We entered Malaysia at Ipoh (pronounced E-poh). From there were were going to be heading 2 hours up into the mountains to the Cameron Highlands.

Ipoh is about halfway up Malaysia's West Coast. The airport is tiny. It has a 2 gates and you walk right out on the runway. Our planes were a decent size - the typical 6 seats across - and the flight was just over an hour from Singapore. We flew Air Asia there and Scoot back - both budget airlines. Carry-on luggage saved us the steep baggage fee. It's $50 for 1 piece of checked luggage.

We had a good chuckle as our Air Asia flight took off from the very modern Singapore airport. From that point on, things were a bit more rustic. The aircon billowed out the vents causing it to look like our plane was rapidly filling with smoke. No one seemed concerned. The landing at the Ipoh Airport was a bit hard and bumpy. As I looked out the window, I saw were were right near the end of the short landing strip. Customs took moments: passport and finger prints. They didn't ask where we were going.

On our way home, we found the Ipoh airport was a bit confusing. This is despite the fact that it's small enough to have only 2 bathrooms (one of which is at the final waiting room) and only 2 customs officers processing your exit from Malaysia.

Speaking of bathrooms there were no toilet seats in the airport bathrooms, even though there were western style toilets.  You, of course, could choose to use the squat toilet instead, where the bowl is flush with the ground.

...but back to getting on our flight home towards Singapore...

We scanned our luggage through the xray and then carried it to the counter. We did this with our carry-on bags, but in hind sight, I don't think we needed to. It wasn't controlled, we could have just walked around the x-ray machine. If you had any luggage to check, you were given an "approved" tag once it was scanned. We checked one bag on the way home, because we had some larger liquids (jars of local jam and honey), but we never saw anyone check for liquids in the entire airport. We had to go back and rescan that bag to get the right tag for it.

At the counter it took about 10 minutes per group to get our boarding passes. There seemed to be a lot of typing and printing and every piece of carry-on (including your purse) got a specific tag. It seemed to take every group that long! Then we went back out past the xray machine to sit at the front of the airport. It wasn't a secure space at all.

We sat at the very front of the airport for a while, because they wouldn't let us go through through customs after until shortly before our flight. The final waiting room to board was too small for more than a flight or 2 of passengers. I still have no idea what the trigger for getting in the customs line was. There was no announcement or time for that printed on the tickets. Eventually there seemed to be a line going through customs and they let us go through with that group.  After a few seconds in customs our carry-ons were scanned through a different xray machine, and that left us at the final waiting room to board the plane.

In the waiting room a number of people were standing. There weren't enough seats for everyone. There was a screen on the wall that kept reading "Final Call" beside our flight number. That was making us nervous, but it was obviously not our boarding time. We finally realized it was 2 different messages side by side on a slightly different rotation time. The screen was missing a vertical line which would have made it more obvious. We had been reading it from left to the far right, instead of as 2 separate messages. That final call was for the flight before us. Shortly before our boarding time, an announcement came over the P.A. saying the gate was closing for our flight. That made us jump up, but that was only the check in gate closing (where we got our boarding passes) and not the actual boarding gate.  

The had the umbrellas ready for us, but we missed any rain as we walked down the runway to the plane.