HKG - KUL - KOS or... Go South, old man, where the sun's a little warmer

12:45 Hong Kong time
Time to check out 

I have 2 hours of time to kill, so I decide to take hang around the hotel's street for a bit....

I LIKE it here ;-)

 

No wonder, this neighbourhood literally has my name written all over it ;-)

... and then to take the Ding-Ding to Central.

content Ding-Ding rider 

14:10
I'm on the airport express.  Having bought a return ticket at the airport makes things easy.

15:00 Only when I'm sitting in some Cafe in Terminal 1 of HK Airport do I realize that my plane actually leaves from Terminal 2.  Oops, did it again.  

What can one say about Hong Kong food?  Definitely NOT kosher, LOL

Walk over to Terminal 2.  Go through immigration & security (I already have my boarding pass), take the train back to the gates at Terminal 1 (WTF?).  This is when I see that the flight that was scheduled for 18:15 now might leave at 19:50. That's 3.5 hours from NOW !

GREAT, just what I needed.   Where do I sleep for that long??????

I end up passing out on one of the VERY FEW 3-element benches for a while.
When I get to the gate at 19:00, departure has been delayed until 20:10 and there is still no plane there at 19:30.  GRRRRREAT !

The plane finally takes off at 21:00

and lands in Kuala Lumpur at 0:35. Yup AFTER midnight. 

The layout  of KLIA2 is bloody confusing.   But my first cigarette lets me appreciate the warmth that comes with being only 3 degrees from the equator ;-)
I decide NOT to take a taxi to my hotel in the outskirts, and after one failed attempt get a room at KLIA2 Tune hotel for 400 Ringit.  Sleep I need !

Despite being utterly exhausted when I got to the hotel, I can't sleep more than a few hours.

Tune Hotel KLIA2 (it's so moist that the camera lens fogged up !)

Checking my e-mail, I realize that I got a response from Joanna (Seattle Joanna, not Paris Joanna, i.e. my beach bungalow neighbour in July ) and have to laugh when I realize that we will spend the next week on two different dream islands, one in Vietnam and one in Cambodia, with only 96 km separating our chosen beaches.

 At 4 am I head back to the terminal building to exchange my left over Philippine Pesos for Malaysian Ringgit. 

I also buy a can of Carlsberg and some strange baked raisin thingie in the market in the terminal which shortly afterwards help to take the edge off.

Then it's time to hit the hotel's Breakfast Buffet for MR 32.

A Google Images Sambal sauce

The coffee is far from HOT, but Rosemary Chicken, Boiled Egg, Fried Noodles, and a HUGE dollop of SPICY Sambal sauce (also throw in a handful of dried tiny fish) help me to commence this day with a smoking-tires start ;-)  The same price that I paid for the Hong Kong breakfast buffet but literally a world of difference.  The second course has Sambal Sauce, chicken sausage & freshly roasted peanuts as its main ingredients.  I'm finally back in a part of the world where peanuts still carry their thin inner shell and have flavour ;-)

This breakfast alone makes me reconsider my previous decision NOT to return to Malaysia on this trip !  I could get used to eating like this every morning, LOL.

I finally sleep another hour and have another small breakfast at 8 am.

After checkout at 10:30 I walk over the 5 minutes to KLIA2 and order a Spicy Ramyun and a glass of wine. 

I really only wanted the spicy broth because that wakes me up again fabulously ;-)

Since I saw that my flight is delayed by more than half an hour, I might as well have another smoke in the fabulous outside smoking area.

As I had feared, there is NO smoking area behind the security system of the L gates at KLIA2.   Asian airports used to be a smoker's paradise.  But this is being slowly eroded.  I make a submission to Airportsmokers.com (Yes, there is a web-site that tells you which airport has smoking areas and where they are ;-)

FINALLY on the plane.  

A line-up of taxiing planes

finally airborne !

Somewhere over Malaysia 

You have to give it to Air Asia. 

 Service is glacial, but once you have your Chicken Vindaloo Biryani you won't regret the 15 MR you paid for it.

Picture from the menu.  The actual thing is not quite this pretty but tastes GREAT !

My camera temporarily goes on the Fritz while I'm taking pictures of Islands off the West coast of the Malaysian peninsula (it might be Thailand already judging by the above map).

To anyone who reads this, her is a tip: NEVER fly into Sihanoukville from abroad.  It takes the immigration staff more than 1 whole hour to process the passengers of a small Airbus.  It's appalling how long it takes them to process that plane.

A taxi ride from the airport to Sihanoukville is US$ 20.   Steep but not too steep for the half-hour ride. And I can feel the relief and joy of having secured the LAST available fare in both the face and the excited blabbering (in excellent English) of the taxi driver after the taxi vendor walks out to hand over to him the money and the LAST customer of this flight.   These guys are LUCKY to have one fare a day, so driving to the airport and NOT getting one is hardship.

A glass of white wine at 'The Turk' is US$ 4.  Outrageous really. But can you still get one for that price in North America? With this view? LOL

A glass of Rose at Laluna 50 meters down this path already is down to US$ 3.  The initially stressed proprietress quickly warms to me after a few Arkoons. She also tells me where to buy wine to take to Koh Rong tomorrow.

After a brief rest in my room, I back to the main stretch.   The BUVA FERRY return ticket to Sok San costs me US$ 27.

The Mini Market almost next door has a HUGE selection of wines. I walk away with 3 bottles for US$ 30.

17:30
Sitting in Laluna restaurant, having just ordered Thai scallops with rice. 

And I again realize how precious My Beach really is.  This former paradise here in Sihanoukville is going downhill fast, just as happened to Nha Trang a while ago and is happening to Da Nang right now. 

So I book a ticket.  Grandma will have me for my birthday and for Christmas.

17:40
It's been raining for a while, which was just now joined by lightning. Seconds later the power goes out.
Ah well.  Even though the WiFi is down, the laptop will run for a short while longer.  This also gives me a good opportunity to take a few shots of the ocean.

The power is back 11 minutes later ;-)  Could be a generator though, since all the WiFi networks are still down......  

It is a generator!

Hitting the bed at 6 pm no longer sounds all that bad after I realize that it's already 7 pm in Kuala Lumpur ;-)

The return of mains power announces itself when BRIGHT ligths and a right-in-my-face fan wake me briefly at 7 pm.