the passengers were assembled ahead of time (well there seemed to be enough for a full load) and they opened the shutters on a fully operational bar! I was NOT allowed to go and investigate because they had already started loading ‘women-and-small-children’…Many passengers in the Gate went up to use the Bar facilities!
Away on time and the first catastrophe…a huge man sitting I n front of me decided to put his seat ALL the way back and go to sleep! I couldn’t move or do anything with his head and seat in my lap. Meanwhile, two seats in front of mine, a Chinese man and wife, apparently didn’t like the feng-sui or whatever about his seat, and they both bolted for two unoccupied seats in the centre rows? He wildly waved and indicated to me that I should move up to his vacant seats. Bouncing the man in front’s head and seat as hard as I could and dropping my overnight bag onto his head from the overhead locker, I ignored his complaints, told him his seat MUST BE UPRIGHT until after take-off and moved to the two seats-all-to-myself-heaven, two rows forward. Pat was still opposite my original seat (across the aisle) and having her own battler with an early/seat-right-back-no dinner-traveller and, a kid playing football against the back of her seat, for good measure. She can handle her own problems! I decided and promptly put on earphones so I couldn’t hear her complaints and “…why don’t you do something, you bastard?…”
Uneventful trip, I drank four big glasses of red, had four or five beers, took two more pain killers than recommended and spent the night standing up, suffering leg and thigh cramps and watched three movies and three or four features during the night. Ten Hours and forty minutes of agony, I have vowed NEVER to fly cattle-class again for any flight over two hours in duration!!! This morning, I am dead, I am sure I stink and I feel like I have been run over by a train.
Our hotel is a full hour and then some away from the airport. However, the hotel is terrific and, right in the centre of the city. We decided to do the usual city tour, what a farce! Firstly, after paying and being assured that the tour would be conducted on a proper Tour Bus with Air-Con and would consist of flying visits to about eight places of interest. Mainly so people could make up their own minds about which places they really wanted to spend time in, take photos of and explore…at their leisure, ie, in their own time on a second visit!
Then we were loaded into a very scruffy old saloon car, to go to the Coach Pick-up-point…apprehensive already, we get to the pick-up point and there is our ‘coach’…a dilapidated, old, beat-up Combi-wagon. We objected and were told that the only other option was the car we had just got out of…we decided to chance it and, NO Air-Con just a fan blowing and only on one half of the vents! Others, three thirtyish-years women, also climbed aboard and echoed our complaints about the state of the vehicle and no aircon.
Off to the first place of interest…the telecom Tower...almost as high as the twin towers. Thirty-five minutes for photographs, says our driver…but 20 Ringitts each to go up to the platform in the tower…we declined only to be told that we were trouble makers and everyone ‘…went-up-the-tower…!’ We complained about everything again to the driver pointing out that what we were doing was not what was in the brochure, not what the agent had said and…here it was an hour later, and the three women had still not returned to the car, against what he himself had said was going to happen!!!
Finally, the women turned up, Pat had a go at them for being late and got some stiff replies including “…we’ll be later next time…!” I bit in and very quietly pointed out that they had been told 35 minutes, they were over 40 minutes late and therefore we, collectively, would now miss out on parts of the program because they had used up the time! We then battled the traffic across KL to the Kings Palace. Here, the Driver pointed out very forcibly too, that due to people being late, we had missed the changing of the guard at the palace by 15 minutes and, the intent of the tour was to see as many places as possible during the short time available. This arrangement was for the participants to then decide which places they would return to at their leisure…!!! The three women were very, very quiet and courteous to us, for the remainder of the tour.
Back at the hotel, we ventured to the hotel’s Irish Bar…had various drinks (Kilkenny Brown Ale for me) and some very good Irish grub! Pat left early to go shopping whilst I finished my beer and then went to an internet café and cleared all outstanding Email.
Surprise, surprise, an Email from my old friend and Business associate in Indonesia, Darryl. He is here in KL on business and I left my accommodation and contact details by reply email. We expect to catch up with him sometime tomorrow - possibly for lunch or dinner…he also is going to Jakarta on Saturday (tomorrow). I doubt that he would be flying Malaysian…living in Jakarta he would enjoy business concessions for flying with an Indonesian airline…he travels all over the middle East and South East Asia doing business…Towers, antenna and cable supplier to the communications industry, both Governmental and Private Broadcasters.
I was gently chastised by the receptionist for not ‘dropping’ my key when I went to the Internet Café’ this afternoon…I asked why and was informed “…if there was a fire, we would not know if you were in the building or not! Please drop your key at Reception each time you leave the hotel…” Suitably, verbally spanked…she is gorgeous! Petite and Eurasian. She could do anything she liked with me, now chastised, I went back to the room to watch the news before bed! This should do for uploading as Article 17 tomorrow…I may have to brave the depths of a Starbucks Café to get free WI/FI so I can upload stuff!
