\nAnd I bumped into Xiamen Airline\u2019s offer of round trip to Kuala Lumpur from Hangzhou at a little bit more than CNY1300, with a stop at Fuzhou(\u798f\u5dde). The only restriction was that I needed make the return trip on the morning of Chinese New Year\u2019s Day, which wasn\u2019t that much problem for me
Then, since my last and only exam of the semester was on Jan 12th, and 2 weeks of Malaysia seemed too much for me, I decided to arrange the visit of another country in Southeast Asia during that time. The decision was easy, as Kuala Lumpur is the headquarter of Asia\u2019s budget airlines, and Cambodia, the bureaucracy and corruption in which resulted in unusually high air fares and fees compared with its neighboring countries, is just a short strait away from Malaysia. So my plan of the day was to take Xiamen Airlines flight MF877 to Kuala Lumpur on January 14th, spend the night in Kuala Lumpur Airport <\/p>\n Well, under the incentive of local government subsidy, Xiamen Airlines arranged flight MF877 with a stopover (rather than proper transition) in Fuzhou(\u798f\u5dde), which was common practice among Chinese carriers. This meant that the check-in counter for the flight was secludedly located in the passenger terminal, away from Xiamen Airline\u2019s main counters, and opened only two hours in advance. <\/br>Memory Usage Warning<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Windows Display Screen Rebooting<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Unfortunately, since I was among the first people at the counter to check-in (and Xiamen Airlines didn\u2019t offer online check-in for its international flights, for which their check-in clerks were asking everyone about seat preferences), I was assigned a seat just over the wings, which meant the wonderful views of God\u2019s earth that I so often enjoyed was blocked most of the flight. <\/br>Hangzhou Airport Domestic Terminal Interior<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Hangzhou Airport International Terminal Interior<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Xiamen Airlines B738 (B-5789)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Apron<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n After securities, we were led to a not-so-often-used waiting room in the mezzanine floor of the airport\u2019s international terminal. Hell, if not for this, I wouldn\u2019t notice it ever existed.<\/p>\n <\/br>Waiting Room in Mezzanine Floor at Hangzhou Airport International Terminal<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Ground Floor of Hangzhou Airport International Departure<\/br>I had no idea I would be boarding my flight to Doha there in just two weeks.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Boarding Pass<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Boarding Flight to Fuzhou(\u798f\u5dde)<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Cargo Apron of Hangzhou Airport<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n During the first leg of the journey, the cabin was half empty. The overhead screens were playing boring documentaries of penguins, which nobody watched. <\/p>\n <\/br>Dinner on First Leg of Flight<\/br>Very basic as this\u2019s a rather short flight.<\/span><\/p><\/div>\n I was rather surprised to find that there were meal services on this flight. Yes, this was a 300-mile one-hour short hop regulated by the infamous Chinese aviation authorities, who insisted that safety-belt-sign to be switched off not until 15 minutes into flight, who mandated cabin service to halt 30 minutes before landing, who didn\u2019t have the guts to allow cell phones in flight and who lacked the brains to manage its airspace traffic.<\/p>\n <\/br>Sea of Clouds Reflecting Setting Sun<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Fuzhou(\u798f\u5dde) Airport Terminal upon Landing<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Xiamen Airlines B738 (B-5846)<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n There was a change of cabin crew at Fuzhou(\u798f\u5dde), which I didn\u2019t quite understand why as the plane was obviously flying the return trip daily, and why not so for the crew?<\/p>\n Then, given the terrible design of Fuzhou(\u798f\u5dde) Airport (and presumably every other Chinese airport), it\u2019s passport control and security again. <\/p>\n <\/br>My Plane to Kuala Lumpur (B-6490) At the Gate<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Xiamen Airlines B788 (B-2768) Arriving<\/br>From Sydney.<\/span><\/p><\/div> <\/br>Flying around Fuzhou(\u798f\u5dde) Airport after Takeoff<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Dinner on Second Leg of Flight<\/br>Chicken Noodle<\/span><\/p><\/div><\/p>\n After dinner and knowing I would spend the night in Kuala Lumpur Airport, I tried to catch some sleep. However, the entertainment pads in the cabin were playing some tasteless Chinese movies that all had been Amogood<\/a>ed, so I barely caught any sleep even with my earplugs on. <\/br>Lights of South Kuala Lumpur<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Lights of Kuala Lumpur in the Distance<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Planes Parked<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Kuala Lumpur Airport Satellite Building<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Lanterns in Kuala Lumpur Airport Celebrating Chinese New Year<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Sadly, I encountered some visa issue at the immigration, as the immigration officer insisted that I couldn\u2019t apply for their transit-without-visa since I already had a single-entry visa, which meant I would have to apply for another visa for my proper visit of the country next week. No, this rule was nowhere to be found in any website they have.