Arriving in KL early in the morning gave me a different perspectives on the place. The airport was deserted, barely anyone there, except few lines of Indians queuing at the transfer desk. The immigration was quick as usual, but the luggage took a while to get out. I felt so relieved to be able to go back to the place that I love so much, the KLIA express didn't take long and I was so happy to be able to spot Putrajaya and Mid Valley on my way to KL Sentral. My friends have been expecting me at their place and I was so embarassed and sorry, as I have troubled them by making them waiting for me as they need to get to work that morning. For pretty much the whole day, I didn't do anything, I couldn't get out either. I have no idea where am I and I don't have ringgit either, all my money is still in Australian dollars. Urgh...
Luckily, they took me to Mid Valley in the evening. It was still the same, not much changes, except a few shops here and there. That place was unusually crowded last night, as many people went for pre-Christmas sale and bargain hunting. Giordano was having 50% off sale and it was jam packed with people and security guards, even had to install a barrier and poles to control the queues.
Back to my friend's place, I managed to sleep, albeit not very comfortable under the fan and on top of the thin mattress. My back was a little sore in the morning and I woke up early too, as I couldn't sleep much last night.
Calling a taxi to get to my friend's place is no easy task, it took me 45minutes to get a taxi at 10am. My friend's condo is kinda remote and off the track, it's not easy to find either. I had to ask my bf in melbourne to help me calling the taxi. Finally, I got myself a cab with a nice driver and arriving at the hotel was a bliss. The room was not ready, but I'm just happy to be able to leave my luggage with them and knowing that I will be able to get a good night sleep tonight.
As I was waiting for my friend from Jakarta to arrive, I booked myself a full spa treatment from head to toe. Sooooo relaxing.... All my pains and tiredness have gone....
Met my friend in KL sentral and headed to the hotel afterwards, but not before booking the day trip to genting for tomorrow. What a day... Tonight, we gonna just relax, shop in times square and enjoy ourselves eating mamak in Jalan Alor... Yum...
水曜日, 12月 06, 2006
マレーシアエアライン
After some last minutes preparation, I finally headed to the airport around 9.30pm last night. Arriving at the airport, Malaysia Airlines' check in counters are nowhere to be seen, seems that there are some re-organising work done in Melbourne Airport. Qantas now occupies the far right corner and Singapore Airlines occupies 2 sides of check in counters in the middle. There are few flights leaving that night within minutes of each other, including Singapore Airlines to Singapore, Thai Airways to Bangkok, Malaysia Airlines to Kuala Lumpur, and Qantas to Hong Kong/London.
Singapore Airlines' check in counters looked deserted, but no surprise here. They use both sides of check in counters to speed up the check in process. Malaysia and Thai on the other hand, only used one side and has extremely long queues, way beyond their designated queue lines. I met few people in the queue and we checked in together, so there were 6 of us. The check in took ages, maybe 20-30min just to get our boarding pass. In all, we have 13 pieces of luggage, yes.. 13!! and the humongous luggage bags. Since this is a codeshare flights with Air India, there were plenty of Indians around, with their endless luggage. They looked like bringing the whole house with them. We are in for a heavy ride tonight....
Around 00.00, passengers were called for boarding. I arrived at the gate at around 12.15am, and no one was there. Everyone is on board already. Entering the planes, I felt like the flight attendants didn't try enough to accomodate the passengers. They are just leaning to the chairs and said welcome, only a few actually bothered to help the passengers to put their luggage at the overhead compartment. What a difference from Singapore Airlines. When I got into my seat, the seat was occupied by an Indian guy. I asked him to move to his seat, the middle seat. Later, he asked if he can swap seat with me and he said his leg is pain. Oh what a bullshit... I said no... The seat pitch has no difference whether you are in the middle or aisle seat. Later, I found 0ut he slept most of the time and snored too.. Geez.. what happen if I need to go to toilet, which I did go about 4-5 times during the flights.
The economy class seats was pretty narrow, but the seat pitch is better than Singapore Airlines' and Cathay Pacific's boeing 747. The hot towel they gave wasn't up to the standard, it's actually a warm paper towel. Oh well... The first meal was a cost cutting measures implemented to alleviate the ailing carrier from losing money. It was horrible lamb sandwich/bun, the bread was cold, hard and lamb? can't you even think of better choices? Not many people like lambs. The drink choices was pretty mediocre: tea, coffee, water, orange juice, and several soft drinks. Alcoholic beverages were nowhere to be seen. Such a shame for 5 stars airlines.
