KL
Trip Start
Feb 04, 2008
1
37
105
Trip End
Jan 19, 2009
Kuala Lumpur,
Wilayah Persekutuan,
Malaysia
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
We arrived at the main bus station just next to china town and soon remember that Bangkok was the last big city we were in and maybe we'd forgotten what it was like. Despite the hustle, bustle, alien sounds and smells that welcome you to most Asian capitals we managed to make our way through the throngs and booked ourselves into a little hotel just on the other side of the main China town tourist market. We'd decided to splash out a bit for one night so we have air-con, hot water, a TV and everything! not too bad for 65RM.
We dumped our stuff, showered away the travel grime and headed out to explore our new playground
Comfy chair
. An hour later we were sat in Nando's savoring the safety of the western (well Portuguese) world having been harangued, harassed, stared at and rubbed up against (that was more Debbie) and having witnessed a violent mugging committed by a fairly large gang in the middle of a busy tourist area at about 3.30 in the afternoon.After a little while, a couple of chicken burgers and some free Coke refills, we were braced and ready to head back out - albeit a shade more warily than before! The rest of the day passed uneventfully as we wandered through markets and shopping malls and generally took in some of the sights sounds and smells. We headed back early to watch some shoddy, probably, movie on HBO and take advantage of our creature comforts.
The next day we set of in search of the elusive Qantas office to try and change/confirm the rest of the dates for the flights on our multi-stop-return-to-New-Zealand tickets. Now, running the risk of boring you to death, I'd like to recount briefly this saga - or "Ticketgate" if you will. (NB. Feel free to skip this bit if you don't really care - I just need to get it off my chest)
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As you may or my not know airlines only publish their flight schedules about a year in advance so that when you book a long trip some months in advance, as we did, you have to put in provisional dates for any flights more than a year in the future. I think that our last 7 flights (of 8) were initially booked for the 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th, 17th and 18th of May - Which i think you'll agree wasn't going to allow us much time to soak up the combined ambiances of Australia, New Zealand and Japan
China town market
! Fortunately the dates of any and all of these flights could be change with a quick phone call to Qantas and payment of a £25 fee... or so we thought.We'd decided it was time to confirm the dates of our onward flights when we reached Penang but twas not to be so easy. bullet points are probably the way forward here...
Penang
- Go on-line and get Qantas' number in Malaysia (KL). I says it's routed straight to Oz, even better.
- Track down a local store that has IDD facilities, no worries. Very cheap to call KL.
- After about 5 minutes messing about with various dialing codes we finally get through. Problem is it's so quiet you can only just tell you're connected let alone hear what the automaton at the end is asking you to do.
- We try again but get he same problem.
- We head to a travel agent were the guy lets us use his mobile to call. It's twice as expensive but the call only lasts 2 minutes as we get the same problem. It must be at Qantas' end.
Breakfast
- We head back to the first place to call the Bangkok office (we sensibly got the number earlier for just such an eventuality) it's a bit more expensive as it's an international call.- we get through to a lady in Bangkok who after a brief discussion tells us that she's pretty sure it'll be impossible to change the dates of any of our flights (the next being in about a week. from Bali!) but if we can fax her our tickets she can double check.
- firstly we don't have a fax machine (we forgot to pack it) and nor does the convenience store we're stood in the back of (just next an amazing array of different spirits for a Muslim country. Literally the must have been 1000 brands). Plus we have books of tickets with several tissue-paper-thin pages containing text that isn't even legible to us now let alone when it's been put through the enigma machine that is a fax.
- We give up and go for a bite to eat to wait for an hour or so till it's late enough that we can call the Flight Centre in Manchester.
- We call from the back of the shop again and speak to a girl, Rachel i think, who says they're very busy at the moment (it is 9am on a Monday morning) so can she take a number and call us back. we explain that this isn't really possible so she tells us to call back in 10 minutes an she'll make sure she's free.
- after perusing the 175 different bottles of vodka for a few minutes we call back and she tells us that the woman in Bangkok is talking rubbish (Phew!) and probably just couldn't get our details up on her system. We can definitely change the dates but it still needs to be done directly with Qantas - we were kind of hoping she'd say "leave it to me" and sort it all out for us
Finally
.- Before hanging up we get the address of the Qantas office in Kuala Lumpur as we'll be there in a day or two and it may be easier (and cheaper - we've spent over £10 and got nowhere) to do it in person.
Kuala Lumpur
- We head out in the morning for a bit of a wander around the business district of the city and to find the Qantas office and sort these damn tickets out.
- having checked the address with our guest house we're fairly sure we know where we're going. it's about a 20-25 minute walk.
- arriving at the correct building, there's no sign of a, well, sign for Qantas but we speak to the security/concierge guy and explain what floor we need to go to. In exchange for a passport he grants us a lift pass and p we go.
- we wander around said floor but see no indication that they might house the offices of any airlines. We ask at a random reception and she tells us that they've moved offices. rubbish! She can't tell us where they've moved to. Rubbisher!
- We head back down and trade the small bit of plastic for our passport. we try in vain to explain to the security guy and his security pal that we're looking for a company that used to have offices here but we don't get very far - they're looking at us encouragingly but also as if they're hoping money or sweets (or maybe beer) might start shooting out of the top of heads at any moment. We leave dejected and slightly worried, our flight from Bali leaves any day now and even if we could get there in time all our other flights are still so jammed together we'll be home in 2 weeks
Easy does it
!- Back on the street and looking at our city map we see that there's a tourist information centre just 10 minutes walk away so we decide to head there for some... information.
