Rickard Gustafsson | Saturday, 13 December 2025
“Can passenger Rickard Gustafsson come to the desk at gate B15”. Then they took my boarding cards and asked me about my luggage. Well this can’t be good. Then they asked me about some form for permission to enter somewhere that I hadn’t filled. And started to print new boarding cards. This certainly cannot be good.
Then they showed me some link on their screen and gave me new boarding cards. Still the same as before, just different paper. So I wasn’t put on the next flight home at least. But the link they had showed me didn’t work. Some googling and I found something. Something that took ages to load. I started to fill the form and suddenly run into another wall. Address of where I’m going. I’m going into the jungle hopefully far from an address! But that wasn’t an option.
Started writing to Paul. And calling Paul, I needed this right now! Paul didn’t answer no matter how many times I called.
So I’m boarding the plane not knowing if I will solve this thing. But then I got an idea, Ashly! I’ll write to her on Facebook and hope she sees my message and can help me. Didn’t take long till I had an address to fill in the form then. Thank you Ashly for relieving me of some stress. I was a bit worried during the flight as it states that this form, MDAC, should be filled three days before arrival. But what will happen now? Will they stop me in Malaysia?
I could soon find something that looked like some kind of approval via a link I got in an email. And some more research showed that I wasn’t in trouble. Might just in for a bit slower process to get in to Malaysia. And at the passport check there were no problem. Didn’t even mention the approval.
And if you travel with Qatar with the stop in Thailand between Doha and Penang you might not be allowed to stay on the plane during the stop and have to walk around the airport in Phuket to get on the same plane again.
So how could I miss that MDAC form needed to be filled before arrival? Well I looked it up if I needed something like a visa so such to enter the country. The first thing I found was that if I would stay less than 90 days no visa required. And there were a couple of more points that didn’t apply. So I stopped reading. The final point there was the mention of MDAC. Well well.
So now I’m in Malaysia. Paul meeting me right outside the baggage drop and two steps outside the door was the snakehead truck. Smooth ride to Gerik. The traffic wasn’t bad at all as I was expect. Much nicer than England. But people on mopeds are crazy. Riding in the pitch black with no lights at all. The only mishap was that we probably did hit a small poor snake. Small as in it was only about two meters long. Not two meters between the eyes, actual two meters. Head to tail.
Then we did meet up Ashly for dinner. That was nice. Nice meeting the person who saved me quite a bit of stress during the travel. Nice food also. Nice to have a cold beer. Then we went to pick up something that I had requested. A life jacket. That was like condition for me to be able to go here. I wouldn’t have got permission from my girlfriend to if I wasn’t going to use a life jacket.
I was going to bring my own life jacket. You are allowed to bring an inflatable life jacket in your checked in luggage but you have to get permission from the airline. But I couldn’t get the permission to do so since part of my travel would be operated by more than one airline. A bit strange reason. So I had to put that on my wishing list to Paul.
And now I don’t get to hear the end of it. At any time. From Paul. “Can you be on the battleship without the life jacket?”, can you do this and that without… Yes I can. I actually have gotten permission from home to be on the battleship without the life jacket.
From there we started off the first night with not sleeping. Instead we drank beer and talked about everything and fly casting. Good idea when you the sleep you had gotten the last day was a couple of hours on an aeroplane. Then you don’t need a good night’s sleep when you will spend the next day fishing all day.
That must’ve been the reason that I fucked up the good chances I got during the day. And that I was fishing the HT9 prototype, it just isn’t ready. Not that I couldn’t keep it together and make the shot. Not that my training suddenly was nowhere to be found. Seeing this beautiful ghost show up from nowhere is very exciting and stressing. I think it was like five sets of snakeheads with babies that I did manage to spook. I ended up catching a bigger baby when missing one shot. That the only fish I did catch the first day. It didn’t even become better when I switched rod. Might have been that the number on the box didn’t match to number above the handle. How about that Lasse? One of Paul’s rods with a mismatching line. You like that huh?
“Are you swimming without the life jacket! Are you crazy?!”, I was just taking a break in the writing. And I’m allowed to go swim without the life jacket also. I do believe. And now it’s time for beer and waiting for the potatoes. I think I’ll save this trip to at least one or two more FPs.
Cheer, Rickard