Second trip - Day 1

Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:00 PM

Subject: Asia 2007 - Day 1

Here is how the trip started…

“Where are you going, sir?”

“Kuala Lumpur.”

“Where?”

“Kuala Lumpur, in Malaysia.”

The ticket agent was having difficulty checking me in at the Minneapolis airport. 

Where is that?”, she asked with a slightly annoyed and bewildered look.

“…In Malaysia!”, I said.  I wasn’t trying to be a smart ass, I just didn’t know how else to answer the question.

“I can’t find this.  Do you have a paper ticket?  It says I need to see a paper ticket.”

“My Minneapolis to LA leg is an e-ticket.”, I explained.  “I have paper tickets for the rest of the trip to Malaysia” .  My luggage is being checked through so I don’t have to claim it in LA and recheck it when I change airlines.  I was beginning to wonder if I would ever see my luggage again.

She picked up a phone behind the counter and began speaking to someone.

“I have a passenger checking in to….Where did you say you were going again?”

“Kuala Lumpur”

“He is going to…where?”

“Kuala Lumpur”, I repeated.

He is going to …Kooloo Looper” , she looked at me for a nod of approval, which she did not receive.

After repeating the instructions, more phone conversations, showing my itinerary, passport, etc, she was able to confirm my seats and print luggage tags clearly reading “KUL”, which is the airport code for Kooloo Looper.

The flight to LA was uneventful.  I had a good seat thanks to seatguru.com, a great website which gives detailed information for every seat location specific to each airline and aircraft, such as legroom, seat width, proximity to the lavatory and galley, etc. 

In all of the traveling that I have done, this is my first time in LA.  It was around 11:00 PM local time when we began our approach.  The city lights and the low-lying haze were quite pretty.  Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is another story.  This has to be the most poorly designed airport I have ever seen.  The ceilings are low, the corridors are narrow, you can’t see far enough ahead of you to get any bearings.  I spent 10 minutes trying to figure out where to find Malaysia Airlines (no maps or directories to be found) and eventually asked a TSA employee who was lying on a bench.  I was told I had to go outside and walk to the Bradley International Terminal.  The Bradley terminal was not far.  By now it is nearly midnight, a time when most airport terminals are fairly quiet.  Not this one.  It looked like O’Hare the day before Thanksgiving, except nearly everyone is Asian or Hispanic, and what I was reading about queuing not being and Asian custom is apparently true.  There wasn’t so much of a line for security screening as there was a herd. 

The flight to KL is on a 747 (thanks again, Grandpa).  The gate is crowded and there seem to be only a dozen or so westerners on the flight.  I could not get a free WiFi signal in the terminal so I will have to send this from Taipei during our stop there if I can.

More to come.