7.5 Hours at KL Airport, What to Do...

What are you to do when you have a 7 and a half hour stop-over at Kuala Lumpur airport? Good question, my friends. Please use the following post as a guide for how to spend the sometimes frustrating hours, as you eagerly wait for a connecting flight to your originally desired location. Yes, low cost carriers are fabulously cheap. However they do incur with them an obligation to wait umpteen hours with awkwardly sized luggage that makes casually strolling the candy isles an impossible task without looking like the Incredible Hulk and sending candy flying off the shelves in all directions. I recommend you try and avoid that situation - the staff at one particular convenience store are apparently without a sense of humour about such incidents. Instead, I suggest you amuse yourselves with the following activities.

1. Eat meal number 1, lunch…at 8am local time.

After much careful consideration (read: we were starving and ate at the first place we paid attention to) we sat down at ‘Taste of Asia’. I had chicken and fish-ball noodle soup, and Ben had a Nasi Lemak. Mine was better. A lot better. Not bad for airport food! A nice flavoured broth, good quality shredded chicken and rather delightful fish balls. I was quite pleased.

Ben’s beef was dry, the egg overcooked, and the sauce lacked depth, but what do you expect from a café called ‘Taste of Asia’ that cooks in bulk. I think that my soup was a diamond in the trough.

2. Lament the long wait – our flight wasn’t even up on the board yet - and take silly photographs to amuse yourself.

3. Wander around the foods shops educating yourself on how much Malaysians (and, as I would discover, many South East Asians) appear to love Shrimp flavoured chips and Oreos. Not at the same time…or maybe?

4. Drink beverages the size of your torso. This was Ben’s ‘medium’ café latte from 'The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf'. Haha, right. I had a green tea that was just a large, however I was over-the-moon about my huge cup – usually tea just seems so tiny and overpriced. The US $5 I spent on this cup felt completely worth it. Hang on a minute…I paid $5 for tea?!! Long waits at Airports will do that to you.

5. Make up for said costly tea by saving money on book purchases. I bought ‘The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo' for 35 MYR, which equates to ~ $15. I immediately got lost in the pages and developed an unabashed crush on Blomkvist. And Salander. Dirch Frode was kind of cool too. I really enjoyed this book, and picked up the second in Bangkok, which I am yet to finish.

6. Diligently observe the variety of donut flavours on offer at ‘Dunkin’ Donuts’ – hello potato, sausage and green tea flavours!

7. Watch 3 episodes of Mad Men, season 1, on your laptop computer (if you don't have a laptop with you, may I suggest spending extra time on activities 3 and/or 5).

We’re in love with this show! It took a couple of episodes for me to get into it, but now I love everything about it – the characters, the storylines, the work, the costumes. I want to be Joan, boy is she hot stuff.

But perhaps only for a day, I don’t think I could stand the rampant sexism. And is there anyone cooler than Don Draper? (disregarding the multiple affairs, and all).

8. Eat meal number 2, second lunch – at 1pm. Well this meal was far worse than the first, true story. Drawn in by the attractive 'white picket-fence, garden' look, we decided to eat at the aptly named, 'Food Garden'. Come to think of it it was incredibly aptly named, as there were flies buzzing everywhere. We had the Laksa, and let’s not even go there. Bland soup, heavy on the coconut milk, with a few measly shards of chicken (or other tasteless, white meat). Ok I just went there...we ate it, though, as we were hungry.

We also had another Nasi Lemak, as it looked so yummy being delivered to fellow patrons. Looks can be deceiving, my friends. I did enjoy the ikan bilis, however. I think I just like saying ‘ikan bilis’. No, this is not true, I am certifiably in love with this stuff. I may even name my future dog “Ikan Bilis”.