Kuala Lumpur International Airport (tips)

So here goes a bunch of ‘consejos’ as the Spanish say it for what to do when you reach to the Malaysian airport. This airport is the main airport of Kuala Lumpur, it's called KLIA, and there is also KLIA2 which Air Asia flights take place there, so don’t confuse the two.

After passing through immigration, which was chosen the best airport immigration this year, you get to the baggage claim area, and well the rest are pretty easy to be honest so you guys don’t need tips there. a lot of countries don’t need visa to visit Malaysia, so make sure you have checked all requirements before travelling there, and I'm sure you have.

Tips #1: Changing money

Well coming from a foreign country you probably have no Malaysian currency at hand, the Malaysian currency is Ringgit, RM, and you definitely need it if you need to get to your hotel or desired accommodation from the airport. Now I really want to suggest you guys to not do is change a lot of money in the airport, the exchange rates are extremely high, really high honestly. I suggest changing enough amount for you to get to your hotel and then changing the rest of your money back in the city, especially if you want to change dollars or euros. Let me give you an example, like my case, we changed 50 dollars, the exchange rate was 4. 08 ringgits on every dollar, when I came to the city it was 4. 40 Ringgits on every dollar; that is like 32 ringgits of difference, you can have a proper good meal with that money so yea.

Tips #2: Buying a Sim Card

Alright well, you would probably be like gosh what does she wanna say about Sim Cards well, I want to tell you guys not to buy a Sim Card from the airport, why is that? Let me elaborate. So this time around my old Sim Card has expired, the Malaysian Sim Cards expire if you don’t use them for more than three months. So I had to buy a new one, so I was like yea sure let’s get it from the airport, I went to buy the U-mobile carrier, there are other ones like Maxis and Digi and all. I went up to the kiosk and they had such a weird deal, they said if you want a one week Sim Card it is for 20 ringgits. And I was like no I want a normal Sim Card and that’s how I saw they don’t have it. Inside the city you can get a U-mobile Sim Card for 8. 50 ringgits, and if you get a 10 ringgit top up you can get a deal that has up to 1GB of 3G for a month. You guys are welcome, I honestly should be getting paid to give these tips.

(U-mobile symbol)

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Transportation options

Now let’s explore the transportation options, I'm gonna explain the three best ways to get to the city from the airport, with a car it is about an hour to get to the city, give or take. Now you can also take the high speed train, which I'm going to explain about in just a bit and that would take about 30-35 minutes to get to KL Sentral.

Airport taxi:

The airport obviously, has taxi services, the cars are great, you can get a minivan if there are like a few of you, the normal taxi costs about 100 ringgits, pretty much, that fare could change depending on your location but that is usually the median, their service is great and the drivers are courteous but it is a little bit pricey to be honest. You can get one of these cabs which are black or dark blue color usually, inside of the airport at a certain kiosk and then come outside and get on one.

Grab:

I'm going to a write a full article on Grab and it’s benefits, I'm also going to compare grab and Uber together and reach a conclusion as to which one is the best to use in Malaysia. but for now I'm only going to talk about Grab, because that’s what I used to get to Kuala Lumpur from airport this time around; first of all you need to download the application and get started, honestly I'm not going to explain much, since I'm pretty sure you guys know how to use apps like this, you can use Grab, to pinpoint your location, and then see the estimated price, sometimes it's peak hour and then it is more expensive. We booked a ride from the airport to the Ampang area, the fare was about 65 ringgits rather than the 100. Although we paid for the road tolls as well, it was something around 75 ringgits till I got home. I was totally satisfied with the service, it's fast, it's reliable and safe.

(Grab logo)

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KLIA Express:

That is the name of the high speed train of the airport. The KLIA express is located inside the airport, and it is super convenient to use it, since you get to the city in about 30 minutes. The city station is located in KL Sentral, which is pretty much an interchange station, depends on where your accommodation is you can take a cab from there.

(Inside of the KLIA Express)

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Let’s say if you get to Kuala Lumpur, and you are in a hurry to get to the city, let’s say you have a business meeting or you don’t have a lot of luggage then yes you should take the Express train. The fare is about 55 ringgits per person, which given I paid 75 ringgits for two people to get to our accommodation paying 55 ringgits per person was kind of expensive, actually really expensive so we just chose Grab.

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I hope these information helps and you guys do have a smooth experience in KLIA.

Cheers.

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