Retroactive: a day at the airport

When I came back from Africa I had to spend a day at Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur airport. I arrived at 5AM and had to wait until 11PM for my flight. It was a very boring day, and I would like everyone to share in my boredom. It is in Malaysia that I realized why they call the procedure of entering a plane 'boreding'...

5:00 Got out of gate. Gate policemen stopped everyone and wouldn't let us pass until we signed a form stating that we did not feel sick and did not have contact with Americans. Swine flu FTW.

6:00 Went to main terminal by the 'aero train' (that train thing) to ask for the possibility of a hotel stay. Guy at ticket counter told me to go back to the satellite terminal and wait until 7:00 for an actual person to show up... Went back and waited. Read a book.

7:00 When person arrived he sent me to the business lounge. Walked to the business lounge. Business lounge counter person must have sensed my poverty, because he sent me to the gate that was the furthest away from the business lounge. Stayed there and slept. Note to self: never come back to Malaysia.

8:00 Exchanged money, went to toy store, ate at Burger King. Used Internet at BK.

9:30 - 10:00 Found a nice quiet place and read a book.

10:00 - 12:00 Slept. Kept waking up because annoying people next to me were playing music and making noise. The airport was almost empty but somehow they liked to sit next to me.

12:00 - 14:00 Went to Starbucks. Read a book.

14:00 - 15:00 Went back to quiet place. Annoying people left. Read a book.

15:00 - 17:00 Slept more.

17:00 - 18:00 Shopping. Bought some more books, including a sudoku puzzle book.

18:00 - 19:00 Tried solving one sudoku puzzle. I think the book is too difficult for me.

19:00 - 21:00 Ate at restaurant and read some more. Tried to do another sudoku puzzle but gave up halfway.

21:00 - 22:00 Surfed the internet, blogged, and looked up swine flu on wikipedia.

22:00 - 23:00 Went to the gate and waited.

23:30 I am in my plane, going home!

So that was my day in Malaysia. Slightly boring. Note to anyone going to KL airport: do NOT stay too long in the toilets. After a couple of minutes the toilet gets angry and starts flushing (from the front!), resulting in wet ball syndrome. I personally confirmed this for at least four different toilets in the satellite terminal. This may save your children one day, so be careful!@%#

I wonder who designed the airport. It seems like they didn't really think things through very well. Every toilet doubles as a shower, which sounds like a good idea in theory, but in practice it means that the floor and the toilet seat are always wet. Enjoy wiping. Another thing that didn't make sense to me is the waiting spots. There's several nice areas reserver for waiting passengers, but none of those places is in line of sight of a monitor to check your flight status. It also annoyed me that the only places where you could sit and look outside belonged to restaurants and cafes, forcing you to buy something if you want to look outside. Conclusion: crappy airport, obviously the entire country must suck too.

(I figured I'd better add a disclaimer, as some stupid people might get offended. Disclaimer: obviously my stay at the airport was not as bad as this blogpost makes you believe, and obviously I do not hate the entire country just because I had one boring day at an airport there. [/for-people-who-don't-understand-sarcasm] )

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