LIMA ’05

*

Times men­tioned in this post are not accu­rate due to time con­strains in com­plet­ing this post, which caused a delay in pub­lish­ing. This post was pub­lished three weeks after I started writ­ing. Not that the dates mat­ter, though.

—————————-

In three weeks, I’ve trav­elled to all four cor­ners of the Penin­su­lar Malaysia. Through­out my stay in Kuala Lumpur, which is on the west coast of the penin­su­lar, I have trav­elled to Johor Bahru (Southern tip), Kuan­tan (East coast) and recently Langkawi, which is in the Northern part of the penin­sula. So that’s North, South, East and West, all of which were reached by car.

That said, last week­end, my rel­a­tives and I went on a four-day vaca­tion to the lovely island of Langkawi, a 1 hour and 40 min­utes ferry ride off the coast of Kuala Kedah, North­ern Penin­su­lar Malaysia. Our Fri­day evening ferry ride were wildly rocky despite the boat’s large size due to “rough waves” as told by the ferry oper­a­tor. Noth­ing was more wel­com­ing as the Jetty Point har­bour as we held our nau­sea, des­per­ate for firm grounds. Upon reach­ing the shore, we rented a 12-seater old ass van, which stalled 3 times that night on its way to the hotel alone. There were 13 of us, you know, uncles, aun­ties, cousins, grandmommas..

Noon next day, we headed for the Langkawi Inter­na­tional Mar­itime and Aero­space (LIMA ’05) Exhi­bi­tion which were held there from 6 to 11 Decem­ber. Count us lucky for plan­ning a trip to Langkawi with­out even know­ing about LIMA, the only time where prices every­where spikes, taxi fares, car rentals, hotel fares, boat rides — you name it. Police escorted motor­cades sped by lit­er­ally every hour around town, I had to say though, that the island wasn’t pre­pared for the LIMA event: con­struc­tion at the new Jetty Point ferry ter­mi­nal wasn’t com­pleted to say the least, the upgrad­ing works on the road lead­ing to the exhi­bi­tion cen­tre was not even half done, too. Shame on them, really, to host an inter­na­tional event and not get­ting ready for it.

Nonethe­less, we made it to the LIMA exhi­bi­tion cen­tre in the egg-frying heat of that Sat­ur­day after­noon. The exhi­bi­tion cen­tre was filled with exhibitors from the avi­a­tion indus­try from all over the world, namely: RMAF, RMA, Antonov, Northrop Grum­man, BAE Sys­tems, Air­bus (nice A380 model), Boe­ing, Rolls Royce, blah blah blah. Amongst the poster grab­bing rush we man­aged to ‘grab’ a poster of the sweet-ass Air­bus A380 in MAS colours and a Sukhoi SU-30MK fighter jet poster. The for­mer which was ripped off an exhibitors table (with per­mis­sion, of course) and the lat­ter which was given by a Malay fam­ily who grabbed two of the same posters in the rush. Lucky, eh?

We com­pleted the whole exhi­bi­tion cen­tre just in time for the air­show which was at 2pm. 5 min­utes before that and we’ve already heard the RMAF MiG-29 tak­ing off. We rushed out and chased with the crowd to the tar­mac. Despite the mercy-less heat, every­one braved the sun and stepped out for the air­show. Parked on the tar­mac were a few air­crafts which I could not name. Well, I guess it’s bet­ter to leave the rest to pic­tures instead of end­less para­graphs, so here ya go:-


Fire Department’s chop­per in a res­cue demonstration.


Row of RMAF MiG-29s fir­ing up, get­ting ready for the airshow.


and off they go.


Roar­ing past the crowd in for­ma­tion. This shot isn’t pos­si­ble with­out the sports mode on my Nikon Coolpix 3700.


MiG-29s taxi­ing back after retir­ing from the sky.


An over­all shot of the tarmac.


Teh army babe dude pos­ing with the beast .