After 2.5 days of hedonistic excess it was time to clean up our act and go to Mal-AY-sia (am I the only person incapable of pronouncing that otherwise, after being subjected to a barrage of "Mal-AY-sia, Truly AY-sia!" commercials on CNN?). Leaving the JW by taxi to the airport never ceases to amuse me -- the taxi has to turn south to Wireless Rd, make a quasi-legal U-turn, head straight through the crossing, dive into a tiny soi in the right, zigzag its way back to Sukhumvit, drive right past the starting point (on the other side) and only then can it turn left onto the highway. On a Saturday afternoon this was just amusing, but in rush hour this can well take more time then the rest of the journey to the airport!

We were there in plenty of time (2 hrs before) and Air Asia's checkin for this flight was painless, no hassle about our slightly oversized (and rather overweight) carry-on either. As usual, no boarding cards, just little printed receipts. We got to the gate and I noticed that there was no plane there yet... and, since this was an AK flight (from Malaysia), as opposed to an FH flight (Air Asia Thailand), the plane would be flying in from Malaysia. Uh-oh. Time passed slowly, the display flashed Boarding, the Final Call, a queue of eager people formed up... and still no plane. Only 5 minutes before departure did the plane roll in and another half an hour later we boarded...

AK 883 BKK-KUL B737 free seating

Despite not queueing up there were free seats to go around and we had no problems scoring a 3-seat row; load still appeared to be fairly decent at 80% or so. The plane was AAP, one of Air Asia's newest and easily distinguishable due to the cartoons designed by famed Malaysian cartoonist Lat, and like all newer Air Asia planes it offered comfy leather seating. The flight itself was entirely uneventful: pitch was small but adequate, there was no IFE or reading materials other than your own, and we opted not to go for the Snack Attacks being touted for a few dozen baht. I've said it before and I'll say it again: like Southwest and Ryanair before it, this is the future of Asian aviation.

Touchdown at KUL was shortly before nightfall, and the airport seemed even more deserted than usual. Immigration was painless, but obtaining some ringgit proved harder as the RHB ATM accepted all 3 attempted cards happily, let us punch in our digits and request amounts, then chewed on this for a minute before spitting the card back out without even an error message. Fortunately the AmBank ATM we found on the other side of the arrivals hall was more cooperative, as was the KLIA Ekspres ticket machine, and after grabbing a mee siam and a nasi lemak for the road we hopped on board.

28 minutes later we were in the city, and with only a bit of luggage to carry we opted to take the monorail to Bukit Bintang; I can't imagine many visitors go for this though since you'll have a hard time spotting the signs and the way down and across the parking lot even if you're looking out for them. The monorail was smooth enough (although the interval between trains remains too long...) and then our digs for the night, the Westin KL, was just a short walk away.

I'd booked an internet supersaver rate for a "Towers View" room; at check-in we were smootly informed that we'd been upgraded to an apartment instead. No complaints, if a bit of waste given that we'd be staying here for less than 12 hours...! The apartment consisted of a kitchen/dining room, bedroom and large bathroom, all very tastefully furnished in proper Westin style -- but unfortunately condensation from rain wrecked the view of the Towers, not it that would have been very good anyway from the 7th floor. My second gripe was that the air-con was freezing despite my best attempts to twiddle with the thermostats (which had been preset to 5 deg C when we came in!). But perhaps this just makes you appreciate a Westin Heavenly Bed a little more; and how much can you complain if you're paying around US$80 in the first place?

Not much time to lounge around next morning though, since we had a flight to catch and places to go. The trip above repeated in reverse, we checked in at the MH counters, grabbed two packets of mee and kuay tiow, and went to twiddle our thumbs at the gate. This time the plane was waiting, boarding started on time, and soon it was time for:

MH 1388 KUL-KBR B737 seat 22F

I flew exactly the same flight two years ago on my first trip to Malaysia, and the only thing that seemed to have changed was that this time we were served a glass of Milo in addition to orange juice. MH has responsed to competition by slashing its prices but not its service: our tickets cost us RM 79 a piece, still 20 ringgit more than Air Asia's RM 59 tix, but with more decent timing (there's a world of difference between getting up at 7 AM and getting up at 5 AM!) and the aforementioned glass of OJ. But, being the same make of plane, everything else is effectively identical and given that it's only a 50-minute hop, I will continue to patronize both.

The one thing that had changed on arrival was that Kota Bharu's old crusty airport building had been retired and we now taxied straight to a jetway in the adjacent new terminal, one of 3 as it happens... which seems slightly optimistic given than KBR currently receives seven (7) flights a day, all of them from Kuala Lumpur! I'm still waiting for a direct flight from SIN or JHB (Johor Bahru) to appear as it would make diving so much more convenient.

Anyway, the old pick-a-taxi-and-haggle method has now been replaced by a coupon taxi system. Unfortunately, it turns out that for our intended destination, the paradise islands of the Perhentians, the taxi guys are in cahoots with one of the dodgier boat operators and blithely sold us a ticket not the Kuala Besut main jetty I asked for, but the "wrong" one at Tok Bali. Grumble. But we got there in one piece, twiddled our thumbs waiting for the next boat, tenderized our rear ends for 45 minutes on the sea journey (boink-boink-boink), and by 2 PM were finally gazing on the white sands, green palms, blue sky and turquoise waters of Perhentian Besar.