千里之行 始于足下

Prologue

Ever since Firefly started flying to SIN in 2009, I’ve been wanting to fly their ATR72-500s. Turboprops are very rare in SIN and it will be interesting to try them out on Firefly’s short hops to Malaysia.

There was a Firefly promotion and the one way fare of 102 MYR was too irresistible. The usual fare was easily more than twice of that.

Initially I wanted to do a 2d/1n trip but got my dates wrong during the booking and ended up doing a day trip on 4 March instead.

Found a cheapo AirAsia flight from KUL LCCT (S$30 a/i) departing late from KUL; hopefully there wouldn’t be late arrival as I didn’t want to cab back home.

SIN Budget Terminal

Earlier in the week it was announced that the Budget Terminal would be demolished soon and in its place SIN T4 will be built. I had flew in and out of BT quite a few times and found it generally quite pleasant. I would have one more flight out of BT (unless I have new plans) in July; the terminal will shut down and the airlines operating out of there currently will move to T2 in September.

I arrived at BT using my normal route (Bus 27) with plenty of time to spare.

No queue at check-in and my boarding pass was quickly printed out.

I had no idea that TR provided this service until seeing this sign.

Grabbed some breakfast at McD; picked the cheapest meal on the menu.

After immigration and security check, I went to the bookshop and browsed through the titles there.

When the boarding time arrived, I made my way to Gate 1.

My plane was nowhere in sight though. I could only see the SQ planes parked at T2.

While waiting near the gate, I was approached by a lady who was doing a survey on behalf of Changi Airport. It took a few minutes and she asked for my feedback on my experience at Budget Terminal (mostly positive). Hopefully my input will make the upcoming T4 a better terminal.

At 11.45am my plane taxi-ed into the budget terminal 5 minutes ahead of its schedule.

While the incoming passengers disembarked, the gate agents checked the boarding passes and got us to queue in two lines.

FZ 3502

Flight: Firefly FZ 3502
Depart: Singapore SIN – 12:10
Arrive: Subang SZB – 13:20
Duration: 1h10m
Aircraft: ATR 72-500 (212)
Seat: 19 A

ATR72 is quite unique as boarding is done from the back. One of the two crew for the flight stood at the door without acknowledging me when I boarded. Not the best first impression.

I was seated in the last row which meant that I would be one of the first passengers to disembark later.

The cabin was more spacious than I thought; the leg room was adequate as well.

The cabin was filled with ads from SP Setia, a property developer in Malaysia.

In fact the inflight magazine was sponsored by SP Setia too.

Its content seemed quite strange to me as the bulk of it was on Melbourne.

I was impressed that boarding was done in less than 15 minutes and the plane pushed back 5 minutes ahead of time. During the taxi, the PA was playing songs from a recorded radio programme.

The noise wasn’t as bad as I thought but I did wish I have a noise-canceling headset.

The ATR72-500 didn’t need the full runway to take off and we were airborne in no time.

Being a light plane it was definitely more susceptible to turbulence.

Fortunately the turbulence stopped after it reached cruising altitude.

The crew distributed the Malaysian arrival cards and snacks when the seat belt sign went off.

The plane hit SZB with a loud thud and it was probably one of the bumpiest landing that I ever experienced.

SZB

As mentioned earlier I was one of the first passengers to disembarked.

There were only three counters at immigration and there was a long queue for those holding Malaysian passports. In contrast there were no lines at the two desks assigned to the foreign passports and I was cleared in no time.

Subang Sky Park is a much pleasant terminal compared to KUL LCCT.

It took me a while to figure out where the bus stop to KL was. To get there, one should go up to level two of the terminal and cross over to the other side of the road using the overhead bridge. Then walk in the direction of the traffic until the bus stop which was situated outside the Malaysia Airlines building.

I saw the previous bus (RapidKL U81) left and waited around 20 minutes for the next one. It appeared that most of the users were foreign workers; it’s no surprise since most locals drive.

Kuala Lumpur

The traffic was quite smooth on a Sunday and I reached Kuala Lumpur in around 30 minutes. I alighted at the bus stop near Sentral KL and switched to KL Monorail for Bukit Bintang.

