We're Here! Our first days in Malaysia.

We're Here!

So after seven months of planning and preparation we have arrived in Malaysia. Well we have arrived at the airport and that's about as far as we've got!

You see Malaysia has a blanket quarantine on all arrivals and a 14 day quarantine for foreign nationals coming from most territories. That is if you can even get permission to enter, as the reality is that there are only a few specific circumstances were you will be granted permission to enter Malaysia. Fortunately taking up a new post here is one of them.

The flight from the UK was fine. A bit of an endurance test as we had two 7 hour flights with a 3 hour layover in Dubai in between.

As a sidebar when we arrived in Dubai it was midnight and the outside temperature was 36 degrees Celsius. What is that about? That's without the sun even being involved - that's spare heat left over!

We did get to see the inside of Dubai International Airport and most of the shops and food outlets were open even at 2am. You could even buy gold if you wanted...

Golden palm tree - why not..?

When we eventually arrived in Malaysia it was tomorrow o'clock and we had no idea what was happening. The process to get into Malaysia was actually very straightforward as we'd done all of the necessary forms in advance, but it was a fairly drawn out process. There were at least six separate steps to go through, including health screenings and immigration papers and it took around an hour and a half. In all fairness I've had longer waits in airports than this without the complexities of immigration and Covid added to the mix, so it wasn't that bad.

After leaving the airport we were escorted to our transport to the hotel. Yes escorted - at all points in the process we were under the direct supervision of airport staff, immigration officials, reserve police officers and health officials - this was very different from our outgoing UK experience.

Now the hotel - there is a story there. We booked a premium package for the quarantine - we didn't want to risk three of us being confined to a single 22 metre square bedroom for a fortnight so we opted to pay a premium and upgrade to a suite in a hotel that had some very good write-ups. This was the Hotel Istana in Kuala Lumpur city centre.

 

Now we chose this one as it seemed to be a good balance of price, space, amenities and food. It was well reviewed on Tripadvisor and the quarantine support group on Facebook that I'd joined also seemed to rate it. Unfortunately it is closing and the decision was taken to close it subsequent to our booking being accepted.

We found this out on Sunday morning. We were due to fly out on Wednesday. Oh dear...

But this turned out not to be a drama as the hotel had secured like for like bookings at the Sama Sama hotel at the airport - a hotel we had also considered. So in the end it was a simple email and quick international call and all was sorted.

My main issue here is not that we were inconvenienced, quite the opposite. This meant we had a shorter journey from the airport to the quarantine accommodation and the facilities were pretty much on a par. What this did exemplify was another impact of Covid. 

The Istana has been a feature of the KL skyline and destination for tourists for decades now and is apparently a local landmark. Now, sadly, because of the lockdowns and tourism effectively ceasing, this family run business is having to shut down, taking with it the livelihoods of the many people employed there. 

The front façade of the hotel

The night time view from one of our windows.

The living area in our accommodation - Not bad at all!

Anyway we are now in the Sama Sama hotel and will be for the next now eleven days. The first three having passed without too much incident.

We have a timetable of activities to keep us going, iPlayer, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ as well as the hotel's free on demand movies to keep us entertained. We managed to squeeze six different board games into our suitcases and Thomas has enough Lego to build himself an annexe should he get bored of our company. 

I should at this point give a shout out to DownDog Yoga - their app is brilliant and we're using it every day. That, along with a bunch of other videos, some exercise bands and a lot of reading material should keep us going for the foreseeable future... I hope!

Anyway I'll post again when we have some other musings or anything to report.

Take care all!