It’s early morning Malaysia time – I’d say the joys of jetlag but to be honest I normally wake at 5:00 in the morning and can’t get back to sleep. So deciding to get up at 5:15 is more because I have early meetings this week coming and I want to hold off a bit on fully adjusting to the timezone. So I got up, made my coffee (Hummingbird I bought with me) and went to sit in my favourite chair looking out towards the Towers. And as I sat there, the dawn call to prayer for the Masjid Wilayah Persekutuan (Federal Mosque) started. A new day begins.
When I first arrived in KL I still remember my first sight of the Masjid as we drove into Mont Kiara. Our visit to it the year or so after I arrived will always be one of my stand out memories. During the week day the call to prayer can be lost in normal daily traffic noise – its first thing in the morning and the weekend that it marks the start and passing of the day.
This morning it prompted me to go and grab my laptop and capture the memories of the trip as I suspect that will be the most exciting thing that happens for the next two weeks 🙂 I can already see where the challenges could lie.
On Wednesday morning I woke up to a light frost and an incredibly clear country morning. I took some photos of my spring garden around my 100 year old wooden villa to send to a friend. Thursday morning I woke up at Rydges Wellington Airport, Friday morning a transit hotel in Changi and this morning in my alternate life at 22 floors in a 300 m3 Mont Kiara condo I have a clear view out to the Genting Highlands.
I remember over 35 years ago flying to London with two small children, spending three days in Singapore in transit. Everything was in paper – our tickets had layers for each segment and our kids didn’t have their own passports – they were in both mine and Nick’s. At Heathrow all the visa work was in paper. That is about the closest experience I have to checking in on Thursday. Air New Zealand Wellington had a list of what we needed including our copy of our negative PCR, and approval to enter Malaysia. Despite our paperwork being checked and boarding passes issued we needed to go through it all again at Singapore Airlines in Christchurch.
In Christchurch it was negative test, approval letter to enter, evidence of vaccination, transit arrangements in Singapore and quarantine hotel booking in KL. What would normally have taken fifteen minutes (they usually want to sight my Malaysian visa so I often need to be checked in) took 45 minutes. They had a country by country list of entry requirements and every check in was double checked (as in another staff member had to verify the first person’s work). When boarded we were the only passengers in our cabin class and there would have been maybe 30 passengers on the flight. From our conversations in the transit lounge we were going to at least six different onward destinations, (France, Hong Kong, Indonesia, China, Phillipines, Malaysia)
On landing we were met by four to five people in PPE and all got a green ribbon tied loosely around out wrist (one tip – don’t tighten the clip to take up some of the slack, it get’s really annoying after a few hours) then we were escorted (as in following someone crocodile file) to the transit lounge. Where our documentation was checked again and we had to sit and wait to either be escorted to an onward flight or, as in our case, to a transit hotel. The great moment was sitting in transit and checking our home quarantine application for Malaysia to discover it was approved.
Changi was a like being slapped in the face by the pandemic. Walking through Terminal 3 past gate lounge after gate lounge with all the seats wrapped in plastic and closed off, the eerie silence while all the electronic billboards continued to flash through the advertisements for Duty Free luxury goods. There were a few things open in Terminal 1 which we went through on the way to our transit hotel, but transit passengers couldn’t access them. The transit lounge in the evening had a small kiosk and there was a Uber Eats style arrangement where you could order something from Terminal 1 via an app and it would be delivered to the Transit area. We were tracked pretty much every minute and couldn’t move anywhere without an escort. Once checked in to our hotel room we were not allowed to leave it until we were due to move to the transit lounge for our next flight.
One of the signs of the restricted number of flights was using one of the big international gates for what is a typically a one hour regional flight to Kuala Lumpur. Once through security, as well as every second seat being wrapped the lounge was tightly segregated (a flight to Hong Kong was departing within 30 minutes of ours) As passengers with green ribbons we were segregated within the segregated and boarded first. We did get tea/coffee/juice on the flight though which startled me a bit after a Level 2 NZ domestic flight with no service.
And then we got to KL – off the plane into another largely silent airport. It wasn’t quite as controlled but as we got to the terminal transfer train everyone had to scan a QR card with My Sejahtera that triggered a form opening. The form requested travel details, and vaccination status which then triggered a red band on the app that said home quarantine. The helper (there were two or three) told us to screenshot that as we needed to show it at the next step. The usual staff checked the screenshot and passport and let us on the normal train.
Immigration was set up with all the quarantine arrangements before you got to passport control. Home quarantine went one way which we followed. The person who did our details had a printer we could print our letters to so the paperwork was complete and this time the required paper was negative PCR, evidence of vaccination and the home quarantine approval letter. From that we got pink wristbands with our port of entry, passport number and quarantine dates written on them (this one is plastic). Plus the paperwork (two copies) and through to Covid test where we lost one copy to go with our tests.
Then it was through to the station to check we had receipts for testing and hotel quarantine (which as we no longer needed they gave us the form to request a refund) They also ordered our driver and that was almost the longest wait as we chatted while we waited for the driver to be assigned. Next step – follow the foreign passport lane where approval to enter letters were checked and stamped. It got slightly weird as we got into the next room and an immigration officer took our passport and approval letter into another room and told us to wait. After a few minutes we were called up to the desk for the typical photo, fingerprint, stamp – we didn’t get the approval letter back just our passports. We left there and then went through the single open passport gate where he just checked they had entry stamps before letting us through.
It took long enough that our bags were off the conveyor built and waiting, so it was a straight walk through customs and out to where our driver was waiting for us. He loaded our bags and then put on a protective suit to drive us home. Our condo has a SOP for home quarantine but they were pretty relaxed about us arriving. We notified the office that we were vaccinated and had negative tests and anything we order has to be delivered to our door.
So we are home 🙂 And despite Nick’s estimate that it would take 3 hours and my worst case scenario of four – it was 90 minutes from the time we got off the plane to when we got in the car – which is actually close to typical!