Earthquakes, Gamblers, Pirates and Oysters: BKK-NTQ-LAS-SJU-NAS-YOW-CDG-BCN-BKK in Y
It all started with an excuse. I "needed" to visit a conference of marginal utility (but serious potential for fun) in Puerto Rico, which would be located 11913 miles away from Singapore if there was a non-stop flight, which there of course isn't. As soon as I'd convinced myself that a Star Alliance round-the-world ticket would be the best way to accomplish this, the mathematical perfection of this Great Circle curve started to acquire fractal cruft: stops in Japan, the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas on the way there, a visit over to the Bahamas since it's almost right next door anyway, a detour to Canada, and to France, Finland and Spain on my way back to Singapore. The full route, courtesy of GC2:
This time, I'm going to try a strange hybrid format: the stories of me poking around strange places doing strange things will be posted on Wikitravel Extra, while the stories of me sitting around in airports or on airplanes commenting on trivia of hardware and service will be posted here on Flyertalk. Both will be indexed together. Any comments on the workability or lack thereof for this welcome!
The plane turned out to be the flying museum piece I expected, a crunky old Airbus (the oldest in Thai's fleet, if I'm not very much mistaken) with all the aesthetic charm and usability of a Commodore 64. I can understand Thai flying these domestically, or even making the occasional hop to Singapore and back, but medium-range redeyes with these things is pushing it. But then again, flying to FUK instead of KIX/NGO/NRT saved some time and (for NRT/KIX) a pretty painful transfer, so beggars can't be choosers...
And it could've been worse. The flight was around 70%-ish full, but my neighbor jumped across the aisle, leaving me with two seats to use. After a "light meal" that consisted of a pastry and a cup of juice, I strecthed out diagonally and, much to my own surprise, slept for ~3 hours of this 4.5 hr flight.
Breakfast was big but bad. Yogurt, fruits and juice I could deal with, but the centerpiece was a "crepe omelette" gruesomely splattered with a vomitous white sauce so foul I could only eat one -- I can't remember ever running across literally inedible airline food before. What happened at TG catering, which is usually pretty good?
The sky over Kyushu was cloudy as we flew in, only the shapes of a few hills peeking through the mist. I girded myself for the battle that awaited.
I headed back to T1 and got there with an hour to spare. While the international side of FUK is pretty slick, T1, which only caters to small planes to obscure domestic destinations, is a bit worn around the edges. After half a year in cricket-crazy India, though, I did like the way that the gate entrances were termed "Wickets" in the English signage. (Bowled for a duck, wot wot?) And then it was time to end this maiden visit and wave buh-bye to Kyushu; I'll be back.
Sometimes the sheer dedication of Japanese to their job amazes me. As the aircraft rolled out of the gate, they all lined up in front of the gate, waved goodbye to the plane and its passengers, and then bowed deeply. Maybe it was just jet lag and lack of sleep, but I swear I had to wipe away a tear just watching it.
This zippy little dolphin, which can take barely 100 pax, is one-class and as cramped as a cheap can of tuna. But it's only an hour's flight to KMQ, so I'll manage...
Noto Airport is among Japan's newest, and certainly amongst its most obscure -- it took a little poking around until I realized that the Star Alliance schedule lists it under "Wajima/JP", and it also made history by being the first airport I've been to that wasn't listed in the usually all-knowing Great Circle database. (Rest assured, this grievous defect has since been corrected.) Under an innovative profit guarantee cooked by the fine businessmen of Noto, ANA operates two flights to it daily from Tokyo, so that ANA is paid if occupancy falls below a minimum threshold, and Noto is paid if the threshold is exceeded. (So far, both sides have been making money.) Given this level of traffic, though, the airport is rather absurdly oversized: it's a grand four-story edifice complete with a fancy information display system showing a week's worth of the same two flights to Tokyo, and two aerobridges which are unlikely to ever be used simultaneously... but at least the airstrip hosts an aviation academy, where students can practice without too much danger of colliding into passenger jets.
As I sat in the gate lounge, I realized I hadn't seen a single foreigner since I left Kanazawa, and I have a sneaky suspicion I'm the first Finn ever to use this airport. I think I prefer this record to my previous one of being the last one to use Gaza's airport...
Boarding produced a small surprise -- whoah nelly, since when does ANA own or fly any Airbuses? Somebody give Boeing a call. (Later research indicated that ANA in fact owns no less than 32 of these little beasties, and 737s are in fact a distinct minority. I wonder how I've managed to avoid them 'till now?)
The skies below were cloudy, but every now and then a gap opened up to reveal snowy mountains below. April isn't spring quite yet in many parts of Japan...
The next day, I pottered around Ueno Park and its sozzled hanami (cherry blossom viewing) celebrations and then, finally, got on the long haul out of Ueno by Keisei. Narita's never been one of my favorite airports, but the advent of the new South Wing at T1 has certainly pushed it up a few notches in my book. While my favorite "last chance in Japan" sushi restaurant seems to have disappeared, alas, it's been replaced by a tolerable if somewhat overpriced conveyor belt joint (on 5F) and a whole load of new shops. Check-in for Star Golds was as efficient as always, security was a breeze, immigration had the usual queue and the new ANA huge lounge in slick shades of black and white was a sight to behold. Quirky feature award goes to the free noodle bar, although I won't be changing my NRT routine until they add in a free sushi bar as well...!
