Good to be Home

Am back now after a longer than expected flight home due to strong headwinds. Considering that, the flight was pretty smooth. I touched down t KLIA just after 5pm. Got my bags pretty quickly after and decided against taking a can back.

I'm now waiting for the KLIA Express at the newly refurbished terminal downstairs. Not all the system were online yet, including the problem of buying the train tickets. I ended up having to purchase ten on arrival at KL Sentral. Bizzare!

It had been a good trip. My first experience of Japan. It had been a positive one and hopefully I could return with the family for a holiday trip. At the moment, I was looking forward to share the titbits with Puan Anita and the boys when I reach home. I will some time to reflect on the trip later and of course blog about it more. For the money, it was time to chill ...... and back to work tomorrow ....

More on my Kyoto trip here.

Taking Off

Kansai Airport was located in the middle of a bay on a reclaimed piece of land. As a result, it had a short runway and was exposed to all the elements. And on that particular morning, it was raining with strong winds. Hence, the take-off was rather rough.

And it was rough for the next 30 minutes until we reached the cruising altitude. The flight was also longer than expected due to a 200km/h headwind. We were scheduled to be 45 minutes late.

To kill time, I watched a couple of movies. I never liked traveling during day light as I won't be able to sleep ....

More entries from my Kyoto trip here.

Boarding at Kansai

The Kansai Airport was much smaller than expected for an international airport. But the place was certainly geared for high volume I passengers as it showed this morning.

Since I bought a few items in Kyoto which I could get tax reimbursements for, I thought I had to show them to customs. It turned out that I didn't have to. Therefore, I had to do a bit of repackage before I got my luggages checked in. That took a bit of doing, especially taking some of the toys out from the bulky boxes.

The check-in queue was long, and that was not half the story. The next line up was to get through security. There were easily a couple hundred people in front of me, but the arrangement was so tight that there were no queue cutting. And the queue went through very fast. They had six X-ray machine to service us, and the staff on duty was very good at getting the lines moving. The instructions were also very clear.

Once we were through security, immigrations came next. Again another long but efficient queue. I would imagine KLIA would struggle to service such volume of passenger. Certainly these Japanese were very good at managing the traffic.

Next came breakfast. It was either Japanese of Western. Of course it was Japanese ....

I finished the rest of my yen buying sweets and chocolates. Luckily I managed to get everything cramped into my bag, as otherwise I might have to pay some tax at the customs when I reach KLIA as the shopping bags may look rather suspicious ..... More on my Kyoto trip here.

Setting Off

It was a good thing that we set off early from Kyoto to the Kansai Airport in Osaka this morning as the journey took close to a couple if hours and there was a long queue at immigrations and check-in. Starving, right after we cleared the security we rushed for breakfast. A ramen affair this morning. And it was not long before we started doing some duty free and rushing to the terminal to board, a short train ride away.

One of my colleague wasn't very well, with a slight virus and was feeling under the weather the whole journey to the airport. As for me, I was sleeping away all the way. Setting off at 6.45 and a bit of packing meant that I had to wake up at 5.30.

And it was raining all the two hours in the bus ..... more entries from the trip here.

The First Half

My shopping was halfway done. Most o the boys' toys had been bought and next non the card would e shopping for Puan Anita. I had to get back to the conference centre by lunch to attend a couple of afternoon sessions. So, the other half of my shopping would be for later.

Went to Kyoto Station this morning, and spent the morning shopping around there. There was an Isetan at the station, but I decided against going there. I went to a toy store instead. To avoid the rain, I just used the underground passageway to get to the supermarkets.

For lunch, I met up with a couple of Pharma friends who were with me during the Atlanta trip last December. We had some tempura before hauling my shopping back to the hotel before attending the afternoon session.

More entries from my Kyoto trip here.