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We only had to check out at 12pm, so took the opportunity to lie in as late as possible. Edd had gone to get me a coffee from the pantry early on (my hero) but we hadn’t bothered getting out of bed until after 10am. I then got up and had a shower, not feeling very well, so hoping a hot wash would sort me out.
We packed our bags again set off downstairs to book a taxi to the airport; we were originally going to leave our bags at the hotel and go for a wonder round the city, as our flight was only in the evening, but we had seen that Kuala Lumpur airport looked quite interesting when we’d landed there a few days earlier, so decided to book the taxi for immidiatly and go and check it out. The woman behind the desk in the morning was not as jacked up as the woman that worked in the afternoon: the morning woman was not in possession of outside of the box thinking. We were unsure if she was in possession of inside of the box thinking; we also considered the possibility of there not being a box. She could not book a taxi for a reasonable fare and did not have the ability to think of Googling other possibilities.
In the end, Edd went in search of a taxi on the street; Cip and I waited in the hotel for him and he came back 15 minutes later with a taxi for a good fare. We climbed in and got comfortable for the hour and a half journey to the air port.
We were dropped off at departures and our driver went and fetched us a trolley; Edd and Cip packed it with all of our bags and we set off on a wander around the airport.
It turned out the shops were horrendous and there was literally no where to sit; I’d taken up residence on top of the bags on the trolley, shortly after our wandering began; poor Edd was pushing me and our bags around the airport and was getting tired. He then found a carpeted spot by a plug point and we set up our ‘power station’ (the multi plug with USB multi port adapters) to charge everything. We all logged into the airport wifi and laid there for 4 hours, the boys going for a walk for a little while at one point and then I went in search of a bathroom to change into my long pants as I was getting cold.
It came time to check in and we asked around for the quickest way to drop our bags off - we’d already checked in online, so did not need to go through the whole process. The check in queues were also not moving, if there was any way we could get around standing in one, we’d figure it out.
Finally we were told to stand in queues further down in the building, which we happily did. Our bags were dropped off, we were through security and on the other side: new adventures awaited us.
We still had a bit of money left over and found a pastry shop that was still open, or at least it looked like it. We asked about ordering pizza’s and the lady behind the till promptly turned the advertisement screens off. Apparently they were ‘out of stock.’ We then asked about the lasagnes that were on another advertisement board and she promptly turned those off as well. All we could order was a very limited amount of cakes and pastries on the shelves, which we did; we managed to get rid of most of the bit of money we had left over between the 3 of us and had a mini feast of food which we knew would contribute to massive amounts of indigestion later. We then figured out that they actually closed at 9pm and were too lazy to cook any of the food that was on the boards. Other customers had arrived after us and they suddenly had an influx of people in their store, wanting to order things; again we thought about the lack of customer service compared to where we were from and what we were used to. It was karma that they were still serving customers after their store was supposed to be closed.
We boarded our flight promptly and took off 10 minutes after schedule. We were only in the air for 20 minutes when the captain came over the speakers informing us of our descent; it was a 45 minute flight from KL to Singapore, but felt like about 10 minutes.
The place was still going too fast when we landed in Singapore and we were running out of runway, fast... The captain did what can only be described as an emergency stop: airplane style. Everyone on board nearly face planted the seat in front of them and we all looked around at each other wondering if we were still alive or if this was heaven. The only person with a different opinion on the matter was a 2 year old girl sitting on the seats opposite us, she thought the whole affair was absolutely hilarious!
We disembarked and had decision to make: do we go through immigration or do we stay air side, leaving our bags to be picked up by lost and found and go through in the morning instead. We asked the advise of a woman behind the counter of another airline. She did not listen to our explanation, but instead repeated herself over and over and over about having to clear immigration immediately. The airport website said otherwise.
We decided to chance it and go through immigration. Our cards asked us how many days we were planning on being in Singapore: 0 days; it was 11 hours to be exact, but we didn’t have an hour option.
By the time we’d gone through immigration (Edd won the immigration game, getting through quicker than me again, my woman was away with the fairies, I was yet to win the game during our trip, he always managed to pick the faster queues), collected our bags and gone through to the departure lounge, it was 11.30pm. We said goodbye to Cip, as he was taking a taxi into Singapore for the night, staying there the next day and then flying out the next evening; we had to wait until we could check into our Jetstar flight that left at 10.45am the next day. Edd was sad to see him go, he’d had a great time with some male company, having been surrounded by either just me other other female travellers for most of our trip.
We then went in search of Jetstar customer services, wanting to find out if we could check in super early and go through to airside and grab a couch there to sleep on.
We were told we could check in early at their customer services, but when we got to the counters, were told we could only check in at the earliest, 4am the next morning. (4.5 hours time). The women that worked for Jetstar on the graveyard shift looked like they’d been plucked from the Roald Dahl book about witches; I was half expecting them to take their shoes off and whip out their toeless feet.
We had a wander round and then found a spot upstairs in the food court, it was dead as everything was closed and the corner we’d found had nothing that would attract people - except maybe the view into the airside miniature city that we couldn’t get access to. We saw people sleeping on comfy couches and then looked around at the lack of seating we had available. There were wooden chairs with metal arm rests to sit on, but they had low backs and were not designed for napping, quick the opposite, in fact.
Edd unpacked his vacuum packed clothes and laid them out on the floor; he then got his cotton sleeping back liner out and climbed inside. We had positioned ourselves behind a square concrete pillar and were out of sight of anyone who walked past, unless they decided to torture themselves and look into the airside part of the airport. I was reluctant to unpack my bag as it was a mission to repack, so slept on my shorts for 2 hours. By 2.15am, I was positively frozen, I gave in and unpacked my vacuum packed clothes that were at the top of my bag, it had my sleeping bag liner in it (miraculously) so I got that out and covered myself with it after climbing on top of my clothes. It stopped my body from touching the floor tiles and dropping my core body temperature enough that we napped/dozed until 5.30am..
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