- The centre looks very out of place amongst the multitude of skyscrapers and high-rises (is there a difference?) it's built like a luxurious Mexican ranch and i half expect to be greeted by Pablo Escobar. Inside though it's all legitimate business and efficient too. Within a few minutes the girl behind the desk has got Qantas' news office address (two minutes walk from the old one) and has called them to check that they're not closed for lunch.
- we head back past the first building and along the road to the new address. This looks more like it. As well as a couple of major banks the building has signs for several other international Airlines. We head in and up to the floor (20 or so) in a super fast lift.
- On exiting the lift we are presented with a large notice stating that this office (which acts for Qantas and BA as well as several other carriers) does not deal in anyway with changes to flights. It advises us to call Qantas direct (why didn't we think of that) or alternatively provides a map to another agent a few blocks away who may be able to help.
Lotus
- We take the map and head back down in the super fast lift. We walk on, only 5 more minutes, to the third office block. On speaking to the security desk they direct us through the building to another atrium and up to the 3rd floor. We wander round this floor searching for a few minutes and then ask for directions again. Apparently there is a third atrium and it's in that one.- we head back down and along and sure enough there's another lobby. we sign in again at this one and head up in the, quite slow, lift. Eventually we arrive at the correct office.
- Here we speak to a very nice lady who informs us that it may be possible for us to change our tickets, she'll have to check, but it will cost us £25 per person/per flight. meaning the total bill will be around £300! On explaining that this is not what we've been told and that we can't really afford that much she kindly offers to call Qantas for us and find out, at least, that it is possible for us to make these changes.
- When she's finished her call she says that she needs to photocopy and fax our tickets over to Qantas - apparently they keep no simple record of the type of ticket or the cost on there computers - crazy! She send the fax and we sit on a comfy sofa and wait.
- after about an hour (it's got to be time for lunch soon!) she come over and tells us that the good news is we will be able to change our flights...the bad is that because we have actual ticket books (rather than e-tickets) we'll have to do it in person at the Qantas office..
D'oh!
. in Bali!- this is somewhat awkward as we're not planning on being in Bali for at least 2 or 3 weeks and our current flight leaves from there in a matter of days!
- We thanked the nice lady for her time and effort but left even more dejected than before. Where we going to have to get a last minute flight to Bali and miss out Singapore and Borneo or would we miss our flight from Bali to Darwin and from Darwin to Melbourne and then have to pay for two more flights later on?
- Walking back we passed an Internet cafe and decided to go in and try and call Qantas direct again. After another few tries at getting the international code right Debbie finally managed to get through to a nice guy somewhere in Australia.
- To make a long sto.... never mind... he sorted it all out in about, well about an hour - but it was a lot of flights and we had great difficulty getting the dates we wanted from Bali to Darwin as the Pope is traveling to Australia around that time and everything, like, EVERYTHING is booked up.)
- The best thing, although quite confusing, is that is was all done for FREE! Apparently we can change them all as much as we like with no charge. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
Karaoke cages
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Apologies again if you've just read all of that! Just to confirm though our new schedule looks like this...
30th May - Flying from Denpasar (Bali) to Darwin (Aus) at 21.15 arriving at 1.15am.
Qantus flight number 324
6th June - Flying from Darwin to Melbourne at 6.10am arriving at 10.45am
Qantus Jetstar flight number 5062
29th August - Flying from Cairns to Sydney at 10;55am arriving at 1.45pm
Qantus Jetstar flight number 5955
3 HOURS TO WAIT IN SYDNEY AIRPORT THEN
Flying from Sydney to Christchurch (South NZ) at 5.10pm arriving at 10.10pm
Qantus Jetstar flight number 207
26th December - Flying from Auckland (North NZ) to Melbourne at 4.25pm arriving at 6.20pm
Qantus flight number 134
Stay overnight in Melbourne (no connecting flights)
27th December - Flying from Melbourne to Tokyo at 10.10am arriving at 6.30pm
Qantus flight number 119
18th Jan - Flying from Tokyo to London at 1.05pm arriving at 4.20pm
BA flight number 8
Right, now where was i..
Petronas Towers
. Oh yes... We were spending a couple of days in KL and weren't 100% sure if we liked it. After finally sorting out or tickets we went out and had a fancy meal with wine and a big dessert. Oh wait, hang on. Sorry, no, we celebrated the end of the saga and saving £50 by eating horrible food from a scary stall. Debs had a #4 and i had a #2 (no jokes please, I'm still trying to keep it down) I'm afraid i can't give you and more of a description than that!The next day we decided that it was about time we actually saw some sights. We headed back through the CBD an took in, from the ground, the Petronas towers (formerly the tallest buildings in the world). Next we decided it would be a good idea to get a view from a bit higher up so we headed to the KL tower which is an (approx) 450m high communications tower, currently the 4th highest in the world i believe. The viewing platform there is only at about 270m but it's still a lot higher than the bridge connecting the Petronas towers which as high as you can go there. The views were unsurprisingly great and there was a storm coming in so it actually made it quite exciting.
I hate to say it but other than that, a lot of walking around (both the streets and shopping centers) and a couple of good meals (we went of the beaten track to find some great curries) that was about all we got up to in KL over our few days.
We got an early, 8am, bus to Singapore and said goodbye (apart from a quick return to JB airport) to peninsular Malaysia.
P.s. I don't know what we were doing wrong but it was seriously hard, nigh on impossible to find a street vendor who would actually sell us some satay! They either were closed, didn't do it or weren't doing it at that time of day - and we went all the time!!
Comments
Quantas
Hi Guys, just been reading your horror story re changing quantas flight dates. We are in the exact same situation (In Penang right now) and want to change ours. Do we ring Quantas direct and if so which number did you ring? Thanks a mil!