A few years ago I lived in France. It wasn't the traditional working holiday/backpacker experience; I was on a high school exchange. For an entire year I lived with a family and attended school – just like a real French Boy. I also had the opportunity to travel a bit. In fact one of the few things I didn't do while in Europe was go to McDonald’s. I once tallied up my visits and realised, for that year, I went to Italy more times than I went to Macca’s. And yet there we sat in Kuala Lumpur Airport, not one hour after landing, waiting for Bek to finish a less than hearty Macca’s breakfast.
I think I may have mentioned the more than ample time we’d allowed to meet all of our connections. For our next connection, the flight to Penang, we allowed a cool 4.5 hours – plenty of time to account for delays, immigration, baggage collection, check-in, maybe even a quick stroll through duty-free… We've got our bags. We've cleared immigration. We checked the time, 4:45 am. Too early to check-in. Nothing to do but wait. Or blog.
A double power nap and a few strange looks later, we were off to Penang: Land of Adventure. We were greeted at the airport by a man holding up a sign with all of our names (I thoroughly enjoyed that part). We piled into his van and headed off towards the hotel, and he provided us with a well-thought, informative and balanced commentary on current Penang politics (I thoroughly enjoyed that part). The Prime Minister was visiting Penang, and in order to gain some desperately needed votes, paid K-Pop super-star Psy an exorbitant amount of money to perform a free concert for the people (I sensed our driver less than thoroughly enjoyed that part).
When we arrived at our hotel we were relieved that the wait was finally over. We were swiftly greeted by the bell boy who took our luggage and ushered us into reception.
“Welcome to Hydro Hotel,” smiled a friendly receptionist, “do you have a reservation?”
“We sure do,” I handed her my passport, “I’m looking forward to a nice hot shower after that journey!” The others agreed, though we later decided it would be better to take separate showers.
“I’m sorry sir, but your room is not yet available. Neither of the rooms are ready yet.” What went wrong? We've got our bags. We’re at the hotel. We checked the time, 11:15 am. Too early to check-in. Nothing to do but wait. Or blog.
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