These are my notes on travelling to Malaysia.
We flew on an Boeing 777 for 13 hours from Toronto to Tokyo. This was an uncomfortable ride with the seats being tight and it was a packed flight. The food was alright for the the fact that it was airline food.
I ended up watching a couple movies and listening to the history of rome podcast that I had downloaded specifically for this trip.
The second flight was from Tokyo to Kuala Lumpur and this was 7 hours long. This was much more comfortable due to the flight being mostly empty and we got the exit row seats where you can stretch your legs out. Definitely something that might be worth buying on a long flight as I think that made the largest difference in comfort level. The hospitality of the ANA flight attendents was fantastic and the food was pretty good as well.
The toilets were bidets in the Japanese flight and their airport bathrooms had some pretty fancy toilets as well. Why is Canada still in the dark ages?
It's still crazy to think that we've travelled for 21 hours without any real breaks.
We landed in Malaysia at 12am and we took a Taxi to our AirBnB. This took about an hour with the airport being outside of Kuala Lumpur and/or being on the outskirts.
Customs was straightforward with just a baggage check. The AirBnB was a building that looks to be solely for airbnb as most of the mailboxes had pin locks that you need to open before you can get the keys. The building also uses a system of QR codes to get into the building and to use the elevator. This was a pretty cool way to enter the building.
We also used the Grab app to get McDonalds ordered as a late night meal. The chicken nuggets tasted like chicken nuggets which was great. The chicken sandwich had some actual spice in it and is much more juicy and flavorful. We'll need to try McDonalds in store as well as everything felt soggy when ordered.
I once again appreciate that I was born in Canada and because of that I know the lingua franca. I know English and so eveyrwhere I've been has catered to my for the most part. Most people may not English and we may struggle to communicate but everyone knows enough to help each other. The same could not be said f the only language I knew was Tamil.
After reading Sapiens, I'm also realizing that the idea of a global culture is true. I hadn't noticed before but cities, roads, signage, the way buildings look are all very similar. There is one global culture at least for the large cities. This idea may not hold in smaller areas.