My midday flight had been “preponed” to 1040 which meant that I left the apartment with my parents at 0815. Traffic was surprisingly easy. With an earlier-than-scheduled departure and good tailwind, the flight to KL landed around 20 minutes early. The Italian pilot made his PA onboard in Malay as well as English; it was a nice touch even though it was scripted and rehearsed.
At KL, I was meant to connect to Tehran today on another ridiculously cheap fare on AirAsia X. But with the Iranian currency crisis, Iranian tourists simply weren’t coming to Malaysia and the route got scrapped (with plenty of notice fortunately). I got a refund and instead got a good fare to Bangalore for tomorrow. Combined with a cheap Indian domestic flight in a few days time, it is also cheap way of getting to North India (as no budget airlines fly there from KL).
So that means I have the day in KL. I bused to KL Sentral to “connect” to the monorail to Tune Hotel. The construction site is still in the way of the two stations so it wasn’t the most convenient walk. I was pleasantly surprised when I got to my hotel’s station at Medan Tuanku. There was a new elevated walkway that took me directly to the hotel. Even better, the hotel had been refurbished. And the earlybird promotional rate was just RM20 plus RM16 for 12h aircon (about NZD10).
After a quick splash in the shower, I took the train to Ampang to look for the Sudanese embassy so I could enquire on their visa application turnaround time (for my trip in February net year). They hadn’t been answering their calls some weeks back but I now realise they had been closed during their shift to new premises.
While I qualify for visa-on-arrival at Sudan’s Khartoum airport, the IATA database which check-in staff use (to determine whether to carry someone) has a longstanding error saying that I qualify for it when arriving directly from Malaysia. With an 11h transit in Riyadh, it is safer to hold a visa in case airline staff interpret things unfavourably. In any case, an embassy-issued visa (RM212) is much cheaper than one on arrival (USD100/RM320).
There was enough time for me to live out my routine in KL, which is a blind massage then dinner at Pavilion. It was only interrupted with a short detour into Uniqlo for some shopping. The pressure point oil-less massage was very strong and simply superb, especially considering the masseur is currently fasting being the month of Ramadhan.