Strangely there was a huge queue for tickets while I was at the station. Wasted 10 minutes queuing up at the machine to buy the token for my ride.

After a short ride, I arrived at Bukit Bintang. Got lost inside the labyrinthine of Sungei Wang and seriously thought about the fire safety status of the building.

Sungei Wang didn’t really appeal to me and I decided to go upmarket and walked to Berjaya Times Square.

Ended up spending most of my time at Borders.

At around 6.45 I retraced my route back to KL Sentral for my transfer to KUL LCCT. Originally I intended to take the 7pm Skybus from KL Sentral (I even bought the ticket when booking my plane ticket) but the allure of taking KLIA Transit was too great for me.

It was slightly more expensive at 12.50 MYR but it shaved 30 minutes off the traveling time.

The train resembled the day-time trains that I took in Europe last year. Pretty modern and clean and slightly less than half an hour after departing from KL Sentral I alighted at Salak Tinggi ERL station.

A shuttle bus was already waiting to take us to KLIA LCCT; we reached there just before 8.30pm (the scheduled time).

KUL LCCT

Although my last visit was October (on my way to ORY), the place remained familiar to me. I proceeded to print out my boarding pass from one of the self-service kiosks.

These kiosks didn’t read my code and I had to use another type of machine instead.

Immigration was painless and I was air-side shortly before the printed boarding time of 9.45pm.

Plenty of action at LCCT at that hour; saw quite a few Koreans on their way back to Seoul on D7.

After milling around for a while, I suddenly recalled that I needed to verify my documents before boarding. Apparently the counter had shifted from the land-side to air-side (except for D7 flights) and I wondered if I would be denied boarding if I hadn’t remembered.

Our plane tonight was parked nearer to the domestic terminal which meant a long walk for us.

AK 725

Flight: Air Asia AK 725
Depart: Kuala Lumpur KUL – 22:30
Arrive: Singapore SIN – 23:30
Duration: 1h0m
Aircraft: Airbus A320-200
Seat: 21 E

21D was occupied but 21F turned out to be empty; I seemed to be quite lucky as I experienced the same thing on my last AirAsia flight (KUL-ORY!).

3sixty was a good read as usual.

One thing that struck me was the flight was staffed by an all-Singaporean crew. I didn’t realize that AirAsia has Singapore-based crew and pilots until this flight. It made sense though as the plane would overnight at Changi and flew back to KUL as AK 732 early next morning.

After take-off my pre-booked sandwich was delivered. Didn’t remember why I chose it but I still finished it.

We landed 15 minutes ahead of time but being in the middle of the plane meant that I couldn’t get out of it as fast as I would like. It wasn’t end of the world though as I could still connect to public transport home. Just like my trip to Dhaka, I was at my door within an hour of exiting the plane despite having to wait quite a while for the public buses.

Epilogue

I was glad that I flew with Firefly as it recently announced that there would be an increase in its fuel surcharge. It was nice to be served snacks and drinks on-board but I wasn’t sure they were worth the premium. Thought that Firefly could learn a thing or two from AirAsia on generating ancillary income.

ATR72 is a nice little plane but I didn’t really have the stomach for bumpy ride. I also didn’t expect SZB to have such a modern terminal which was definitely a pleasant surprise. Its proximity to KL is a huge plus and I could imagine travelers will prefer to travel out of there instead of KUL LCCT.

AirAsia is efficient as usual; I can’t complain about the ride which got me home for less than S$30. Luckily for me, despite being on the last flight of the day, it was on time and thus saved me a potential expensive cab fare home.

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

Jalan Alor was KL’s equivalent to Singapore’s Lau Pa Sat: hawker food for tourists at not-so-cheap prices.

The food was so-so for me and some of us had durians for dessert.

After dinner we went back to our hotel.

As the hotel that we stayed in was fully booked, we actually scored an upgrade to the suites.

It turned out that a koran-reciting competition was being hosted at our hotel (explained the fully booked rooms).

