Back in Malaysia

I am glad to be back in old Malaysia. I didn't blog during the weeekend as most of the time I was wathing the Commonwealth Games on TV.

I had a terrible time on Saturday. I left Ashgabat, Turkmenistan on Friday , 6.15 pm. The Ashgabat airport is really quite bad. When I walked into the departure lounge, I was hit by heavy fumes from cigarettes. To my unpleasant surprise and contrary to the norm in other airports, smoking is not banned in airport departures lounges in Turkmenistan. There was about half a dozen people happily puffing away near the toilets. I scurried away to sit near the bar where strangely enough no one was smoking there.

My flight was on Turkmenistan Airline to Bangkok. The aircraft was a Boeing 757 perhaps in its most basic(minimal) configuration. There was no TV screen to watch nor was there any audio facilities. The service was OK but the food ordinary. The English language spoken during various announcements was utterly incomprehensible. See this website for what others had to say about Turkmen. airlines.

The flight was 6 hrs arriving in Bangkok at 2.40 pm, 30 minutes late due to late departure. Bangkok International airport is really in bad shape. There are not enough seats in a the airport and even that hour, most the seats were fully occupied. Most of the people in the airport lounges at that hour were Indian and Vietnamese. Suffice for me to say, the 6 hours I waited for the connecting flight to KL felt like 16 hrs. Next time, I will bring some bedding materials like foam sheets and potable pillows.

On running in Asghabat, I did manage to run 5 km on Wednesday evening. There are plenty of parks in Asghabat and very few people are using the parks in Winter. There is no problem with safety as there is at least one policeman/army at the park. I did get strange looks from the policeman and the locals while I was running in the park. I don't think ANYONE runs for exercise in Turkmenistan.

I will post some photos later.

My right knee is getting much better now. I did not get any symptoms when I ran 5 km last Wednesday. I plan to do some minimum running this week.