{"id":25154,"date":"2022-04-07T21:26:03","date_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:26:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=25154"},"modified":"2022-04-07T21:27:42","modified_gmt":"2022-04-07T13:27:42","slug":"perdana-view-backershagen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=25154","title":{"rendered":"Perdana View => Backershagen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are two places I call home, Perdana View in Petaling Jaya and Backershagen in Amsterdam. Most of the time I live in Malaysia, once or twice a year I stay for a couple of weeks in the Netherlands. Because of the Covid-19 pandemic it was almost three years ago that I visited the Netherlands. In the picture below the apartments are indicated with an X, left Perdana View, right Backershagen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In February I decided to book a trip to the Netherlands from 30 March until 11 May. I was fully vaccinated, including a booster shot. The Netherlands were opening their borders and Malaysia was planning to do the same. I only needed a negative PCR-test, taken less than 48 hours before my planned departure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weekend of 20 March I had visited Taiping, see my report Taiping, March 2022<\/a>. On the last day of my visit I had been in close contact with a Covid-infected friend and although I should be immune, I was a bit worried, so I did an antigen self test, which was negative. Still I was nervous when on 28 March I went to my GP for the PCR test. Relieved when I received the negative result the next morning. Left the antigen test, right the PCR test<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Because of the uncertainty, I only started packing after I received the negative test result, one day before departure! When I booked my ticket, I expected that, being a KLM frequent flyer, I was entitled to one piece of cargo luggage (23 kg) free of charge. But my level was too low, so I could only bring 12 kg cabin luggage. I managed to take only essential stuff, of course I had warm clothes in Amsterdam. The last evening I could relax in our roof garden \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In the past KLM had a direct flight from KLIA to Schiphol airport, but nowadays I first had to fly to Singapore. When I booked my ticket, I had a Singapore Airline flight to Singapore (20:40-21:50) with a connecting KLM flight (23:35 – 06:50). Perfect, less than a 2 hour transit in Singapore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But a few days before departure KLM rescheduled my flight “for operational reasons” Departure from KL at 2pm with Jetstar Asia and from Singapore with KLM at 23:05, resulting in about 8 hours transit in Singapore. How to spend that time? The departure of the KLM flight half an hour earlier was probably the reason, to change the connecting flight from KLIA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We left Perdana View early at 10 am and that was a good decision because KLM had not notified me that the Jetstar Asia flight would not depart from KLIA but from KLIA2, the former Low Cost Terminal. Nearby KLIA, but still a hassle for us and a bad move of KLM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was pleasantly surprised by the service of Jetstar. I think they were not used yet to KLM travelers. They decided to accept my cabin bag as cargo luggage and directly transfer it to Schiphol, so I didn’t have to carry it around in Singapore. I had to show my negative PCR test, that was all. There was time enough for a nasi lemak \ud83d\ude09 Passing Malaysian immigration was smooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When boarding started, they invited me to came forward first, for the first time in my life I entered an empty plane. And during the short flight (less than one hour) I was one of the few passengers who got a muffin and a bottle of water. Kudos for Jetstar <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Thorough fogging of the plane and not a full flight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In Changi airport I noticed the departure time of 23:05. Eight hours to spend. I had visited Changi Airport in 2019<\/a>, admired the famous Jewel, but now I was in transit. However there are an amazing lot of things to do while in transit<\/a>. You can even make trips to the city while staying in transit! I only visited the gardens in Terminal 1. There are three of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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From left to right the Artifical Tree garden, the Waterlily garden and the Cactus garden. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I bought a book and found a quiet place to read.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had dinner at the Burger King, quite good quality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Many shops were still closed<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Shock! The KLM flight was retimed to 23:35, the original departure time! So I could have taken the 20:40 SQ flight and saved 8 hours of time. The flight (from Jakarta) was unpleasantly full, but fortunately i had an empty seat next to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Usually the KLM flies from KL to the Netherlands over the Ukraine. Of course they did not because of the war in Ukraine, the plane went far south. As usual I could not sleep well. We landed early at 6:05 am, the pilot announced that the temperature was 1\u00b0 Celsius with a chance of show. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Immigration was surprisingly smooth, no Covid checking at all. Nobody was wearing mouth masks. Because of the cold I considered taking a taxi, but finally decided to go the usual way, a ten minute train to Amsterdam-Zuid and from there a 15 minute walk home. I survived the walk, but it was bitterly cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here I am standing in the lift to my apartment. Yolanda, Paul’s sister who has a key of the apartment, had bought flowers, a nice welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As the apartment had not been inhabited for more than two years, I had to go shopping at the nearby AH. And have my first lunch, with cheese, herring and strawberries, of course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was a cold night, with snow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here are some pictures I took the next day.. Some daffodils were trying to survive. Real winter atmosphere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I had to solve several problems that day. The prepaid sim card of my mobile had expired, I needed to buy a new one. My laptop had problems, I had to buy a new keyboard\/mouse. And the central heating was not working properly. Not a nice start of my visit. But still I could enjoy a pre-dinner drink<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And prepare my first, very Dutch dinner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Saturday a guy came to repair the central heating. And a bicycle pump was deliverd after an online order. Because of course the tyres of my bike were completely flat after three years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That Saturday evening, three days after coming home, I could finally relax and enjoy the tulips.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Sunset and view from my apartment Sunday morning. At least a bit of blue sky. But still unpleasantly cold.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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More blogs about this trip to the Netherlands will follow<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are two places I call home, Perdana View in Petaling Jaya and Backershagen in Amsterdam. Most of the time I live in Malaysia, once or twice a year I stay for a couple of weeks in the Netherlands. Because … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25188,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3,11,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-malaysia","category-netherlands","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/04\/2022-03-31-13.50.14.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2LqIR-6xI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25154","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25154"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25154\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25217,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25154\/revisions\/25217"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/25188"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25154"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25154"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25154"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}