Transit
After a bit of struggling with the Date Line and timezones, I seem to have concluded that it will take a total of 31 hours for us to travel from our front door to the Bangkok Airport. Our travel won't end there, but we overnight at an airport hotel before a 3-hour hop to Kathmandu, and it seems unfair to tack on an additional 14 hours or so to take us all the way to our destination. If you aren't on a plane or waiting for one, it doesn't count.The first leg of our journey is standard Christmas week: long lines to check bags ("What do you mean I can't check 6 bags? Guess I'll just have to carry them on..."), people who can't find their seat despite very clear markings, people who actually watch the safety video. Sigh. We are in the back of a packed 767 from Boston to LA, 6 1/2 hours of travel novice fun. The characters are predictable:
Our arrival in LA is roughly an hour late, which is a bit of a disaster for our connection. We were scheduled to have two hours to connect, reasonable since our bags were checked through. 45 minutes, however, is not reasonable. In fact, I'm recalling the warning that if we weren't checked in 45 minutes in advance, they can give away our seats. Since we sort of checked in at the Boston counter, and since surely Thai has United's schedule, I hope this does not apply. But hope is nothing compared to results.
- Elderly Couple who Travels Once and Year and Remembers When Flying Was Much Nicer. They shoot evil looks at the rest of us, dressed in comfy clothes and sprawled under blankets. They are neat. The do not sprawl. They read and converse (quietly) on politely neutral topics. Unfortunately, this rigid concern for propriety does not extend quite far enough. About an hour from LA, she whips out the nail polish and induces an impressive coughing fit in me.
- Family with Two Children in Diapers and Car Seats Traveling to See Grandparents. It is hard not to sympathize -- the children are quiet, the parents exhausted. Someone reclines their seat practically on top of one car-seated child and yet they do not scream or complain. And yet, I notice, the habit of giving dirty looks to misbehaving children on planes seems now to have extended to all passengers under 4 regardless of their behavior. While I've certainly been tortured in the past, these poor folks deserved congratulations rather than glares.
- Loud Snoring Guy. Probably one of the most feared archetypes, this fellow is sitting only a row from the quiet Family. Since the flight left at 8am and no doubt required him to awaken at 5am or so, he understandably wants to nap. Not an uncommon hope. Alas, it is only when he is awake that the rest of us have a chance. Many of us try to drown him out, but this only partially works. I get Toy Story 2 with a constant background rumbling, as if Buzz is trying to save Woody from an earthquake that struck Pixar's LA studio. I seem to remember quakes being shorter, though. I thought for a while a mini-uprising would take place, but in the conspiracy of silence modern travel requires, we all resign ourselves to our fate and do nothing.
LAX is very information-free, we find. After asking several people and following hand-scribbled signs, we find the transfer bus stop. It is suspiciously crowded. Several buses stop, none for us. 37 minutes. Time to try desperate measures. The taxi dispatcher recommends walking, as the traffic is terrible. We briskly proceed, arriving at a very empty check-in desk 30 minutes before our flight leaves. Check-in is smooth. Our seats are fine. But the plane has been boarding for 20 minutes, and they'll close the flight 20 minutes before takeoff for a final security check. We are told to go directly to the gate. We hurry off to find a 100-foot line at security. The line twists through several checkpoints -- boarding pass? passport? X-ray? -- over the next 8 minutes. We run to the gate with exactly 1 minute left before the cutoff.
We are not alone, however. A large crowd is still filing through the doors for our flight. The buses take the remaining passengers on a long tour of the runways of LAX, stopping from time to time to allow planes to pass. Some novice international travelers are quite impressed by the whole process. I haven't had a remote gate in a long time, so I hark back to nostalgia. It seems much of my childhood was punctuated by running madly through airports, cajoling desk agents to let us on flights, and riding buses to large planes to go faraway places. The Japanese businessman next to us is less charmed by the exclamations of fascinated Americans. His entire expression makes clear that he does indeed wake snoring tourists.
Step four in the boarding process. We arrive at a small tower connected to a jetway. As we walk up the ramp to board, customs officers and a drug-sniffing dog inspect us. The dog stops a young man, holding up the line for a minute. The whispers behind us are thrilled -- it's like Law & Order, right in front of us. The man is cleared and we move on. The entertainment factor is high already for all us tourists, which is comforting since we are about to enter a small metal tube where we will sit in small seats with recycled air for 20 hours. We wouldn't mind the Rockettes. Finally, a bare 5 minutes before flight time, we get to our seats and home for the next day. I hate LAX. Let's not even think about the (small) probability that our bags were able to make the same journey. Sure hope I like this dress.
We opted to upgrade to business class for the long LA to Bangkok flight, the only sane option in my opinion. While Thai is not the most luxurious airline I've encountered, it is quite good. Beautiful women in even more beautiful silks quietly offer us drinks and hot towels. The meals include Thai options, so we happily sprun veal lion for curry. The cabin has a strong color scheme, relfected in everything from the upholstery to the linens to the color of the walls. Even the tray table is in line. Purple. Very purple. There are easily 20 different shades represented, and you won't find another color anywhere. The majority of the items are muted, greyed out a bit, and they coordinate well. Still, this is a lot of purple to wake up to.
We are provided the usual gifts -- toiletry kits, a travel wallet, socks, mask, earplugs. Rather than dig out my own toiletry kit, I experiment with Thai-made Close-Up toothpaste and what I hope is lip balm. The case, surprisingly, is not purple. As an added bonus, I think I now know the Thai word for "fresh". It might also be "clean", but those seem similar enough to work. Progress! Of course, the bathroom includes a poorly-translated (if appropriate) "Eau de Toilet", so I could be misled.
A few rows ahead of us is a Thai family. A girl of about 9 clutches a stuffed lion as she sleeps, looking quite content. I notice the lion has a small tag identifying its owner. That was me, 20-odd years ago. Come to think of it, I could use a stuffed lion for these flights even now. We eat. We drink water. We sleep. We read. We watch movies. We eat again. We drink more water. We sleep. 12 hours later, we stop at Narita airport in Tokyo. At first, it seems that everyone is disembarking here, but we soon learn that actually everyone leaped for the open door. This is anticipated. We are led by clear English signs through security and into a small departure lounge. As we cannot reboard for about 40 minutes, we have some time to wander through the duty-free stores. The ease of our passage is explained by the brisk business done selling perfume, alcohol, cigarettes, rice crackers, and tiny electronics to bleary-eyed passangers only now realizing there are 7 more hours in the air to go. Quick! We need Marlboros! Good thing it's a non-smoking flight.
About the time we leave Narita (7pm local time on December 24th), we've been in the air for 24 hours. We're a bit confused, a bit achy, and I've gotten quite sick of the taste of Thai Close-Up, but we're ok. The nice thing about these insanely long flights is that it helps me get time-zone adjusted much faster. It takes looking at a window and a watch to understand what day it is. Of course, that's half the fun.