In Kuala Lupur, we take the bus to the airport at half past eight. It's not that busy for a Saturday evening and we're at the airport in an hour. Checking in our suitcases, leaving the country and the security check are all done in 30 minutes. So we have plenty of time before our flight with air China departs on time at 00:30. We bought OVO chocolate... In Kuala Lupur at the airport, how crazy is that? It's a not-so-fresh aircraft with 3+3 seating. The entertainment system takes some getting used to, but it's a night flight. Luckily we're well dressed - it's pretty fresh in the aircraft. Luckily we have the noise-cancelling headphones, which is really great.
We landed on time and the immigration process went without any major obstacles. We had already done the immigration online, only the fingerprinting was a bit difficult because the disc of the reader had so many prints on it. but what the heck, we're in. The airport is really huge, you can cover a lot of ground, it's 5 times bigger than Zurich, about 42 square kilometres. Then customs and we are where our driver is supposed to be. And now it gets a bit, well, let's say bumpy. The driver who is supposed to pick us up is not there. The e-sim we bought doesn't work. We only have contact with the travel agency with an internet connection, so we buy an e-sim and activate it, with a lot of paperwork, we are back online, of course the VPN doesn't work either, so neither Google nor WhatsApp. We can reach our tour guide via WEchat, the driver is stuck in a traffic jam and needs another 40 minutes, which turns into more than an hour. We can check into our room at the hotel before noon and don't have to wait until 2pm. So now we have arrived.
As we are still only half connected to the outside world, we go to a restaurant very close to the hotel, there is something like a hotpot.
In the end we come out well-fed and it was actually quite good by Chinese standards, a little too expensive but quite ok.
After what felt like 100 messages with Holafly (the provider of the SIM card), we get a new QR code and are then reconnected to the outside world and can bypass the great firewall of China, which means Google, Whatsapp, ChatGPT and much more are now working again. So we stay in touch.
Now it's time for a break before we make our way into the city.
The pedestrian zone of Wangfujing is really impressive, it has so many western shops, as well as Asian brands that we don't know. Especially Omega with the tower clock and a Läderach chocolate shop.
But first we have to eat something, the dumpling shop is still turning us on. So we go in and order Dupling's. We order dumplings with pork and beef, one fried and one steamed. They were very good, even the sauce that came with them.
The Omega building has a huge screen that goes round the corner and can do 3D projections. The quality is unbelievable.
And a few more impressions from the run back.