<\/p>\n After that, I took the next and last KLIA express to terminal 2 for my next morning\u2019s flight to Phnom Penh, while looking for a way to apply a e-Visa online, which didn\u2019t turn out to be that easy.<\/p>\n <\/br>KLIA Express<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Stores at KLIA2<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Departure Hall of KLIA2<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n So that\u2019s my first impression of Malaysia, a country under the illusion of its better self, a country with immigration officers pointing to rules that only they have knowledge of, a country that presents to the world its friendly approachable T-stage fashion ladies, while it\u2019s actually filled with Niqab ladies that could turn into machete-wielding gangsters upon any body contact.<\/p>\n Sadly, not long after that, I found the e-Visa website windowmalaysia.my could only be accessed with a Chinese IP, so I was remote-controlling my college friends back at home to upload my visa documents. Luckily, since they were college students, most of them were still awake at 2am.<\/p>\n Then there were these awful chairs at KLIA2. I guessed their curved design was intended to fit the human body better, however, it offered little support for the upper spine, which made it impossible to sit back and relax on these chairs. Also, since it\u2019s curved, it\u2019s not possible to make a bed with several of these chairs and relax. Basically, they were useless, and I was wondering who gave Kuala Lumpur Airport so much credit on sleep-friendliness. Oh, of course, since it\u2019s early in the morning and it\u2019s in Malaysia, the check-in counters at AirAsia was expectedly unorganized as hell. But since they somehow got my bag to Phnom Penh successfully, I guess I should be well satisfied.<\/p>\n <\/br>Awful Chairs at KLIA2<\/p><\/div> <\/br>Boarding Pass<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n Then there\u2019s the AirAsia flight to Phnom Penh, where the only duty for the cabin crew was pushing the doors of overhead storage bins to make sure they close before flight (I do guess their boarding processes would be greatly expedited if they give everyone small amounts of free checked baggage, and in this manner they could make more money by flying the aircraft more often. I\u2019m not saying this because I paid for checked bags and I felt betrayed.), and selling everything they could possibly conceive during flight. <\/br>Phnom Penh Airport<\/p><\/div> It was a normal border entry at Phnom Penh Airport, by “normal” I mean no tips or bribes implicitly demanded by the officers, which was amazing in this nation full of corruption.<\/p>\n <\/br>Phnom Penh Airport Baggage Claim<\/p><\/div> Winter of 2016. As an escape to the grueling task of grad school application, I searched online for destinations (and air tickets) that could be my winter getaway. It\u2019s a luxurious 5-week holiday that could possibly be my… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,201,2],"tags":[202,180,215,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2310"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3178,"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2310\/revisions\/3178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.huangyizhou.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}trying to get some sleep<\/del>, and take Air Asia Flight AK536 on the next morning to Cambodia\u2019s capital, Phnom Penh. <\/p>\n
\nSo while waiting for the counters to open, I watched the entertainment of the information screens (with Microsoft\u2019s Windows operating system) running out of memory and rebooting.<\/p>\n![\"Memory](\"https:\/\/huangyizhou.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com\/20170114\/IMG_20170114_143555%20copy.jpg\")
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\nWhen I\u2019ve done my check-in, more interesting things follow as we were instructed to sit together and wait, until “someone would lead us through security to the waiting area and the gate”. Well, this wasn\u2019t the best customer experience, but for government subsidy the airlines seemed willing to do anything possible.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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\nUnlike the first leg, the plane was almost full during the second leg of the journey.
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\nAfter that, it was a uneventful landing.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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\nWell, grin and bear it, it\u2019s Malaysia, they couldn\u2019t even design a proper website for visa-free transits, guess I shouldn\u2019t put expectation on the chairs.<\/p>\n<\/a>
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\nA family wanted to sit together so I unwilling changed seats with them, there went the photos along the way, but never mind because amazing, I managed to sleep most of the way, expect when I scribbled through the immigration cards.<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nAmazingly, I saw an AirBerlin A320 in that picture and at the airport, guess that’s some charter flight?<\/p>\n<\/a>
\nEND<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"