It has been many years since we last made the trip from the U.S. to Asia, and the girls are older now, so we were cautiously optimistic about how they would do. Of course, that was balanced with all the extra stress that comes from traveling in pandemic times. I had a special folder with all kinds of paperwork showing that we did not have covid, that we did have permission to enter Malaysia, and that we had booked and paid for our quarantine stay. I had to present these, and then pay for four of our bags, since our ticket was booked through American Airlines while we were flying on Qatar Airways, and for some reason, that only includes one bag per person, even though we are entitled when moving to two bags per person, and regular Qatar Airways passengers get two a piece. Since this wasn't our first time dealing with this crazy system, we had come prepared and arrived three hours ahead of time, instead of the typical two hours, with all of our bags in tow.
The Mom and Dad taxi service had managed to get us and all of the bags to the airport, with some logistical support from Jeff the Tetris master. Before we left for the airport, we had thanked them for all of their incredible support with a lunch at Carlyle. Elena LOVES going to eat at restaurants, and she has been asking throughout this whole pandemic time about when we're going to go to restaurants again. With things finally getting back to normal in the States, we figured now was the time. She was SO excited when we told her.
And she stayed excited throughout the whole meal.
It's good that we had such a large lunch, because after all the hoops we had to jump through to check our bags, we had no time to grab some food at the airport. The flight was less than half full, and it had three rows of three. We started the girls off with me in our assigned row of three, but when we saw that no one else was coming, Vivian moved over to Jeff's row of three that he had all to himself. It worked out well, because we each had a kid to take care of, and we all had some space to spread out.
After 45 minutes on hold and talking to someone who didn't understand how co-chaired flights worked, I had managed to get kid's meals for the girls. They found things to eat, and all the food was pretty good. It was especially nice that they gave the adults actual silverware. Elena found Raya and the Last Dragon as a movie option, and after watching it and eating her dinner, she conked out across two of our three seats. Viv had a harder time falling asleep, but managed to get in a couple hours. Jeff and I both dozed as we could.
The flight was over thirteen hours, but it passed relatively quickly and painlessly with a sandwich break and breakfast in addition to dinner. Elena woke up for breakfast and watched Raya for a second time. Viv was a bit grouchy, since she hadn't gotten enough sleep. We were all relieved to get off the airplane though, and it turned out that Doha has a really easy airport for international transfers. We just got off the plane and into the main terminal to wait for our next flight. We didn't have to go through any extra hoopla, which was nice.
When we were looking at the terminal map, we saw a big teddy bear picture at the center of it. We were wondering what that was, and as we walked by the main area, we found it. It was indeed a very large and very strange teddy bear. We have no idea what it is supposed to mean, but we took a picture, because that's what we do.
A more enjoyable discovery was a snack shop selling pomegranate seeds. This is one of my favorite snacks, but it's almost impossible to find good, fresh ones in the U.S.. It was a great treat for surviving the first part of our journey.
We had a leisurely two and a half hour layover, and then we boarded our next flight to KL. The kid's meal dinner on this flight was just so cute that I had to take a picture. They have purple and orange lighting on the plane, so it came out oddly lit, but you can see why it made us smile.
Our second flight had maybe 50 people on it, so Vivian got her own row, and Elena split her time between me and Jeff in three seater rows. She was so excited to get a window seat, because usually Vivian claims that honor. When we got on the plane it was night, but as we were getting ready to land in KL, the sun rose, and Elena was glued to her window.
She tried her hand at airplane window photography.
She was so enamored of the clouds, that she tried sketching them on the blank pages of her mandala coloring book. As we got closer to landing, we were all excited, trying to catch glimpses of our new home out of the windows. We saw the coast on one side and low mountains on the other.
Once again, Elena was all about the clouds.
Finally, we landed. When we got off the plane, there was an expediter from the U.S. embassy waiting to meet us. He was a very friendly, young Malaysian man. We were glad he was there, because getting out of the airport was like an obstacle course. We took a train, and then worked our way through various stations. He had a paper bag full of paperwork. Between the two of us, we ended up having most of the documents we needed. First, I showed our passports, negative covid tests, and boarding passes. Then, we got another covid test. This one was not as easy. They had longer sticks, and they put one in our throat and one up our nose. As before, Elena was completely unphased, and Vivian was certain her tester had wounded the inside of her nose. After that, we spent about twenty minutes sorting out paying the "operational cost" of about $700 per person for passing through the airport (don't get me started). Next, he took us to the immigration waiting area which absolutely reeked of cigarettes. We sat there and waited again while all our paperwork was processed. Finally, our passports were stamped, and we exited that part to find all eight of our bags waiting for us by the carousels. The last indignity was that all of our bags were sprayed with some kind of "disinfecting" liquid, so everything was a bit wet as we loaded into the waiting van from the hotel.
Even though we were all tired, we enjoyed looking out the window for our drive from the airport to the city. There are lots of trees and lots of construction projects along the broad highway. Once we got into the city proper, it reminded us of a smaller version of Bangkok. The driver took us to the hotel's side entrance. We were met by a hotel employee in full PPE, who checked us in and rolled a trolley with all of our bags up to our rooms. We have connecting rooms with a living area in the middle. The furniture looks like what was left over and rejected from the rest of the hotel, and there is nothing on the walls, but the rooms are large, the ceilings are high, and the big windows give us a peek at our new home. We are so excited to have made it to the other side of the planet.
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