The next morning we had to be up early as our flight was departing at 8.40am.

The concierge helped us get a taxi for 130 MYR; it wasn’t so bad since it was split among 5 people.

The journey took almost an hour and all of us slept through the long drive.

The main terminal seemed like an oasis of calm compared to the zoo of LCCT.

The check-in was already open and it turned out that the web check-in counter was SLOWER than the ordinary counter.

After checking in we went to grab some cakes/pies before passing immigration.

Thankfully the queue wasn’t as long as entering Malaysia but it was still time-consuming.

Our gate was at the satellite terminal so we had to take the skytrain there.

The plane was already awaiting us at the gate.

While boarding I spotted a rather exotic airline.

HT and I scored row 4 again but this time I ended up on the middle seat and him on the aisle.

Thus no pictures of the clouds.

We were slightly delayed as our plane had to wait for its turn to take off.

I couldn’t remember much of the flight except of this paragraph written in the in-flight magazine.

We were back in SIN less than 24 hours after leaving it.

For HT he would be back in SIN less than 24 hours from then for his flight back to SYD the following morning.

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

After doing errands (helped my colleague pass some gifts to her friend in KL), checking in and having a snack at McD’s, we were finally on our way to the stadium by LRT.

The train wasn’t too crowded when we boarded and there was time and space for me to take the photograph below.

However it wasn’t long before the train got filled (with Liverpool supporters of course).

It was so crowded that almost no more passengers could board in the last few stations before the Stadium.

I was glad to get out of the overcrowded train but the platform didn’t provide any much respite either.

I only found out later that Bukit Jalil Stadium is the 9th largest football stadium in the world.

Between the LRT station and the stadium there were many stalls selling Malaysian food and drinks (nasi lemak anyone?) as well as not so authentic football apparels.

Definitely very different from a typical match day at Anfield.

Amidst the crowd somehow we managed to rendezvous with the rest of the contingent from Singapore.

By the time we entered the stadium the match had started.

Our 88 MYR　ｔｉｃｋｅｔ　ｓｈｏｕｌｄ　ｅｎｔｉｔｌｅ　ｕｓ　ｔｏ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｅｃｏｎｄ　ｔｉｅｒ　ｏｆ　ｔｈｅ　ｓｔａｄｉｕｍ　ｂｕｔ　ｗｅ were not able to find our way in.

We ended up in the top tier of the stadium, closer to the sky than to the action.

From my position I could see some empty seats in the second tier.

Well we were feeling too comfortable to attempt getting there.

While it was almost full house at Bukit Jalil, the atmosphere while decent left me kinda deflated.

There were plenty of noise but hardly anything was synchronized. I believe that most of the fans (my travel companions included) were familiar with the songs sung at Anfield.

The performance on the pitch was typical of a pre-season friendly; kinda insipid in my opinion. The star of the first half was obviously Charlie Adam, the summer’s new signing from Blackpool.

Charlie’s retaking the penalty

Malaysia’s reply was a Bend-it-like-Beckham-esque freekick minutes later so both sides went into half time tied at 1-1.

Half-time was a good opportunities to take photos.

Liverpool reappeared in the second with an entire different team.

Start of second half

Second half was more entertaining with the sloppy Malaysian defence giving away cheap goals and Liverpool raced to a 4-1 lead.

However the Malaysians didn’t give up and gave Liverpool some scare with two goals of their own.

However more naive defending led to two more goals for the visitors and the final score was a more respectable 6-3 to the EPL side.

At the end of the match the organizers played “You’ll Never Walk Alone” which we sung with full gusto.

By the time we left the stadium was emptying out.

Outside the stadium it was still bustling with activities.

We didn’t head for the LRT station immediately as some of us decided to browse at the merchandises. By the time we were done there was still a large crowd at the stadium.

The security personnel at the LRT station had to implement crowd control and lock the fans out before the station became too overcrowded. We were stuck in the crowd for around 20 minutes before we were allowed into the station.

Then we wasted more time procuring the tickets before waiting to get up to the platforms. All the trains were too filled to the brim and we waited for a couple before we could get up.

