After a great week with our friends Travis and Carissa in Brisbane and the weekend canoeing trip near Ipswitch, we rented a nice campervan and drove it down to the Gold Coast, where we now sit parked bu a reservoir after cooking up hamburgers, salad, tofu and kidney beans. Ok, Ok, Joanne did all the cooking, and I did all the eating!
"Sorry, we're closed", they said as I arrived at the check in counter for our flight from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to the Gold Coast, Australia. Oh no you're not, I thought to myself - not after what we just went through to get here...
Our well planned morning started with a leisurely breakfast, a stroll over to the monorail and its ride offered us our final tour of the Kuala Lumpur from its high perch. From KL Sentral, a nice high speed train whisked us to KLIA airport, 25 mins away.
At KLIA, we admire the architecture and start to look for our check in counter. Except we can't find it anywhere.
We find that the counter lays 25 km away at another airport - KLIA LCC! Who names two airports so similarly? Maybe they enjoy seeing the bulging eyes of the panicked passengers as they realize they are going to miss their flight.
Quickly - an ATM for more cash, a taxi counter, and in a jog, we hop in to a waiting cab, bypassing the taxi driver's offer to put our bags in the trunk - let's go! Our flight leaves in just over an hour!! But we should have realized we were screwed when the dispatcher was signaling to the guy giving him directions. But it should have smacked us in the face when he turned into a dead end street and giggled a nervous giggle, saying "Oooooooh!?". After five minutes more slow and hesitant driving, we ended up back here we started. Oh No!
Heated discussion, frantic GPS look ups on my Blackberry and repeated instance that he call someone who had a clue where this other airport is, and finally, as if something had snapped back into place, he says - "Oh, you want to go to KLIA-LCC!, yes I know" and proceeded to whisk us directly there, far above the speed limit with his new found confidence.
We get to the airport only to hear the fated "Sorry, we're closed" at the check in counter. Thankfully, with no bags to check we could still catch the flight if we hurry. We get assigned the back most two seats on the A330. There's enough of a delay that I was able to write this from seat 47K before....
Lift off!!