Borneo 2: Travel

I passed through the airport in Hong Kong, a common hub for travel through SouthEast Asia, yesterday. I only had a two hour layover but will spend a day here at the end of the month on my trip back.

Basically 100% humidity with temps of 30 C. The clouds look like completely soaked cotton, and passing through them on the plane gives the plane a pretty good kick. Pretty though, as they form huge towers in the rising heat.

Another 3.5 hours of flying past Hong Kong gets you to Kuala Lumpur (assuming you survive the choking insecticide spray they completely douse the airplane cabin with prior to landing), where I will be spending the day. Kuala Lumpur is a modern city in almost all respects, although the reason I haven't posted anything until now was because the hotel internet was down.

The first thing one notices about Kuala Lumpur are the endless oil palm plantations. The airport is about 60-70 km out of Kuala Lumpur so a taxi ride from the airport takes about an hour. That will set you back about $20 CAN and you get the great experience of driving at 140 km/hr in a taxi weaving in and out of traffic. Driving is a pretty aggressive game here (making Vancouver look pretty tame), and while cars mostly use the lanes (my taxi driver decided to straddle a couple for about 10 minutes), countless small motorcycles run along the dotted lane markers somehow avoiding collisions with cars that change lanes without using signals.

Picture Credit: Me. Hong Kong airport. Victoria Peak is in the background.