Fans heading home

While waiting for the train Jaslin spotted a spelling mistake.

Two hours after the match ended we finally reached the Bukit Bintang area and went to Jalan Alor for dinner.

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

I was really happy that we chose an afternoon departure instead of an early morning one. I was able to sleep in a bit and had some decent breakfast at home before taking public transport to the airport.

Two buses and slightly less than half an hour later I arrived at the airport.

SIN Terminal 1 was bustling on a Saturday morning.

I checked the screens for the check-in row for my flight.

It seemed that T1 was dominated by low-cost carriers, especially Jetstar and AirAsia.

Lewis and his girlfriend Jaslin had already checked in when I reached row 3.

Several Jetstar/Valuair flights were leaving within one hour of one another (for KUL, CGK, MFM and SWA) which explained the long queue at the check-in counters.

Luckily I did OLCI earlier.

The last member of the traveling party HT arrived shortly after and we joined the web check-in queue.

While waiting in line, one of Jetstar’s staff came around to make sure that I had printed out the confirmations of my OLCI. Although there weren’t many people in front of us, we still spent at least a good ten minutes in the queue.

After collecting our boarding passes and passing through the immigration controls, we were off to an early lunch at the airside Burger King.

To be honest it wasn’t the best time to do spotting.

Looking at the JT aircraft reminded me my flight with them from CGK.

The trip report wouldn’t be complete without a cliched shot.

On our way to our gate we caught a glimpse of our bird.

There was already a queue for the security screening at the gate. From my observation, more than a third of the passengers were wearing Liverpool replica jersies (us included). Seemed that we would all be heading towards the same place in Kuala Lumpur.

I took another picture of our aircraft at the holding area.

Route: SIN – KUL
Flight no.: 3K 685
STD: 12:50 (ATD: 13:20)
STA: 13:55 (ATA: 14:05)
Time taken: 0h45m
Distance traveled: 196 miles / 313 km
Aircraft: Airbus A320
Registration: 9V-JSB

We were slightly delayed in boarding and I only got seated in 3A at the supposed time of departure.

While waiting for our turn to take-off, I discovered that there were plenty of things inside my seat pocket.

Despite the many photographs we weren’t even air-borne yet.

Ahead of us was an SQ whale jet bound for LHR.

Twenty minutes after our scheduled departure our plane lined up for take-off.

While taking off we could see water spilling out from one of the containers for drinks (I don’t know its exact term) in the galley. Apparently some stuff weren’t properly secured and the crew had to clean up after the seat belt sign was switched off.

The flight time was only 35 minutes and land was always visible from the window. I vaguely remembered that the crew went through one round of sales shortly after taking off.

Our plane touched down at KUL at 2:05pm, 15 minutes behind schedule.

HT and I were out of the plane pretty fast since we were seated so up front. However we had to wait for Lewis and Jaslin who were seated further back. A short shuttle train ride brought us to the main terminal where the immigration controls were.

The queue were horrendous and we took almost 90 minutes before clearing them. The biometric scanning of fingerprints clearly slowed down the whole process. After clearing the immigration at around 3.30pm, we got a pre-paid taxi coupon to our hotel for around 75 MYR.

LFC Asia Tour 2011 [16 - 17 July 2011]
Pt I: Prologue
Pt II: Short Hop
Pt III: Match Day
Pt IV: Going Home

A couple of months before the end of last season, Liverpool FC announced that there would be a pre-season tour of Asia with matches in Guangzhou, Kuala Lumpur and Seoul.

It was only two years since Liverpool last visited Asia and Singapore. This time round there wasn’t any stadium capable of hosting the match on our island otherwise I was pretty sure Singapore would be one of the stops.

I chose not to go to the match in 2009 as I questioned the wisdom of paying 80+ SGD for a pre-seaon friendly match, especially only two months after visiting Anfield. I had spent a fair bit of money traveling to UK to catch the team live in action (3-0 win over Newcastle) and my head told me that it was probably wiser to give the friendly a miss.

