Subang Airport Shuttle Bus Service

Today I made my way to the Klang Valley again for the Goods & Services Tax (GST) Agent examination to be held at the Putra World Trade Centre.

If last week I took the bus, this time I chose to fly with Malindo Air. Despite the current weather it was a rather turbulence free flight and I arrived at the Subang Airport on time.

Unfortunately mate Nasser could not pick me up as scheduled thus a change of plan was necessary.

I decided to head for kL Sentral to have lunch there before checking in at the Plaza Hotel in Jalan Raja Laut.

Now there is the Airport Shuttle Bus service that will take travellers to two destinations, the LRT Station in Kelana Jaya (RM4) and the other one is to Pudu Sentral via Sunway Pyramid, Bangsar LRT Station, kL Sentral and the KTM Old Railway Station (RM10).

If you take the cab it will cost you around RM40 for a single trip to kL.

The journey to kL Sentral took around 30-45 minutes in smooth traffic.

The shuttle bus service is operated by Konsortium Transnasional Berhad (KTB) which also has Nice Executive Coach, Transnasional and Plusliner under it's stable.

Chonburi Revisited

How so many things could change within a year.

My first visit to Chonburi was almost exactly a year ago, covering the Asian Youth Trophy (ACT) 2013 match between the home side Chonburi FC against Frenz United B.

At the time I was still the editor of the Dunia Sukan magazine.

Last Sunday I found myself travelling to the tow 100 km southeast of Bangkok again for an assignment which almost mirrored the one that I carried out last year.

However this time, I was travelling for asiana.my which had been engaged by the ACT organiser as their official photographer for the tournament.

Air Asia was still the official airline for the tournament and I departed to Bangkok's Dong Meuang Airport with the rest of the media group and after an hour journey arrived at the Chon Inter, the same hotel that I stayed last year.

Then I found out that the senior side were playing that night against Thai Port Authority in a Thai Premier League match at their stadium. It was an opportunity that did not come all the time, to capture the actions in the best league in South East Asia.

With a little assistance received from the home side I managed to get by the pitch side.

It was a fast and thrilling match in which the home side needed to win in order to continue their challenge for the league title.

They managed to take the lead on the hour mark but the visitors levelled not long after, thanks largely to a mistake by the home side goalkeeper.

It was a pleasure for me to be able to cover a match in another league which gave me the insight on how much better the organisation of the match-day operation at the club than the one we encounter in most local matches.

The next day it was the match that I was assigned for with Harimau Muda C taking on the host Chonburi for a place in the final.

The Thai youngsters who were trailing 3-1 after their first leg defeat did not put much fight after the Malaysians scored their first goal of the night and went down 3-0 for the Young Tigers to go through on a 6-1 aggregate win.

The next day there were talks that we would have the time to go around Bangkok before catching the flight back home.

Unfortunately the hope went up in smoke when the driver pulled into a familiar looking building along the way to the airport, an IKEA store!

Well, taking the infamous Bangkok gridlock into account it was perhaps a good decision as we need to catch our flight back home soon after.

I had been to Thailand twice now but still to visit the country's capital, Bangkok.

The Day with the Elephants

It was our last day of our sojourn in the Klang Valley. Unlike our previous visit here, we decided to get out from the Valley early this time.

Why?

Mostly it was due to the elephants.

To be precise, the elephants of Kuala Gandah.

It has been our intention to visit the sanctuary for quite some time now and today was just as perfect as any other day to do so.

Thus we departed around 11.30 am and after a brief stop at Batu Caves for lunch there was no further stop.

At least that was the plan.

However as we approached Karak suddenly Cha vomited. Thus instead of going to the Lanchang interchange we exited at Karak to get the youngest AKS clean up.

After everything was cleaned up we were on our way again. I decided to take the old trunk road.

It certainly brought back memories of driving to and from the Klang Valley before the existence of the East Coast Highway.

The road to the sanctuary was quite winding and it could be quite dark during the night.

We reached the sanctuary at around 2.30 pm and after the formality of registering ourselves at the welcome centre we went to the pen.

Our timing was not good as the show by the elephants was ending by the time we reached the pen.

But the timing was right if we wanted to watch the elephants having their bath.

After the show the older elephants were brought to the area while for the bath, two younger ones were brought to the stream.

I was thinking of taking part in the bathing with the elephants but it seemed quite late when we arrived thus I did not register myself for it. By the way it cost RM30 per person to take part.

Thus we watched the two young elephants taking their bath and the public who had registered to bath with them in the stream.

It looked like a lot of fun. Thus I am determined to come back and do just that in the future.

After a while we decided to go back to the pen where an older elephant was being fed by the visitors.

The sugar cane cost RM3 and we had fun feeding the elephant.

So that was about it, the day we visited the Kuala Gandah Elephants Sanctuary.

...