From the Philippines to Malaysia - A Truly Asian Experience Part 1

This blog post has been due for quite some time now.  But as life goes it does get busy sometimes.  Ah but it feels great getting back to writing and releasing some stress.  And at the same time helping out other foodies and travelers with their quest for adventure.

We recently traveled to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and explored the food, transportation system, and all the great tourist (and local) areas.  This little blog post, which I will break down to several posts, will show you part of our adventure in Malaysia.  Hope it will help in planning your own trip.  I suggest that for every trip you plan ahead, such as where to stay, how to get there, and what to visit, and of course plan your budget.  This assures you a safe and enjoyable vacation.

Air Asia flies out of Terminal 4 (as of the moment) and now is a great time to visit Malaysia.  They always have some sort of seat sale and you can never run out of great deals.  I would suggest signing up on their website by creating an account with Air Asia.  For our own tickets we purchased them about 6 months ahead of time and paid roughly P4,000 per person (round trip).  Take into account though that even though you're flying out of Terminal 4 you still have to pay P550 for the terminal fee and P1620 for the travel tax (economy seats).  Where this "terminal fee" and "tax" goes is another story though.

Terminal 4 is Manila's airport for local flights but part of the airport has been designated for Air Asia.  It's nothing really to talk about since it's basically a small room with a bathroom.  If you are hungry and want something to eat, Air Asia is selling food near the entrance.  Unfortunately you can't get any other food besides that because you are not allowed to cross over to the food court of the local flights.  No Papa John's pizza for you!

Waiting Area

Air Asia food stall.

The good thing about this terminal is that it is quite clean.  I guess the international media coverage of our airports is doing its job.  The bathroom is clean too because my wife approves of it.  If the wife approves of the bathroom you can bet that it is clean.

After a few minutes of waiting it was boarding time.  You board a small airport bus and ridiculous as it sounds the boarding took longer than the actual bus ride to the plane.  But security prevails and I wouldn't have it any other way.

For those who have never flown Air Asia, I can say that their staff if way more professional than other budget airlines.  The flight itself was pretty standard and took about 3 hours.

We landed in Malaysia about 10:30 in the morning at the newly built KLIA2 or otherwise known as the Kuala Lumpur International Airport 2.  It's quite big and some of the areas of the airport wasn't finished yet when we were there.

The great thing about KLIA and KLIA2 is that it has great infrastructure.  You can either take a bus, take the train, a taxi, or rent a car to get to your hotel.  Please take note that in Malaysia they drive on the left side.

We decided to take the bus to Chinatown where our hotel was.  It cost about 12 Ringgit per person.  The bus is air conditioned and stops at several bus stations.  The bus ride to Chinatown took about 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours.

But if you want to experience the train it costs 35 Ringgit and gets you to the main train station (KL Sentral) in about 39 minutes.  For more information on the KLIA Express please click the link.  From KL Sentral you can pretty much get anywhere else you want to go.  It's way faster than taking the bus and from KL Sentral it's about another 5-10 minutes to Pasar Seni if you want to get to Chinatown quicker.