Leaving hometown
Today I leave hometown and head to Kuala Lumpur then Downunder to Sydney for a two night stay and then back home to Auckland.
It’s a rainy day and I’m over the humidity in Kuching. I decided to head out to the airport early in case there’s a flight disruption and I’d try for the flight an hour earlier. Despite my 5h25 layover in Kuala Lumpur today, it is the tightest connection to Sydney tonight.
I got to the airport 3h before my 1620 departure and spent about 2h30 airside, catching up on lists and having a pie before boarding the Malaysia Airlines B737-800.
We ended up being 25 mins late because cabin crew weren’t vigilant about cabin bags and we ran out of locker space. Ground staff couldn’t transfer them to hold because many of those passengers had had international connections.
It took some time to go through lockers and transfer small items to under the seats and eventually everyone managed to store all wheelies. One sack of blankets had to be buckled into the seat in the last row.
The brewing situation had already been apparent to me, seated in the rear, when crew closed the lockers when full, even the area wasn’t fully seated.
During the taxi to the runway, the inflight boss went to aft galley to debrief or tell-off the crew for not managing the situation well enough.
As if it was due to their sins, the crew had to do a tray service of hot drinks during descent to make up for not being able to serve them with the meal due to turbulence. I’ve never experienced a catch-up round of hot drinks like that on a short flight!
Today, I’m on a refurbished flight with no PTVs but streaming entertainment. The slimline seats and colour palette made the cabin feel very spacious but the seats were not very supportive and wouldn’t be great on longer flights, say to Kathmandu. The USB charger is super-fast compared to on the older cabin.
For some reason, the pilots didn’t instruct the crew to take their seats for landing until we were very low and that made me a little wary. We landed 35 late mins at 1845 in Kuala Lumpur.
Transit in Kuala Lumpur
Luckily, I didn’t have a tight connection. I processed myself through autogate from domestic to international departures with no manual checks or screening. I had 3h available in the Sama Sama lounge for some food and a shower. Strangely, the normally congested lounge was quiet today. I didn’t need the full hours and left early to board the 2335 flight to Sydney.
The flight is chock-a-block tonight with not a single economy seat left for sale. Having been stingy and not paid to select an aisle seat, I was allocated a middle seat in the centre block of four at online check-in.
There were only two seats available for selection, both in the extra legroom section for about NZD100. In an uncharacteristic stroke of weakness, I bit the bullet and paid for it.
Flying to Sydney
I turned left upon boarding to take my seat in a mini zone of just two rows behind Business Class. Legroom and recline was generous. What a pity that I only had half a sleeping pill left which meant that I didn’t sleep as well as I had hoped to, with 4h of dozing rather than sleeping.
Feeling bored with the usual Nasi Lemak or omelette, I pre-ordered the complimentary “Chef-on-Call” Beef Lasagne. It turned out to be an odd breakfast choice before landing but super delicious!