Karma to KL

Posted by Matthew McEwen

Blindly tested this vacation from the beginning. We arrived at Zia International Airport at 11:00pm for a 1:20am flight to Kuala Lumpur. Being break and one of the first of relatively few major outgoing flights to the rest of the world there were plenty of teachers, parents, students, and migratory workers. Remember it was a full week of school and we are running on empty.
Here’s the time line of the night:

11:00 get in the checkin line with a few people in front of us
11:25 asked by service ‘person’ to move to a ‘shorter’ queue
11:40 watch as everyone behind us in the 1st line check-in'ed
11:50 finally check-in’ed
11:55 have some chicken wings (I don’t know why I even try) and ice cream and listen to Lee Ann vent about being on stand-by (hopefully she’ll blog that)
12:30 arrive at gate ready to board at 12:50
12:50 not boarding
1:20 not leaving
1:30 a spokesman says there is a small problem and we’ll know shortly
2:00 a spokesman says there a big problem and we might not take off, we’ll know in 30 mins and he stated that it was"unlikely" we'd fly
2:01 migrant worker takes off shoes and noxious odor fills gate area ..
3:00 a spokesman says they are talking with Kuala Lumpur and we’ll know in 20 minutes
3:40 waiting on a telex from KL on whether we can depart or not and we’ll know in 5 mins
3:50 the telex is out of paper

We figure the ratio of actual time stated to the real waiting time is about 2:1

4:00 the telex arrives, a wedge line forms with the migrant workers … I yelled “women and children first!” grabbed the first student I saw and then thought better of it and instead pushed Carrie yelling “pregnant woman coming through!”' We'll discuss migrant workers on airplanes later.

Apparently it was an equipment problem with the manual landing system. Sooo lame! Who needs that? All in good punch drunk fashion we are off to the last vacation sans kids!

All in good fun and spirits we arrive slightly more than three hours behind schedule and checked into a 5-star resort. Very posh! I guess it all comes round because there was a Blue Bayou Texas buffet in one of the restaurants. Not exactly my idea of a Texas BBQ but the lobster, shrimp etouffee, salmon and chile con carne were very tasty.

... see it all comes around! Kota Kinabalu in Borneo is awesome ... there's Carrie in the background and our swim up bar. So happy ...