It's
our last day in Langkawi, and the day before we head home, and I
realise I've made an inconvenient miscalculation in the planning.
I've booked the latest flight of the day out of Langkawi in order to
give us, in effect, an extra day here. But what I didn't count on was
that check-out time of the hotel is 12 noon and we'll have 6 or 7
hours to kill before our flight. We don't have car, don't really have
time to visit anything and our luggage needs to be stored somewhere.
And where do you freshen up before the flight.
It
seems we've either got very early morning flights or late ones and
either way it's inconvenient. I call Malaysia Airlines and ask if we
can catch the 3:40pm flight out of Langkawi... sure they say... for
an extra 300 ringit. That's what the original flight costs! So me
accept the reality that we are gonna have to wait in the hotel bar
for 5 hours and at least we'll have somewhere for the bags and we can
keep relatively cool. But we ask Reception about a late check-out and
they graciously let us have the chalet until 3pm without any
additional cost. Loyalty does count sometimes.
So
we stay cool and watch a little TV before packing and checking out at
3. We grab a taxi to the airport and have a coffee and muffin and Liz
does some shopping... it's all duty free here but we're not gonna
carry bags of booze and other stuff down to KL.
We
arrive at KLIA right on 8:30 and I message Ben and Rahmat who have
planned to meet up with us for a late dinner. Together with Zol (who
has the flu but makes the effort to be there because he said he
would), all have travelled a couple of hours to be here on our last
night and we really appreciate the efforts they make to see us off
before we leave.
I
haven't seen Ben for the 3 months he's been here so it's great to
catch up with him even though he's heading home on Saturday. The
others soon arrive and we grab a couple of tables in the food court
and Ben orders some Malaysian dishes for us. As usual with this
crowd, there are lots of laughs and bagging each other, notably Zol
who has bought along his Nikon D1... Ben and Rahmat are Canon men and
I'm a recent convert to Canon but my main cameras are my Panasonics.
I think the other guys secretly think they are toys but they have
paid for themselves in the prizes have won with photos taken with
them.
We
have a great time and it's hugs all round when we finally bid them
farewell and jump onto the Pan Pacific Hotel buggy... with the group
standing there waving and laughing as I clown around. What a great
bunch of new and old friends. It couldn't have been a better
send-off.
We
check into the Pan Pacific, where we were the same time exactly 3
weeks ago, only to find we have been upgraded to the Club Floor. This
is a 5 star hotel and we have to admit, one of the best we've stayed
at anywhere. Unfortunately all our stays have been one-nighters,
either going somewhere else or coming home.
Although
it's 11pm, we need a cool drink so we head to the Travellers Bar and
Grill where the cute Asian duo belts out some golden oldies while a
large group from the Italian MotoGP team noisily share the next
table... I hope they are not riding tomorrow because they are
ordering jugs of Carslberg like it's going out of style.
As
we leave for bed, the group performs a pretty decent rendition of
Pink Floyd's Another Brick in the Wall. Then it's up to level 9 and
we watch “The Artist” win Best Picture at the Academy Awards
before turning in for our early 6:30am wake-up call. Our last night
away on what has been an arduous trip bit one which we have enjoyed
immensely.
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