Saturday, June 16, 2012

My short trip to KL

I went up to KL over the weekend recently via the budget airline Tiger Airway. 45min plane and a 2 hour train ride to Mid-Valley. The budget terminal landed at KL's LCCT, short for Low Cost Carrier Terminal. Its a nice little airport to keep cost down budget carriers. You got the usual food outlets and stuff there. Simple for a stopover or waiting for your flight back home.











I did some small research on the net before going over to check if I missed out anything. I initially thought that it would be a simple follow the directional sign kinda thing to get myself to KL. If seems that the LCCT isn't located very near to the KL International Airport. I had been to KL via plane previously and to get to KL city, it would just required some simple navigation around the airport to the KLIA express which would zip you to KL in an hour. The LCCT is slightly different as I found out, there ain't nearest train station that is within walking distance, despite sharing the same runway as KL International Airport, LCCT was actually located at the other end of the runway. Meaning you can't walk to nor is there any free bus ride to KLIA that is easily located.

Well all is not lost, as there are several bus operator taking you directly to the city or to the KL Internation Airport. You just need to find the counter. If you can't locate the counter there are still lots of taxi around. A quick check on the net reveal that KLIA express came up with a LCCT transit service which include a shuttle service and KLIA express train ride to the city at a small cost of RM$12.50. If you have been to Malaysia before, you would know that clearing custom or finding direction will need a slight bit of work as most of the signs are in Malay language. Counter staff ain't always your friendly tour assistance serving you with passion. So while looking for direction and counters always follow the crowd. It can't get wrong if everyone is heading in that direction and if you are looking for counters to buy your bus or train tickets, walk slowly and open your eyes big cause some counter staff sure hope you miss them totally so that they could enjoy that momentary peace at work.

Taking the KLIA express was my best bet and definitely first choice, price and service will never go 'too' wrong with big corporate shareholder companies. Safetly is always on my number one list when travelling overseas, so there goes without saying that I would always try not to get into dodgy transport operators that are out to make a quick buck out of travellers.

So back to the LCCT transit service, right after clearing custom I mange to saw this counter with pink logo with clearly stated sign indicating the LCCT transit service by KLIA. I was relieved as it didn't took me any trouble to locate. Well, as the saying goes, never count your fruit before it is ripe. The counter was selling any ticket but just a information counter where it re-directs you to another counter located further down the hallway. Well, a travelling adventure will never be completed if you never lost your way or did some work locating your whereabouts and location. After, speaking to the counter staff at the first counter, I missed the second counter and walked around the airport for a good 15min before finally purchasing my tickets. If you looked at the map above, you will realise that there are 4 hall within the terminal, the international arrival/departure and domestic arrival/departure. I walked from the international arrival to the domestic arrival which means I covered the whole front ground of the area before locating the counter. Well lucky for me, the counter locating was the only hard part throughout the whole journey. Once locating the counter, next up was to find the shuttle bus location.

The shuttle bus took us to Salak Tingi station which then requires a transfer to the KLIA express which I took to Bandar Tasik Selatan where I did another transfer to the KTM Komunter as I was heading towards Mid-Valley where I was staying. For the usual folks, you will most likely be alighting at KL Sentral which the fee will be slightly higher.

The KL subway/monorail/train system is a budget way of travelling around city and some off city spots. The KTM Komunter was actually a nice ride where I realise at the end, but I didn't had much nice experience with it. My girlfriend lost her Samsung Galaxy S2 to a pickpocket during one of our ride in the afternoon on my first day there. That probably spoil my whole mood of the trip, well to look on the bright safe we only lost something but we are still safe and healty which is most important. Back to the trip, after transfer to the KTM Komunter at Bandar Tasik Selatan, my first wait for the train was a damm long one, a good 45min before a train arrived. I travelled 2 station to Mid-Valley which cost me RM$1 so no complains there. My next few trip on the KTM Komunter was actually quite fast ranging from 5-15min. Well, for the curious, there ain't no indication of arrival timing unlike the monorail. Once I reached Mid-Vally, its shopping shopping shopping.

For monorail travelling check out my previous post ya!

This time round we shopped at 1 UTAMA, SUNGEI WANG and PAVILION.

1 Utama is a slight located out of the place, an easy way is to get a taxi as there are no train nearby. You could get there by bus but some work is needed. I saved myself the trouble and settled that by cab. This shopping mall is one HUGE ASS mall. We basically walked for hours yet I suspect that we didn't really finish the whole mall. *OUCH*









No comments:

Post a Comment