Soon after the meal, the lights were turned off so people could sleep. I watched some movies and documentary during the flights. The inflight entertainment need some practice to get used to. It wasn't that bad. Several new released movies were shown, including The devil wears prada, X-men, poseidon, da vinci code, and some selections of asian movies. It was the new audio video on demand, not bad...
If I didn't asked for water, I think, I would be pretty much dehydrated during the flights. The flights attendants dissapeared after the meals. I had to use the call button to get some water. The call buttons do not always work either, sometimes I have to keep pressing to get attention from them. Where the heck are their ears and eyes? I also wonder, why there was no water/drinks offered every half hour for the passengers to keep them hydrated. They only had two rounds of drinks offer during the 3-4 hours we were in the dark. The plane was flying slow, there was strong head wind of more than 135km/hour above the australian desert. The flight speed shown 890 km/hr, which I thought was pretty slow for a boeing 747.
2.5 hours before landing, the lights were turned on for breakfast. I was pretty surprised, 2.5 hours is such a long time to go before landing. However, I waited and waited, they didn't serve the breakfast straight away, even the second round of so called hot towel took a while to be seen. During the flight I realised that the flight attendants took forever to serve the meals. Even the special meals didn't arrive earlier than the normal meals. They didn't have menu distributed in flight, but they had the menu shown in the tv screen. What a great way to save money, even though I wasn't impressed. They have nasi lemak or chicken sausage with vegetable frittata as the option for breakfast, but the nasi lemak has finished when they reached me. Can't complaint here, I'm taking economy class, you can't always get the meal you want.
Before landing, I asked the flight attendant if they have playing cards, but they seemed to have stopped the production for the cards. I have to say that, the flight attendant named Rowena was pretty and she was pretty nice to me. Overall, I wouldn't say this is a bad flights, but Malaysia Airlines surely do not deserve the best flight attendants award from Skytrax. They need to learn how to use a better body language, use all of their 5 sense to find out passengers' needs, and learn a thing or two about efficiency. For the price I paid, I shouldn't complaint much.
For your interest, maybe this can be the comparisons:
* Singapore Airlines using real towels, not just cheap paper towels. Cathay Pacific has no hot towel at all, they had some wet tissue.
* I'm yet to see Singapore Airlines' flight attendants using poor body language, despite countless of flights with them nor I have seen this in Cathay Pacific. Both airlines have great flight attendants that will help you with your need, including helping putting your luggage into overhead compartment.
* Singapore Airline's flight attendants will be there by your side within 10-20 seconds, provided they are not busy serving the meals.
* Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific has menu and great selection of drinks in economy class. In Singapore Airlines, you can have, 2 selections of white and red wine, cocktails and mocktails, as well as some not very common juice like Tomato and Pineapple juice.
* Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific keep their passengers hydrated by offering water/juice every half hour, even during the dark.
I know SQ are more expensive, but that's how they make their money. They provide good services and in return, they have high customer loyalty. I couldn't even book the flights with them coz it was fully booked, even though they have 3 flights a day from Melbourne.
Would I recommend Malaysia Airlines? If you are on the budget, this airline surely beats Jetstar, but if you have the money, Singapore Airlines is a much better choice.
Singapore Airlines' check in counters looked deserted, but no surprise here. They use both sides of check in counters to speed up the check in process. Malaysia and Thai on the other hand, only used one side and has extremely long queues, way beyond their designated queue lines. I met few people in the queue and we checked in together, so there were 6 of us. The check in took ages, maybe 20-30min just to get our boarding pass. In all, we have 13 pieces of luggage, yes.. 13!! and the humongous luggage bags. Since this is a codeshare flights with Air India, there were plenty of Indians around, with their endless luggage. They looked like bringing the whole house with them. We are in for a heavy ride tonight....
