When I went to meet my airport transfer this morning I found out the hotel hadn't bothered to actually book it, so the maintenance man drove me to the airport. Made it in good time and proceeded through check-in with no worries. Luggage 18.5kg... normally I wouldn't care but since I was losing my Air Asia-ity today I was a bit nervous about tipping over the 20kgs I'd paid for. Got on the plane to find that they sure do the seating strangely on Air Asia. I was seated in the middle, next to a man in the window seat, but with nobody in the aisle, and with spare rows all over the place. Of course I moved. Guess I didn't look at the flight schedule, because I was expecting a much longer flight. It takes 8 hours to go from Bandar Seri Begawan to Kota Kinabalu, and you have to do six border crossings (apparently? Perhaps it's 3 but with a stamp from both countries each time?) However the flight takes around 25 minutes, and no sooner had I reclined my seat to read the fresh December magazine than the hostess told me to put it back up and prepare for landing. What the...?
Evidently there is a low cost terminal in KK, because it certainly wasn't the terminal I flew into the first time. For about two minutes I was genuinely wondering whether I had flown into the right city, but sure enough there were KK maps everywhere. It looked more like a bus station than an airport, with bazaar stands everywhere selling food and magazines, not like the plush surroundings of the Malaysia Airlines terminal. Also nowhere to change my money. I found another couple and shared a taxi into town with them, with the intention of going to Tenom. One thing led to another and eventually that became too hard so I decided to stay in KK for the night. I went off in search of food (cari makan) and wandered around town for a while. Headed back to the backpackers then and read my book! I think I might go snorkelling tomorrow.
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