Arrival in Malaysia

Plane touched the surface and the pilot announced our arrival at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Excitement already filling our hearts. It doesn’t matter how many times you travel international, some journeys feel special. This was one of them and there was no doubt about it.

After freshening up we headed to immigration formalities. Since, Malaysia is visa-free for Indians and we had all our documents ready we assumed this would be a breeze. Oh boy! We were so wrong. By the time we joined the queue for immigration it was already 10 PM local time. While discussing our plans of dinner after the formalities, we observed that the queue was hardly moving. Taking a peek in front of us, we saw only 4-5 counters processing visitors. Another 40 minutes went by, and now only 3 counters were open. By this time, two more flights have arrived and people had queued up behind us.

The never-ending wait came to an end after waiting for 90 minutes.

Moral – Book flights which are reaching during working hours of the arrival country.

After answering the mandatory questions about place, duration and itinerary in the country we were free to go and explore Malaysia. After baggage claim, we got ourselves a local sim. To quieten out grumbling stomachs, became our next top priority. Since it was nearing midnight, majority of the restaurants were closing or had already put their shutter for the night. Food court beckoned us with few open outlets.

I took two rounds looking around the menus of almost 20 outlets, but couldn’t find a single vegetarian option to order. If any menu did have something vegetarian, it was either not available or the particular outlet had closed their kitchen. It was past midnight and we knew there would be nothing to find once we reached the city. I had to settle for a vegetarian version of ‘Goreng’, the only available item in whole of the food court. P, of course ordered some wholesome chicken-rice combo that was served in an earthen pot. We ordered a cold-coffee on the side, which we did not know will become our favorite throughout the entire trip. More about it later.

This midnight hunt for vegetarian food was just a teaser of my survival during our Malaysian adventures. The whole story deserves a chapter of its own as well.

With our tummies somewhat full, we navigated our way through the Airport mall and reached the cab pickup area. When a shiny pristine car came to pick us up, our thoughts simultaneously wandered back comparing them with our rusty and rude domestic Olas and Ubers.

Drive to our accommodation in KL Sentral from Airport was a rather long one, even with cabs driving above 100kmph. Sleep evaded our eyes while we captured every bit of Malaysia enroute.

---

Follow me this April as I take you on a journey through our unforgettable Malaysian adventures, chapter by chapter.

---

I’m participating in #BlogchatterA2Z