The taxi to the airport arrived early in the morning, ready for me to begin my odyssey towards Vietnam that would run over a couple of days. On my previous trip to Yogyakarta, the airport at which I arrived at and subsequently departed from was older and smaller, that was conveniently located close to the centre of the action of the city. The newer airport which had been built to better handle international flights and larger aircraft was located just over an hour away by car, but the amount of time it took would be largely dependent on traffic. Indonesia in places can get a little busy, but today it seemed that the gods were with us.
The airport itself whilst grander in scale than the older terminal was, but still small when compared to many of the others that I have been fortunate/unfortunate enough to have traversed through over the years, with some of the big city ones perhaps just being too big and complex for their own good. I arrived two and a half hours before my flight's departure time which was going to be more than enough for a newer airport of such scale. Check-in was fast and and painless and it wasn't long before I had cleared the first security check of the day and was sat at the airport's Starbucks with a hot matcha latte. This was only only slightly delayed by the national anthem falling starting up at exactly 10:00 am, the same time it does every day. This is a time when everything just stops until the tannoy'd music has run its course.
With the flight not due until 11.45, I took my time and made sure that everything was set for my arrival at Kuala Lumpur later that day, with all the documents that I might need at immigration and beyond saved to my google drive and readily accessible offline on both my tablet and phone. It’s at times like these that you realise how much travel has changed over the last decade since my first prolonged trip out of the country. Some things for the better and some for the worse. The fact that I can easily pay for many things with a simple tap of my global debit card without incurring extra currency conversion charges is something that definitely falls into the “better” category.
Post drink the rest of the journey to KL was smooth and easy. There was no need to take everything out from my bag when having it scanned through at the departure lounge and boarding was similarly straightforward. I had booked myself a front seat onboard the AirAsia aircraft as that option was still available at the time, being all too aware that ordinarily the leg space that they allow for tends to just be a bit too cramped for me to sit comfortably. I also pre booked myself a mushroom wrap which came with a small bottle of water. I reasoned that this would be adequate provision to get through the two and a bit hour flight time, but as usual I was also carrying a tube of sweets in my shorts side pocket for quick access to cover any diabetic concerns. The front seat location of course would also allow for a quick exit from the plane after it touched down, which thankfully it did a little ahead of schedule.
I had been wondering if I was going to run into any issues here at immigration, as one of the new requirements that has been recently introduced for entering Malaysia is the Malaysia Digital Arrival Card Card (MDAC) that has to be completed online no more than a few days before arrival. I had realised the previous evening that I had entered my passport expiry date incorrectly on my submitted form, and with no option that I could find upon revisiting the website to allow me to edit that previous version, I filled in another and hoped for the best, carrying the knowledge that there would now be two forms vying for attention when I arrived. I need not have worried. It was not questioned at all. It does make you wonder though as to just how much this new system is actually being utilised.
On previous visits, certain things I have needed have required cash to be used in payment, including a pre-paid local SIM card and KLIA express train in and out of the city, and to this end I needed to visit an ATM before I could head out any further. Unfortunately the only ones in the immediate vicinity were ones that carried additional charges when used, but it was a day on which I was willing to accept them. I took 200 Malaysian Ringgit (MYR) out to cover the overnight spend, however things had changed the short time I had been away. I could now pay for the SIM card using contactless and the train to the city had also managed to make it into the 2020’s, with benefit of there also being a 20 percent discount applied if using a non Malaysian payment card when tapping and paying at the electronic gate. So 55 MYR became 44 MYR and the freshly dispensed cash stayed in my pocket until it would needed at KL Sentral. Here my contactless streak would come to an end as I would need a little small change for the short MRT journey get me near to the hotel. A return trip to the mall in the evening was the only other cash that I needed that evening, bringing my used total 5.30 MYR. The evening at the hotel was spent just booking my hotel ready for when I arrived in DaNang, and also reserving a flight ticket out of the country for a couple of weeks later. The documentation for these were once again uploaded to my online folder and again I made them so that they would be available offline if needed. After this all that was left to do was prepare my bags and clothes for the next day's early start, clean and try to get some rest. I may actually have been asleep before my head hit managed to hit the pillow.
In the airport Starbucks I settled down again with matcha latte as I had some 24 hours before, but this time with added croissant. Whilst I’m not the biggest fan of Starbucks in general, sometimes needs must and their saturation of the marketplace (which I mostly hate the idea of) does mean that they are to be found at pretty much every turn and juncture. I do find that I appreciate the handwritten notes that are sometimes found jotted onto the side of the cups by the staff however. It’s those kind of little things that that can just help take an edge off of a day. Well it is for me anyway.
It was here that I decided it was time to catch up with the times myself and went about trying to get an e-Sim installed onto my phone. DaNang Airport as I remembered it was not the easiest place in the world to sort a sim card when I last visited in 2019, but this was a flight that also had arrived late in the evening. I remembered the stands for sim card vendors being in the baggage hall, but their being no ATM’s to get money from until you made it to the outside of the airport. Thanks to the newly converted currency that I now had stashed away safely in my wallet, I was not overly concerned by this detail for this visit, but I still decided that I would like to at least try to make that change away from a relying having to find a physical Sim every time that I landed in a different region.
I had looked briefly at options and plans whilst in Penang some weeks before, but at the time the options were both limited and more expensive when directly compared to the physical options available where I was going to be headed. For Vietnam however the prices seemed much more reasonable, with $13 USD giving me a 5gb plan covering 30 days and plenty of different add ons available if if I wanted to tailor the feature set further. I followed the install instructions the best that I could, but I was not going to be sure how successful those efforts had been until I had landed on the other side. With everything set and rest time up, I walked the short distance to the departure gate, passed the final security check and boarded the Batik Air plane that was waiting patiently. Unlike the AirAsia flight from Yogyakarta I had been unable to get a seat with any extra leg room. Thankfully however, the standard space given was also unlike that found on previous AirAsia flights. I noted that my 6D seat was actually positioned only 5 rows from the front of the fuselage, indicating that the seats had not been positioned as close together as perhaps they could have been.
The landing at DaNang was smooth enough, but the immigration process was much easier than I had expected it to be. Vietnam had previously been one of the countries that I had needed additional documentation for over the years, and this was something that I had prepared for in advance. This time however it was one of the easiest experiences I have had to date in any country that I have visited, with nothing more required from me other than the presentation of my passport to be duly stamped. After this it seemed like it was only a couple of minutes wait until my bag and I were reunited again and I was able to exit past the various telecom stands, stubbornly ignoring the fact that I was still struggling to get my mobile phone to connect with the new method. Outside the airport I finally cracked it, but in doing so had accidently enabled my UK sim for a very short time, but it was still enough time to receive a few texts and a phone call from the UK telling me that my house was eligible for some solar panels.
One of the more noteworthy SMS notifications that did manage to come through before I reached my spend limit was one from HSBC. It was a fraud alert in relation to the card I had used to pay for my $13 sim card at Kuala Lumpur and because of this they were putting a stop on the card until I notified them by phone that it was a payment I had authorised. The last time I had to deal with stuff like this was in 2016 when I was also in DaNang. A fitting end to a mad couple of days travel.
It still felt nice to be back here again.
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