End of an adventure

4 November 2004

Boarding the Malaysia Airlines B777 was very quick.  There were only 65 passengers on board, leaving from Cairo for Kuala Lumpur at 0150.  Despite that we left 15 mins late.

Onboard, I recognised a number of the crew.  I had seen them at the pyramids , and immediately thought “They must be Malaysia Airlines crew on our flight”.  Malaysians can be quite recognisable in this part of the world.

During the first meal service, Pat suffered chest pains.  Kim (who is also a flight attendant) alerted the crew and requested oxygen.  The crew handled the situation calmly but they were a little too smiley for a situation like this, I thought.  But Kim said they put the oxygen on a low setting when it should have been on full.  Apart from that, Kim carried on with his dinner and movie in the meantime.

Each of us had a row of five seats tonight.  I lay down and dozed for five hours.  Despite the relatively empty flight, the ventilation on the plane didn’t feel adequate.  While it was cool and there was lots of hissing from the vents above us, we felt sticky between our fingers, armpits and thighpits.

We had an ultra-smooth landing in Kuala Lumpur at 1730 before departing onward to Singapore two hours later.  The short flight on the Airbus A330 was super quiet.  Fiona who is a little deaf at her age could hear the conversations that Kim and I were having onboard and chipped in from time-to-time.

We landed in Singapore at 2025 and overnighted at my step-dad’s place while Pat and Fiona back at Perak Lodge.  Our adventure had ended and we were very pleased to have ben able to give Kim’s parents an adventure through the Levant.

Go top