The details of the tour was released in June and Liverpool’s match at Kuala Lumpur would be on 16 July, a Saturday. It meant that I could do a weekend trip for the match without taking any time from work. The date also coincided with my friend HT’s two-week break from his medical studies in Australia. Lewis, a recent convert to Liverpool’s cause, was most enthusiastic in organizing a trip up north and in all there would be a total of seven of us traveling.

The first phase of the sale was limited only to holders of Standard Chartered Bank’s cards in Malaysia and we would need to wait till the general sale period before we could get our hands on those tickets.

There were several places in Singapore where the local fans could get tickets and we got ours from the Adidas concept store at Suntec. Only the 108 MYR ones (45 SGD) were available and they came with the passes to the training session on Thursday (which we wouldn’t be attending).

Funnily the most prominent player featured on the ticket wouldn’t be traveling to Asia due to his rehabilitation from injuries.

After securing the tickets we would need to make some traveling plans. Naturally I volunteered for the task.

Accommodation-wise it was pretty straight forward. My mother has some time-share membership which I could utilize to get two rooms at Legend Hotel KL for free. Although each booking required a minimum of two-night stay, I somehow managed to get them to bend the rule and give me the rooms for just one night.

Three of the seven going for the match would make their own travel arrangement while I would take care of the remaining four. There are several different modes of transport between the two cities (car, bus, train & plane) and each has their pros and cons.

HT would be going back to Australia the following Monday and he made it clear that he didn’t want to spend hours on Malaysian expressways the day before he was to fly back to SYD. So flight it was.

After a bit of research, we finalized our choice of flying with Jetstar Asia. Our outbound flight was scheduled to depart at 12.50pm which would get us into KUL before 2pm. The inbound flight was a tad too early at 8.40am but we chose it as the later flights were much more expensive.

In total we paid 72.50 SGD each. Not too bad in my opinion.

Sri Lanka Adventure [10 - 18 June 2010]
Part I: Pre-Trip [Singapore, 10 Jun 2010]
Part II: The Long Shuttle [Singapore - Kuala Lumpur, 10 Jun 2010]
Part III: AK255 [KUL - CMB, 11 Jun 2010]
Part IV: A Slice of Cultural Triangle [CMB - Dambulla, 11 June 2010]
Part V: Temples [Dambulla - Kandy, 12 Jun 2010]
Part VI: Into the Hills [Kandy - Haputale, 13 Jun 2010]
Part VII: Trekking to World’s End [Horton's Plains National Park, 14 Jun 2010]
Part VIII: Retracing the steps of Sir Thomas Lipton [Lipton's Seat & Tea Factory, 15 Jun 2010]
Part IX: Leopard! Leopard! Leopard! [Haputale - Tissa, 16 Jun 2010]
Part X: Will this journey ever end? [Tissa - Negombo, 17 Jun 2010]
Part XI: Goodbye Serendib [CMB - KUL - Singapore, 18 Jun 2010]
Part XII: Epilogue

Negombo’s mosquitoes didn’t help to provide me with a good night’s sleep. When I finally fall asleep, Kendrick knocked on our room’s door to return me my book.

And luckily he did. The occupants in my room didn’t realize that it was already 5:25am and we had arranged transport to pick us up at 5:45am. Our military instinct kicked in and the three of us managed to wash up and got ready within the short time. In fact we even had the time to take photographs from the rooftop.

When we were about to leave, I realized that there were blood stains on my pillow.

Some poor mosquitoes must have been squashed by me.

When we returned from dinner the previous night, the guesthouse owner offered to arrange a van to the airport for 1000 LKR. Nevertheless we decided to honor our agreement with the autorickshaw drivers.

Despite being early morning, our autorickshaw driver was chatty and asked us about our trip. He lamented that our trip was too short and told us to visit Sri Lanka soon. Like most Sri Lankans whom we met on the trip, he was friendly and genuine.

The ride from Negombo Beach to CMB took around 25 minutes and the autorickshaws had to pass through cursory security check before being allowed to enter the airport.

