Touch down!

From London to Kuala Lumpur is a 13 hour flight. I was up most of the time. Come to think of it, sitting there with the TV in front of me, and the air conditioner blowing cold air in my face, is no different from what I do every night. I am usually sitting in front of the TV, sleeping most of the time. Once in a while, I would wake up and watch a bit of TV. If I shut off the TV, and turn off the lights, I will not be able to sleep. I need that light and noise to keep me company while I sleep.
So on this flight from London to KL, I watched many half-hour TV shows. I stayed up most of the night, and watched one TV show after another. I saw TV shows that I didn't know existed. Patricia Hutton (from Everybody love Raymond) has a show in which she is a mother of three teens, and a car saleswoman herself. Brother Bob from the same show (he name is Garrett?) also has a new show where he tries to learn to swim for his wife (so they can go snorkeling in Hawaii) and ends up almost drowning himself. I watched a couple of The Simpsons. All very funny. I watched The Big Bang Theory, in which Sheldon tried to befriend another physicist.
In between TV shows, I watched the flight information on the screen in the middle seat. When we passed over India, I mentally waved at our friends at Patni in India, both in Mumbai and Delhi.
By the time we touched down at Kuala Lumpur, I have had maybe a couple minutes of shut eyes. This is not good. Well, I will catch a few winks at the hotel later in the afternoon.
The worrier in me started worrying about whether I will have enough time to get to the next gate for the langkawi flight. I have about an hour between flights. I am thinking, for example, if you fly in from Asia to Los Angeles or San Francisco, you will have to claim your luggage, go through Passport check, then go through custom check, then return the luggage to the flight, and then head to the gate for the domestic flight back to Boston. so a similar process for Kuala Lumpur would entail me getting my luggage, go through passport, then customer, then find and head to the gate. This, surely, must take more than hour.

When I came out of the plane, there is an airport worker holding up a sign for MH1340 Langkawi. I approached the man, and a couple beat me to it, and i heard the man said "go to gate A11 after the train."
Me and the couple rushed over to the train (more like a surface train) and rushed to gate A11. When I handed the boarding pass to the airline clerk, she said "This is not for Langkawi." Oh no! There were no information monitors around this gate area, so I started running back to the top of the corridor. By the time i reached the information desk, I was really panting heavily. I asked where the Langkawi flight was gated, and was directly back up the corridor to gate A6.
When I reached gate A6, I was also very warm and sweaty. I decided to go to the rest room and wash up. I walked into the wash room (called Tandas in Malaysia), and head towards the wash basins. There was a woman using one of the wash basin, brushing her hair. I didn't think much of it, until she started yelling "this is a ladies room." In my confusion, I had walked into a girls room. Fortunately there was no one else in the room, so I quickly apologized and stepped out. The men's room is in fact right next door, but I must have not looked carefully at the symbol at the door. The men and women's symbol are very nearly the same. That is why I was confused.
We left KLIA airport at 8:30. The flight was uneventful, and took about an hour. There was time enough for the attendants to give us some juice and peanuts. I must stop eating these salted peanuts. They are good, but they can cause gout in my foot joints. This is a very painful disease.
Langkawi airport is a single storied airport, which means there are no jetways from the airport to the aircrafts. The planes stop in front of the airport, and passengers will have to walk down the stairs, and walk a hundred yards to the airport.
I tried to take some pictures of the plane and passengers alighting the plane, but was not able to do so. I had the air conditioning up so high in the plane, and the outside temperature was so high, that the camera lens fogged up when I pulled it out of my backpack, and it stayed fogged for quite a while. Later, inside the terminal, I tried to take some pictures too. Hopefully they will come out okay.

At the luggage belt, I said a silent prayer (to noone in particular) that my luggage will appear. When I saw it last in Boston, I had said a silent goodbye to my luggage. I don't think I will ever see it again, between the multiple continents and multiple changes of planes, I thought something will happen to cause me to lose my luggage. It was the second suitcase to come out of the luggage hold.

I grabbed the luggage, and walked straight out of the airport. Since this plane is from Kuala Lumpur, it is considered a domestic flight, so no one paid any attention to it. What if I am an international smuggler? hmmm.

The resort was very organized. They have a shuttle driver waiting outside with an EMC sign, so me and three other EMC folks jumped in and took the 30 minute drive to Westin Resort.
Along the way, the scenery looks very much like on the highway in Kedah. Lush green trees, palm trees, coconut trees, shop houses. Very familiar to me.
When we arrived at Westin, we were greeted by two receptionists. One handed us a glass of iced water, and a warm towel to freshen up. The other has our registration and room key all ready. We just have to sign a piece of paper, promising them we will not skip out without paying, and she handed us our keys. Very convenient. No long lines, no waiting.
My room is 1406. At first I thought it is on the 14th floor, as it would be in the States, but it is on the first floor. Later, I noticed the tallest building in this complex has only four stories.
The room is big. It starts with a four by twelve feet corridor passing through a twelve by twelve feet bathroom. Inside the bathroom, there is a bath tub, a wash basin, a toilet, and a shower stall. The towels are neatly folded. The floor towel folded on the bath tub, and they put an orchid on it. I have a picture of this, but have to wait for my usb cable. On the counter, there are hand towels, and again, a fresh orchid adorned the pile of towels. Very nice.
The bed room has a king size bed under a ceiling fan. The room is air-conditioned. On the wall is a very large flat screen LCD TV, and in the counter, there is a DVD player. On the counter is a coffee maker. I always coffee, so I made myself a cup right away. A work desk is next to the counter, with high speed internet cable. I am glad I brought my Asian electric plug adapter, so I can plug my computer into the wall plug.
Outside, there is a large balcony, with a couple of chairs and a table. I don't like to go outside, preferring to stay in the cool air conditioned room.

By the time I cleaned up, I was quite hungry. There are three restaurants in the resort, but I was thinking more of hawker food, instead of the restaurant food they serve in the restaurants here. I did go into all of them to check out the menu, and they have some Asian food like "Hainan Chicken rice", "Mee goreng (pan fried noodles)", "char kuey teow", each at RM 42. RM is the local currency, Ringgit Malaysia. A ringgit is about 30 cents U.S.