The idea of going for a vacation abroad seemed a distant possibility while
i was working, there were 2 major reasons, firstly the hesitation of asking for a long leave from a boss or guilt of being on vacation while your team members are slogging away or fear of having to grant similar vacation to your team when they demand and not being in a position to say NO. Secondly, there was this thought of clearing off the home loan soon and retiring as that was my only motivation to go to work everyday(when I look back I feel I had postponed living life for some other day in future :))or even the thought of combining vacation with an official trip abroad which never materialized but I always hoped for it. All these miraculously vanished a few months after I quit working, the former for obvious reasons but the latter still makes me wonder, all money related tensions disappeared in thin air, Sudhir keeps pulling my leg saying its when someone Else's money you are spending its a cakewalk :) Anyways the bottom-line is we finally planned our first vacation abroad, Malaysia,Thailand and Singapore were obvious choices as these are most affordable among the host of other choices available in the market, deeper your pockets run more exotic locations you can choose :) however Malaysia wasn't bad either
as I discovered in 10 marvelous days I spent there.
After a lot of discussion and debate Sudhir won the argument of visiting only 1 country rather than placing a tick mark against 3 in one go and returning home
with lots of souvenirs and very less memories. He did all the research on the internet and zeroed upon Malaysia, Singapore the concrete jungle was ruled for this trip as well as for any future visits and Thailand postponed for future. A school buddy of mine Brunda who herself was doing her bit of research for
vacations abroad gave me valuable pointers and inspired us to do all the booking on our own rather than go for standard package trips, she advocated pros and cons of package versus self custom made tour in her true lawyer ways and argument won in the favor of latter.
I have to be honest here and give all due credit to Sudhir for his research
on choosing places, modes of transports, hotels booking etc., as all i did was FIFO(first in first out) my bottomless pit of college assignments and till the previous day of travel was formatting my report, running around to take printouts and spiral bind it.
Again after a lot of haggling over number of bags to carry, size of bags, number of clothes and footwear allowed, we settled somewhere midway between my idea of carrying the huge bags we usually take on site and his of traveling light- only with backpacks, we took 2 cabin bags which we obviously checked in and 2 backpacks,no fancy handbags to go with clothes :)
The Air Asia flight we took was no frills attached flight, you have to pay
for everything from water to food and blankets, pillows etc., There is no entertainment on board other than books you carry or their in-house magazine,never did I feel 4 hours passing more slowly than those I experienced on that flight, however you get what you pay for and its fair enough given the low fares they offer. We took the 5:30 PM flight from Bangalore and landed in KL around midnight given that they are 2.5 hours ahead. We didn't have any foreign exchange on us when we landed other than ones Sudhir was collecting
on the flight, by giving away 500 rupee notes for every 200ml of water bought,as the change was given only in ringgits(rounded) :), after landing, I went to one of the counters to exchange the rupees we were carrying (leaving out what we would require to pay the cab on our return) and few USD we had to gather money for the cab to hotel,such was our preparedness, had I been traveling alone, i would have planned my every move from the time i stepped into the flight till i safely landed in hotel, including paying for taxi and advance to the hotel, trying to ensure I dont get into sticky situations,but this time I was most relaxed, there was someone else to worry about all the logistics. Sudhir happily found another ATM to draw ringgits, i would have died worrying about
exchange rate and humongous service charges that would be levied by
bank on my return :) Its so true that you worry most about something when you have it and when its gone you dont miss it or only for sometime and then move on.
So just as we got into taxi and moved onto freeway, Sudhir told
me there is bollywood music going on in radio, while I was busy scrutinizing and going high ogling the surroundings, our cab driver told us its the local tamil channel which plays this :) I somehow had a feeling the place would be
all hype and less substance, their ad campaign, Malaysia Truly Asia
would turn out to be a Farce, the news about Beijing hiding all slums behind huge billboards during Olympics flashed before my eyes and I was expecting a similar setup here.
But I was pretty impressed on the highway ride with the neat roads, residential areas, lane discipline, as it felt pretty much driving in a developed country.
We stayed in Butik Bintang area or CBD of KL, as we approached at about 2:00 am we were surprised to see shacks all brightly lit up and serving customers,
though not many but still a lot of people on the road. Hotel Alpha Genesis
was good, room very beautiful though I had an experience which changed my opinion on the last day after checking out which I am going to say in my Day 10 experience :) Till then, sit back and enjoy!!! :)