Air passengers had to show the security guards their flight itineraries before being allowed to enter the terminal building. The security officer was satisfied with our flight itinerary being displayed on an iPhone but it would be easier if we had a physical copy.

There were several moneychangers which changed LKR into hard currencies such as USD or Euros. None of them stocked SGD so I exchanged my remaining rupees for USD at a pretty poor rate (1140 LKR for 9 USD). Some of us did some last minute shopping at the souvenir shop before checking in. There were no money exchange facilities beyond the check in counters and each individual is only allowed to bring a maximum of 1000 LKR out of Sri Lanka.

There wasn’t much of a queue at the check in and we were almost served immediately. An indication of a light load? Immigration was hassle-free as well.

In the most unlikeliest of places, we ran into Ian Wright, the host of Globetrekker series who was leaving CMB around the same time as us. He agreed readily to a photograph with us and told us to look out for his latest travel program which features Singapore.

Our plane was waiting for us at Gate 7 and I could see its registration clearly (9M-AHY). It is Air Asia’s newest aircraft and was only delivered on 20th April 2010. I got a middle seat of 21E but it wasn’t much of a problem. The load was light and there were plenty of empty rows for passengers to spread out.

Route: CMB – KUL
Flight no.: Air Asia AK 256
Dep: KUL 8:15am
Arr: CMB 2:20pm
Time taken: 3h35m
Distance traveled: 2470km (1535miles)
Cost: 322 MYR (incl in-flight meal & 15kg checked luggage)

Goodbye Serendib!

The meal service commenced pretty soon after the plane reached cruising altitude. To my horror, I realized that I ordered Asian fried rice for my pre-booked meal. Bad mistake since I had fried rice for almost every meal in Sri Lanka. Luckily it turned out to be quite good.

Chiang was smarter with his choice of chicken rice. The rice was particularly flavorful.

Despite its short time in service, wear and tear were apparent on the plane. One of the washrooms was out of order and Chiang’s left armrest had a piece missing.

The flight was uneventful and we reached KUL on time.

Malaysian immigration cards weren’t stocked on the plane and the Singaporeans could only fill up the cards at the terminal. Despite being held up, we still had to wait a while before our checked bags appeared on the baggage carousel.

Some of us were contemplating flying home instead of taking a coach. The multiple transfers on the previous day had taken its toll and we weren’t particularly looking forward to more transfers. However, the poor schedule and rather expensive prices scuppered the plan.

Kok Wai managed to get his cousin to give us a lift from KUL to the temporary bus station at Bukit Jalil. Cheers to him. If it wasn’t for his kind lift, we would not be able to catch the coach leaving for Singapore at 5:00pm.

The temporary bus station looked as if it was constructed overnight at one of the Bukit Jalil Stadium’s car-parks. It was filled with both travelers and touts looking for seat-fillers. A pretty chaotic scene and I was glad to get out of there in less than 20 minutes.

Route: Kuala Lumpur to Singapore
Mode: Coach (Forgot the name of the operator)
Dep: Bukit Jalil, KL 5:00pm
Arr: Beach Road, Singapore 10:30pm
Time taken: 5h30m
Distance traveled: Approx. 355km
Cost: 39 MYR

View Larger Map

We were the last ones to get on the bus and it left shortly after. Despite the lower price of 39 MYR, this bus had more comfortable seats than First Coach. No on board entertainment was available though so I watched Monga on my iPod instead.

After the Sri Lankan roads, Malaysian expressways seemed a blessing. The good roads enabled us to cover 350km in half the time that we took to cover 300km in Sri Lanka the previous day. It will be part of history soon though. The Southern Expressway linking Colombo and Matara will cut traveling time significantly when it is completed.

At Yong Peng where the coach stopped for dinner, Singapore-bound passengers had to transfer to another bus. There wasn’t much of a traffic heading into Singapore on a Friday evening. Our Sri Lankan adventure came to an end with our 10:30pm arrival at Beach Road.

Seven days wasn’t a long time but we managed to cover quite a bit of Sri Lanka. The epilogue post will sum up our thoughts on the trip.