Around 00.00, passengers were called for boarding. I arrived at the gate at around 12.15am, and no one was there. Everyone is on board already. Entering the planes, I felt like the flight attendants didn't try enough to accomodate the passengers. They are just leaning to the chairs and said welcome, only a few actually bothered to help the passengers to put their luggage at the overhead compartment. What a difference from Singapore Airlines. When I got into my seat, the seat was occupied by an Indian guy. I asked him to move to his seat, the middle seat. Later, he asked if he can swap seat with me and he said his leg is pain. Oh what a bullshit... I said no... The seat pitch has no difference whether you are in the middle or aisle seat. Later, I found 0ut he slept most of the time and snored too.. Geez.. what happen if I need to go to toilet, which I did go about 4-5 times during the flights.
The economy class seats was pretty narrow, but the seat pitch is better than Singapore Airlines' and Cathay Pacific's boeing 747. The hot towel they gave wasn't up to the standard, it's actually a warm paper towel. Oh well... The first meal was a cost cutting measures implemented to alleviate the ailing carrier from losing money. It was horrible lamb sandwich/bun, the bread was cold, hard and lamb? can't you even think of better choices? Not many people like lambs. The drink choices was pretty mediocre: tea, coffee, water, orange juice, and several soft drinks. Alcoholic beverages were nowhere to be seen. Such a shame for 5 stars airlines.
Soon after the meal, the lights were turned off so people could sleep. I watched some movies and documentary during the flights. The inflight entertainment need some practice to get used to. It wasn't that bad. Several new released movies were shown, including The devil wears prada, X-men, poseidon, da vinci code, and some selections of asian movies. It was the new audio video on demand, not bad...
If I didn't asked for water, I think, I would be pretty much dehydrated during the flights. The flights attendants dissapeared after the meals. I had to use the call button to get some water. The call buttons do not always work either, sometimes I have to keep pressing to get attention from them. Where the heck are their ears and eyes? I also wonder, why there was no water/drinks offered every half hour for the passengers to keep them hydrated. They only had two rounds of drinks offer during the 3-4 hours we were in the dark. The plane was flying slow, there was strong head wind of more than 135km/hour above the australian desert. The flight speed shown 890 km/hr, which I thought was pretty slow for a boeing 747.
2.5 hours before landing, the lights were turned on for breakfast. I was pretty surprised, 2.5 hours is such a long time to go before landing. However, I waited and waited, they didn't serve the breakfast straight away, even the second round of so called hot towel took a while to be seen. During the flight I realised that the flight attendants took forever to serve the meals. Even the special meals didn't arrive earlier than the normal meals. They didn't have menu distributed in flight, but they had the menu shown in the tv screen. What a great way to save money, even though I wasn't impressed. They have nasi lemak or chicken sausage with vegetable frittata as the option for breakfast, but the nasi lemak has finished when they reached me. Can't complaint here, I'm taking economy class, you can't always get the meal you want.
Before landing, I asked the flight attendant if they have playing cards, but they seemed to have stopped the production for the cards. I have to say that, the flight attendant named Rowena was pretty and she was pretty nice to me. Overall, I wouldn't say this is a bad flights, but Malaysia Airlines surely do not deserve the best flight attendants award from Skytrax. They need to learn how to use a better body language, use all of their 5 sense to find out passengers' needs, and learn a thing or two about efficiency. For the price I paid, I shouldn't complaint much.
For your interest, maybe this can be the comparisons:
* Singapore Airlines using real towels, not just cheap paper towels. Cathay Pacific has no hot towel at all, they had some wet tissue.
* I'm yet to see Singapore Airlines' flight attendants using poor body language, despite countless of flights with them nor I have seen this in Cathay Pacific. Both airlines have great flight attendants that will help you with your need, including helping putting your luggage into overhead compartment.
* Singapore Airline's flight attendants will be there by your side within 10-20 seconds, provided they are not busy serving the meals.
* Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific has menu and great selection of drinks in economy class. In Singapore Airlines, you can have, 2 selections of white and red wine, cocktails and mocktails, as well as some not very common juice like Tomato and Pineapple juice.
* Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific keep their passengers hydrated by offering water/juice every half hour, even during the dark.
I know SQ are more expensive, but that's how they make their money. They provide good services and in return, they have high customer loyalty. I couldn't even book the flights with them coz it was fully booked, even though they have 3 flights a day from Melbourne.
Would I recommend Malaysia Airlines? If you are on the budget, this airline surely beats Jetstar, but if you have the money, Singapore Airlines is a much better choice.
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