24 hours on a plane is not a particularly pleasant activity – but what wouldn’t you do to fly to Australia for once. The land of kangaroos, koalas, platypuses and all the deadly little animals that live here in a very high density. I was very excited.
After half a day at work, my buddy Aris and I were drawn to Hamburg airport, from where we would first fly in the wrong direction for about an hour before heading east at Amsterdam Schiphol airport. The flight to Kuala Lumpur went off without a hitch and was even exceedingly pleasant thanks to the airline KLM.
Since we had a little time in Kuala Lumpur, we decided to take the express train to the Malaysian capital and explore the area around its main station a little. We didn’t get far, after all we only wanted to eat something and the time was limited. However, if we had known beforehand what hardships awaited us at the airport, we could have easily explored a large part of the city.
Back at the airport, we had to wait, because the plane that was supposed to be our flight was needed for another flight due to the current weather conditions and our new plane had to be flown in from nearby Singapore. Of course, Malaysia Airlines did not inform us about the delay at all. There was also no compensation. When we were finally able to take off with a delay of well over 3 hours, I was not only incredibly annoyed, but also extremely tired. Instead of quickly dimming the lights and letting the passengers sleep, Malaysia Airline insisted on their procedure and served dinner at about 2am. The flight attendant tapped me on my shoulder for minutes for this and my travel companion didn’t even say anything. In other airlines, you are simply left out and get your meal a little later if necessary, but with Malaysia Airlines, you are harassed incessantly.
Malaysia Airlines can be glad that I had already forgotten that they were responsible for a few plane crashes in their past. Otherwise, I would never have flown with them. Now I will never fly with them again in the future because their planes are outdated, poorly maintained and the service is terrible. As I had booked through the Dutch airline KLM, I then contacted Flightright to at least get the compensation of 600€ (minus their commission) for the 3 hours delay. However, the case is still open to this day (06.06.2021) and Malaysia Airlines seems to be resisting vehemently.
At some point, however, we were in Adelaide. The officials at the border control were anything but friendly and wanted to know all my travel plans and even see my return ticket. It’s just a pity that you can’t do that. So I described everything, referred to our rough itinerary, tried to open the itinerary for the flights via the KLM app and vowed not to emigrate to Australia. At some point, they gave up and we were finally able to pick up our luggage. I found the different routes to the exit strange, but the one we were assigned led us directly to the terminal without a stopover.
We had booked our rental car through billigermietwagen at Jucy Rentals. First I had to call a telephone number, where an employee gave me directions to the meeting point. After a short time, someone picked us up. Our rental car itself was an aging Toyota Corolla, which interestingly ran on all-season tyres from Triangle, which I myself, as a development engineer for car tyres, had never heard of. In the meantime, the tyres of the Chinese manufacturer can also be found in Europe, but they don’t really perform well. The Corolla never wanted to go straight, which made driving a bit more exhausting. Well, that could also have been due to the condition of the vehicle; either way, Jucy Rentals seems to have saved costs at the wrong end.
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