The Wrong Way To Travel

This specific blog is a long time coming; sorry I’ve been absent for some time, but I image the few of you who glance of my literary equivalent of a big mac and fries may be quite pleased. I digress, this blog should dictate the adventurous, and frustrating, way Emily and I got out of Malaysia, into Bali, back to Malaysia, and did it all with no reservations...literally. (I thought that sounded good because “No Reservations” is a show on the Travel Channel)

It’s May 20th, a Thursday if my mind serves me right. I’m having a farewell lunch with the people from the SPCA, we go outside for some tea and I get a text from Emily...”Temporary release agreement has been signed, let’s get the hell out of here”. Emily comes home, we start packing, take a break for a group dinner together..some beers on top of our favorite hangout, the Discovery Cafe, say our farewells, and we go back to finish the tedious job of packing up six months of acquired souvenirs and smelly clothes. At 10:00pm we depart Melaka, Malaysia for Kuala Lumpur with no travel plans what-so-ever. We arrive at the Putrajaya Marriott at 11:45pm and start to plan our trip to Bali. We look up flights and realize that in order to maximize time in Bali we should take the early flight; however, we can’t book online for Air Asia because we have U.S. credit cards. Of course, the discount airline that everyone in S.E. Asia uses won’t use our credit cards...that’s how it works, right? We decide to hit the sack, catch a few hours of sleep before we wake up at 5:00 am

5:00am comes, we hit the showers, pack a bag for Bali, and book a hotel on Agoda.com. Upon leaving we had to log back into our e-mail account to get verification for our hotel. Wouldn’t you know it, they blocked the payment and confirmation because they needed to verify we were indeed using our credit card. Only problem is that to verify we had to fax in a copy of our passport, credit card, and a DNA sample of a unicorn. We’re running out of time so we leave the rest of our luggage, grab a pre-arranged taxi...the only thing that actually went as planned, and headed to the LCC (Low Cost Carrier) terminal. If you could only imagine...Kuala Lumpur has two airports, rather, two terminals (LCC and KLIA), both of which are 1.5 hrs outside of KL and about 45 minutes from Putrajaya, where we were. Why the F would you build an airport that far outside of a city? It’s like building RDU Intl airport in Virginia. It makes about as much sense as electing someone with no experience to be President of the U.S.....wait a minute...!

Here is where the fun begins. We arrive at the LCC, which is by far the WORST airport/terminal in the world; nothing works and the people that are supposed to work, barely do that. We quickly find the Air Asia ticket counter and Emily hops in line. We’re assuming they will only take cash because that’s just the way people roll down there. I find a row of 3 ATM’s, one has a line because the ATM on the right just ate someone’s card. The ATM in the middle is out of service. There are a few banks not far away, I sprint to them, only to find out their ATM’s are also out of order. Like I said, finding something that works here is about as challenging as getting Sarah Palin to pull her head out of her ass. I finally stand in the line of the one working ATM, I get up to it and it won’t let me pull out enough money. I went and told Emily and she said she just saw them take a credit card, but that I should get more cash just in case. So, I sprint back to the ATM...stand in line, again, get more cash and run back. We get to the counter, get the flight and give them the credit card. Oh Wait...they don’t take U.S. credit cards. They guy told both Emily and I that our platinum cards were declined even though we had a zero balance. Emily told him that his company sucked and in so many words that he did too, and they needed to fix their payment system; meanwhile, I was dripping sweat onto the counter and counting out 1,800 RM in increments of 50. We paid for our flight, straight cash, because that’s what Randy Moss would do right? Finally we get up to the counter, and Air Asia being as slow as Sarah Palin on a geography test, can’t seem to check people in. Fortunately they opened up a line just for people getting on the Bali flight.

We’re on the flight...taking a sigh of relief, but unfortunately Emily has to finish a report for the technically challenged engineers and managers as (insert Malaysian Refinery). Not more than 5 minutes into the flight a child starts screaming, it keeps screaming, and it doesn’t stop until we’re circling Bali 3hrs later. You should be able to check screaming babies to a lower baggage hold...I know, I know...that’s cruel and insensitive but the hold would be pressurized and temperature controlled. When you’re rolling on 3hrs of sleep, on a tiny plane...a persistent high pitched, ear shattering scream for three hours is enough to make most people question the morality of such an idea. Hell, I'd rather watch an episode of Jersey Shore than sit through that again. Maybe the CIA could use it as a replacement for water boarding. For now on I WILL carry ear plugs with me on flights; i’ve learned my lesson...you win this one infant!

The last trick is getting into Bali, we get our luggage, get the visa on arrival for $25 US (why not other currency...I don’t know) and we step outside and realize we don’t have a place to stay; I hate when that happens. The reason we didn’t book a room while we were at the airport in KL is because the useless LCC terminal doesn’t have those...they have three coffee shops, but no travel agents. Why would you need a travel agent at an airport? Fortunately for us, there were several travel agents right outside the airport and we booked a sweet villa in Seminayak with a tacked on fee, of course. We hoped in a taxi and headed off. We;re finally in Bali and ready to relax a while, if only Emily didn’t stay up ALL night working on that 25 page report, which she later realized...the managers didn’t even read. I told you those people at (insert Malaysian Refinery) were “special”. After that, the time was awesome and we had a blast; fortunately, we didn’t have to incur these shenanigans getting back to Malaysia. For a later story, I’ll tell you how F-ed up our trip back to Chicago was.

So that’s how we arrived at an airport, no flight, no hotel, no sleep, and ended up in Bali, Indonesia 5hrs later with a private pool and a scooter rental shop right down the street.