Have Perut Will Travel...: KUL to BKK │ KLIA to Suvarnabhumi!

Bangkok, Here We Come

Indonesia was the first ASEAN country on our list, and now Thailand becomes our second — starting with its vibrant capital, Bangkok.

We bought our flight tickets during a recent MATTA Fair and got a pretty good deal: RM800 (≈ USD180/EUR166) each for return tickets. Brendan had just begun the second semester of his postgraduate studies, so he was totally bummed he couldn’t join us this time.

KL City Air Terminal Routine

Brendan drove us to KL Sentral’s KL City Air Terminal at noon. As always, we bought our KLIA Express tickets online and enjoyed RM10 off each — only RM40 (≈ USD9/EUR8) per person.

Access to the KL City Air Terminal is strictly via KLIA Express tickets, so we scanned ours at the turnstile and entered. For now, the terminal caters only to Malaysia Airlines, Batik Air, and KLM.

We submitted our yellow submarines for security screening before checking them in. Total weight: 29 kg, well within our 40 kg allowance. After a costly lesson from a previous overseas trip, we made sure to pre purchase extra luggage for the return.

We exited the terminal and crossed over to the KLIA Express platform using the same tickets. The train arrived fifteen minutes later.

Lunch Before Departure

The train departed KL Sentral at 12:40pm and arrived at KLIA half an hour later. We took the elevator up to the Food Garden level, but the enclosed environment didn’t appeal to us. So we continued up to the Departure floor and eventually settled on Nooodles for lunch.

We ordered:

Dim Sum
Loh Mai Kai
Spring Rolls
Iced Tea
Sour Plum Juice

Total: RM76.50 (≈ USD17/EUR16), plus a 10% service charge and 5% SST — and we still don’t know the difference between the two.

Waiting for MH774

MH774 was scheduled to depart at 4:20pm from Gate G4. With two hours to spare, we headed to the Departure Hall.

We breezed through Immigration using the new MyBorderPass auto gates, and by the time we emerged, it was 2:30pm. We spent some time at Dunkin Donuts near Gate G6 before being allowed into the holding area at 3:20pm. Five minutes later, we cleared the final security checkpoint.

Boarding began at 3:40pm. The flight wasn’t full, and the last group of passengers boarded at 5:00pm.

A delay occurred when a passenger failed to show up despite having checked in her luggage. Ground staff had to locate and remove her bag from the cargo hold before MH774 was cleared for departure.

Off to Bangkok

The plane pushed back at 4:38pm and took off at 4:55pm. The two hour flight was smooth and uneventful. We began descending at 6:25pm, and MH774 touched down at 5:55pm local time.

Kudos to Captain Lim and Chief Steward Shahrul for an excellent flight.

We disembarked ten minutes later and headed to Carousel 19 to collect our luggage.

Welcome to Bangkok!