Kuala Lumpur

 

Yesterday I flew to Kuala Lumpur and it was by far one of the most difficult jet lag experiences I’ve ever had. The first leg from Zurich to Singapore departed at noon (6pm in KL), so it was nearly impossible to get any sleep during the twelve hour flight. When we arrived to Singapore at 6am (midnight in Switzerland) I felt like it was still Saturday.

There was one positive to the flight, though – my first trip on an Airbus A380. The plane was absolutely massive, and basically looked like it ate another jumbo jet. I got a kick out of the boarding diagram (pictured). Given the size of the plane, there were two separate boarding gates and the various sections of the diagram were color-coded to streamline the boarding process.

My seat was in the front row on the second floor – directly above the 1st class “suites.” On the other side of the “wall” in front of me, was a full 10 foot wide staircase down to the first level. It almost didn’t feel like you were even on a plane. But the claim that I heard regarding not feeling any turbulence on an A380 definitely didn’t hold up. We had a pretty rough ride for an extended period of time.

After arriving in Singapore I didn’t have a lot of time to make my connecting flight to KL. Fortunately, however, Singapore’s Changi airport is one of the most user-friendly that I’ve ever experienced and I managed to borderline sleepwalk myself to the departure gate with time to spare.

The flight from Singapore to KL only took about an hour, so there wasn’t sufficient time to catch up on any sleep. I stared at one of those airplane magazine maps that shows all the routes the airline flys thinking that might help put me to sleep but it unfortunately didn’t.

Upon departing the airport, the humidity was pretty brutal and it was only 9am. The drive to KL basically consisted of an endless forest of palm trees, as palm oil seems to be one of the country’s major exports.

Once I got to the hotel I absolutely crashed. My plan was to immediately do some sightseeing, but that got revised and I proceeded to sleep all afternoon. And I finally awoke solely because of a late-afternoon thunderstorm with some of the hardest rain that I’d ever seen.

The rain finally stopped so decided to go out for a bit to get some dinner. The hotel concierge directed me to a restaurant that is part of the part of the Petronas Towers complex. For those who remember the Sean Connery / Catherine Zeta-Jones film Entrapement, you should recognize the towers and the bridge that connects them.