ADVERSITY seems to have thrown a few new options at visa runners from Phuket and, with the South unsafe on the ground, feisty Firefly now offers some great solutions.

The flight to Penang, where the little airline began, is fairly familiar to visa runners but now there's a daily flight to Kuala Lumpur as well.

That's a mere 90 minutes in the air and a 30-minute, 23-kilometre bus trip to the Malaysian capital.

How's that?

Because Firefly lands at Subang, the old airport, not the big new International Airport, which is more than an hour by road from KL.

The convenience extends to competitive prices, because the new turbo-prop aircraft Firefly uses are extremely economical and some of the savings are passed on to consumers.

Phuketwan tripped along on the inaugural flight from Phuket to KL, and we'd give it a big thumbs up for convenience.

The fleet of ATR72-500s being flown by Firefly carry 72 passengers in plush leather seating and come crowd-free.

What's happening in the skies over Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia is a revolution.

Firefly, the community airline offshoot of Malaysia Airline Systems, is opening up a network of routes designed to ferry travellers to all kinds of exciting new destinations.

Among them, once you reach KL, are flights to Langkawi, Kota Bharu, Johor Bahru within Malaysia and further afield to Medan, and Pekanbaru in Indonesia. Go to Penang and you open up Banda Aceh, too.

It's simple to hop back to Samui instead of Phuket. One day soon, they hope to loop to Krabi and Hua Hin.

And many more routes are being planned to open up romantic, remote destinations, including exotic and remote destinations in Indonesia: Bengkulu, Padang, Jambi, Palembang and Pangkal Pinang.

The era of spending days crowded among the chicken cages on a local bus are gone . . unless you happen to like chickens and buses.

From Subang airport, where a new terminal is being fitted out, we went on a frantic tour of some of the sights that Malaysia has to offer.

The blue Mosque was quite a sight but most memorable of all were the fireflies: not the airline's fleet of planes, but the flying insects they were named after.

Thailand has firefly havens, too, but I'd never seen anything quite so spectacular as the fireflies of Selangor, an environmentally friendly state about 65 kilometres from KL.

We were paddled up the river to watch the fireflies flash on and off in their thousands . . . it was a remarkable sight on the Seangor River. They stretched for about 10 kilometres along one bank.

Homestays are popular in the region, too, and it's little wonder. Stay there and you could come back for a fabulous encore the following night.

Local food is also part of the attraction, along with top-spinning and batik painting.

Bukit Malawati gave us a glorious lighthouse on Malawati Hill, at Kuala Selangor.

Legends of a virgin who disappeared mysteriously before her wedding and a poisoned well where traitors were once tortured added spice to the trip.

As they say, Selangor is ''a never-ending discovery.''

Back in the bustling capital, we took off again . . .this time in an elevator up Menara Kuala Lumpur, otherwise known as KL Tower, at 421 metres one of the world's tallest communications towers.

The Petronas Towers may be a little bit closer to heaven, but the KL Tower certainly offers exciting views, too. Try them both and compare them yourselves.

At the base there's a winter park, an animal zone and the chance to ride in an F1 race car simulator.

And the good thing is that the airport and the flight home is as close when you leave as it is when you arrive.

The author was a guest of Firefly in Malaysia.


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