Getting to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

Categorized | kuala lumpur, Thai Language, Traveling in Asia

Tags | air asia, air france, airasia, airbus a330, flamingo hotel, kuala lumpur, malaysia, petronas towers, thai education visa, thai visa, thai visa kuala lumpur

Getting to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia

Posted on 08 June 2009 by Mike Behnken

Decisions, Decisions

I just had to get it over with. As I explained previously I needed to leave Thailand to get the education visa process finalized so I don’t have to do these rediculous border runs every 30 days. Border runs actually give you the freedom to travel but I personally hate having deadlines. I like to be under total control of my schedule while I travel. I had a few places where my Thai language school recommended and I couldn’t choose with any logic so I just closed my eyes and checked AirAsia.com to find which flight I could take on Monday to get it over with. The only place where there were a plentiful amount of cheap flights day and night were to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. I haven’t heard much about KL other than it was cheap. People in Bangkok even say KL is cheap which leads me to believe it is dirt cheap.

Flying Air Asia

I took the 6:15pm Air Asia flight from Bangkok to Kuala Lumpur which (along with a return flight on Wed Night) cost me 5,725 baht or $166USD which believe it or not, is way overpriced for the 2 hour flight. If I booked it in advance like any responsible traveler would have, it would have probably cost around 4,000 baht or $116. The AirAsia flight which happened to be on a Airbus A330 which AirAsia publicly hasn’t modified since the news of the crash of Air France Flight was as smooth as any flight I’ve ever been on. Seeing lightening in the distance kind of freaked me out for a second but when the flight is so smooth there was no stress.

Keep this in mind it doesn’t include the 1,000 baht rape by the taxi driver to the airport who I evidentally paid for his return back to the city or the hour plus taxi ride with a Malay grand-pa taxi driver traveling around 80km/h on a wide open expressway. You can tell upon arriving in the Kuala Lumpur airport it is going to take a while to get to the city as you see NOTHING in all directions.

The hour drive reminded me of driving on highways in Oregon. Lots of trees is about all you see until about an hour when huge high-rise apartment buildings pop up out of nowhere. These apartment buildings looked modern. They were all wide, rectangular buildings as opposed to the narrow, square apartment buildings (slums?) in Hong Kong. The apartment buildings are everywhere you look and they block the most famous site of KL the Petronas Towers. They look cool but it seems no matter where you are there is a large building obsuring their view like in the picture (which I did NOT take). I ended up at a hotel semi-near the Thai embassy which I must goto bright and early in 6 or so hours tomorrow morning.

Finding a Hotel in Kuala Lumpur

My first night I’m staying at the Flamingo Hotel. It’s the second choice after the first hotel which was recommended by the information kiosk at the airport the DePalma was booked except for the rockstar suite which I didn’t even want to know how much it was. The Flamingo hotel is one of those wannabee nice hotels which over charges for crap that I don’t care about. The room cost about 325 Malaysian Ringgits ($90) per night which is why I’m up at 2am looking for cheaper hotels.

I still have no idea how to pronounce their money (EDIT: ringgets ), more on that later. I was looking for cheap hotels for short trips like this one and I came across a new looking cheap place called Tune Hotels in the flight catalogue in the airplane which I may check out tomorrow.

I have to wake up and get to the Royal Thai Embassy early so I can come back to this wanabee fancy, 32inch Sony Bravia (which I won’t turn on) having, no food anywhere in Kuala Lumpur after midnight hotel and check out to find a cheaper place with less bells & whistles which I don’t care about before noon. Sorry about the pathetic attempt at English Grammar but its late and know it’s going to be tough to wake up in time tomorrow if I don’t get to sleep like now!!!