Hello, travellers of Hive. I hope you all are doing well.
Today, I will share my hectic experience through the immigration process mishap and how I got away with the officers after receiving a bad news and how excited I got after knowing that I would visit my friend here in Malaysia after a year and a half since I last saw him in Bangladesh.
P.s. I couldn’t post all this time because I had final exams and I had to do good.
Without further ado, let’s begin.
The flight for KL with Batik Air was at 1:10 am and boy was my schedule jam packed with events. I had 1 final exam which I had to prepare for, a bunch of chores, and had to pack my bag for the trip. I assumed that this day would be impossible for me to get by.
First things first, I woke up early and went for a walk and risked giving a bad final by not finishing my studies. Mind you, I still had not completed practicing all the exercises that were included in the finals. I went out at 6:40 am and came back by 8:10 am, completed about 10k steps.
After that, I went out and completed a chore; I brought water from the nearby Wasa booth where water is sold for extremely cheap but carrying the water bottles are the difficult part. Each bottle can hold 5 litres and I took 10 of these. It was rigorous but I got it done and right afterward I went ahead and made some breakfast. I had the foresight to buy a small veggie pack from the store back near my home. I heated it up and by putting it on top of the instant tortillas and made a poached egg. By then, it was 11:40 am and man I had the perfect start for a long day now that I think about it.
After the short brekkie, I spent the next 5 hours studying for the impending final exam. I didn’t know that completing all the exercises would take about 5 hours. So, I completed almost all the exercises and skipped 2 of them before heading out for the exam.
The exam went quite well, the majority of the marks was in theory while the math part carried about 43% of the marks.
After the exam, we discussed how our exams went and boy were we all disappointed to see that all our exams were bad. I told my buddies that I was going abroad for over 2 weeks and asked if they wanted to head out to eat. They promptly agreed and we went over.
We called in 3 more guys and ordered our food as it takes more than 20 minutes to receive the food. We all got student combo meals while the others took other offers presented at the shop.
We discussed how things were going to change for us since we were becoming 3rd years and if our exams were good. We all agreed that this semester was just a big disaster… for all of us lmao. After everyone arrived, I announced my departure that night. They congratulated me and anked for my safe return. I bid them farewell and returned home by 8:30 pm.
Mind you my flight was at 12:50 am and I haven’t even packed yet.
Man, my mom screamed at me for being behind the schedule… yesterday was just not my day. I quickly brought out my clothes and finished packing within 9:30 pm as I unlocked peak efficiency.
After 10:30 pm, we left home and bid everyone good bye and headed toward airport with all the necessary documents. Reached the airport within 30 minutes.
After we made out way inside Shahjalal airport, the people who were going to Malaysia for the first time were asked to stand aside for manual verification of visas.
It was only then when I found that my there was a typo in my visa made by the Malaysian embassy when they issued. That is why the department of immigration could not find my visa info in their website. The officer present directly warned me if I had taken the help of illegal methods to get ahold of this visa. He also told me that I may not be to fly today because they couldn’t find my visa there.
This checking went on for 50 more minutes. My brother’s and uncle’s visas were good and they got out of immigration… leaving me with the other passengers. Later, an officer took several passports and asked for the people whose names being called to follow him toward the head office.
Waited for another 20 minutes there… mind you that it was around 12:20 am and my flight got delayed to 1:10 am.
The head officer in the seat asked if the rest of my information was right… they checked and determined that it was correct and that the typo in the visa was a clerical error and they finally let me through. They also advised me to directly go to the visa checking spot and enter from the exit gate since my flight was boarding time was 30 minutes away. They did warn me that I may be stopped and maybe even sent back here in Bangladesh if their immigration officer wanted it in Malaysia because of the mistake their Malaysian embassy made.
Man… talk about wild. Later, we made our way through the terminals and to the boarding area.
At 1:07 am we checked in and found that the flight got delayed by 20 minutes more. I had mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I got some time to rest and the other is that had to wait for 20 minutes.
It was only after reaching the plane through the bus we realised why they made us wait this long. This airline merged the passengers travelling at 11:40 pm with our flight which is how 97% of the seats were filled by the time I reached my seat. P.s. my seat was dead last. Don’t know how the people reacted to having their flight delayed by 2 hours.
Once aboard, the pilot was swift in action. He put us on the runway within 5 minutes and the usual instructions came in, the section was lit up and it looked fantastic.
Even though I have an iPhone 14, the speed at which we were going made the picture a bit blurry on the left side.
Within minutes we had flown out of the Chittagong port and out of Bangladesh… and in my head the only thing going on was if the officer at the immigration’s words were gonna come true.
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What I didn’t know on the flight was that this one server the Malay version of Bangladeshi food. So my brother and I got chicken biriyani which cost about $14.99 total and it wasn’t as good as the one I am accustomed with. It… just wasn’t that good.
I struggled to get a good sleep because my ear was doing that funny thing where it kept getting murdered over and over again but after a while I managed to grab some zzzs. Morning arrived and what a stupendous view I was able to see.
30-40 thousand feet above sea level and the clouds were sublimely spread out above the vast blue sky. This is what my friend in Malaysia said about Malaysia, it has one of the best cloud formation in the sky… even though he’s been in only 3 countries… I agree with him because I too have been in only 3 countries XD.
Within minutes we were going to land in Kuala Lumpur International Airport where I did not except to meet all the white people. Because this was not a tourist season yet, Summer is an off season but here they were… just like me; we all thought this off season would be a perfect opportunity to get the best seats at cheap price.
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As per customs, we made our way to the immigration section. I avoided all the chocolate sections because I knew they were too going to be overpriced.
This is where the real problem would begin. We waited in the huge line by the immigration office for about an hour.
When our turn finally came, I went straight up to the officer. He asked my name and my area of stay. I showed him the documents and the invitation letter my aunt had sent for me from her temporary residence at Sefina Mont Kiara, apparently it’s a posh area. And then came the real hurdle. He checked my visa and told that it didn’t show in their website. With a trembling voice, I told them that there was a typo in the visa issued by their embassy. To verify this, he went back to another station positioned just above their seat and matched my words with the information on their embassy’s website. 5 gruelling minutes later, my brother and uncle were cleared by this time, the officer came back with a smiling face and said that there was indeed a typo and I was free to go. He did warn me that I was going to have this conversation again when I will leave the country. That didn’t bother me much, what’s 10 extra minutes of standing in the line in the face of not getting into the country at all.
I couldn’t get a picture of this kind officer but I was absolutely stoked to see that I went from being inadmissible for flight to getting into Malaysia, a country known for for it’s vibrant culture and history and art/frescoes.
Once outside, we called up my friend here in Malaysia and my aunt about which SIM card to get. They both elected for us to get comdigi. It had 5G, unlimited internet access for a month for 24.99RM. That’s about $6.99. A good deal.
Then, we ordered a car from grab and now we are heading straight toward my aunt’s apartment.