At the gate, the boarding pass reader said "boop" and I was taken aside. My RTW was issued as five physical paper tickets and I'd only shown the first at check-in, so could I show my connecting flight onward from the US? Well, I pointed out, it's a RTW ticket (see the little "YRWSTAR1" notation there?) and the itinerary is shown in computerese at the bottom: starting in BKK, then TYOSFOPHX, out later via NASYYZYOWYVRCDG and eventually back to BKK. The gate agent was convinced and let me through... but came back a few minutes later: the US immigration authorities, she said, wouldn't let me in without a return ticket (a valid theoretical point, I'll admit, although I've never been asked), so they'd dug up my baggage from the hold and wanted me to get my ticket. Err, OK -- my bag was truly procured, I demonstrated to everyone's satisfaction that my RTW does, indeed, exit the US at some point, and I was allowed back in, this time with ticket in hand.
I had tried to get a Star Alliance upgrade for this flight, unsuccessfully -- I was told that Friday's a very popular day to fly out, and hence biz was always full. Needless to say, once on board it became clear that at least half the seats in C were actually empty... and I'd already mentally composed half my angry letter blasting KrisFlyer, ANA and Star Alliance for their intolerable incompetence when it dawned on me that, due to the aforementioned Int'l Date Line muddle, I'd been requesting the upgrade for the wrong day. D'oh! (That would also explain why they had some problems finding my booking, although KF never actually confessed that they couldn't actually find it.)
My consolations were that flight time was just 8 hours (vs a scheduled 9:30) and that there was nobody in the middle seat, allowing me to stretch out a little. This was my first taste of long-haul NH in eco, and I quite liked the on-demand video-and-more system, which had a pretty good selection of J-pop and allowed me to finally watch 2001 from beginning to end (definitely a movie best sampled in the middle of the night at 33,000 feet over a moonlit Pacific).
The Japanese food, though, was surprisingly terrible, especially considering the excellence of NH's biz fare. For dinner, it was gluey rice with soggy breaded whitefish, and for breakfast, it was a morbidly fatty chunk of bacon coupled with a rice patty topped with salsa (...?). Other flight amenities were nonexistent: no shades, no socks, no earplugs, no toothbrush, not even a shared bottle of moisturizer in the loo. The control box for the AV system, under the middle seat, was huge and prevented me from stretching out from my window seat; I would be chewing my legs off if I had to sit there! Fortunately I was prepared with all the essentials, and thanks to my new laptop's 8-hr battery capacity killing time on non-sleepy pursuits wasn't an issue.
In other good news, my threshold for pain seems to have gone higher. Four hours in economy used to be the point at which I started getting antsy, but half a year of commuting between Singapore and Delhi has pushed that up to six. On this flight, though, I experimentally determined that over seven hours is still unpleasant. Fortunately I've timed every other flight remaining on this trip to avoid this situation... except the last. Time to pay for an upgrade?
We were in SFO almost an hour ahead of scheduled time. Immigration was painless, and the officer even managed to make me laugh by asking why I never smile. ('Coz you aren't allowed to in Finnish passport photos.) After its NRT adventure, my bag was unsurprisingly among the first to come out, and I embarked on a semi-circular quest to find my check-in counter -- I thought I had an America West flight codeshared as UA, a double mistake at that as "America West" turned into US Airways some time ago, but no, it turned out to be the real thing. Or at least almost: this was my first encounter with the faceless, amorphous, omnipresent entity known only as Ted. There were no earlier UA flights, although I could, theoretically, have gotten onto an HP flight that left 30 minutes earlier, in exchange for spending umpty-ump minutes trying to endorse my RTW over to them -- no thanks. But with grandmotherly kindness, Ted gave me an Economy Plus seat.
It was my first visit to SFO, and while it's heads and shoulders above LAX (which is why I routed this way), seeing signs proclaim it the best airport in the US was a little depressing: surely you could do a little better? The TSA security carnival seemed positively painless compared to LHR last year (although that bit with the shoes was still ludicrous). Only one problem now: I was dog-tired and in severe danger of falling asleep, but I had no watch, my cellphone's battery was dead and my charger doesn't like 110V, so I couldn't set an alarm. The Red Carpet Club was packed to the rafters, but I managed to snag a seat and, through a minor miracle, even get free wireless thanks to some bizarre T-Mobile/Vista crosspromotion thingy, valid until the end of the month to boot -- just long enough to cover the US portion of my trip, and just the distraction device I needed to keep me awake. Spiffy.
Dodging somebody else's projectile vomit all over the men's bathroom, I eventually headed out of the lounge to find a refugee camp assembling at the gates. Both had Ted flights, and both were late, mine by 20 minutes -- but the one to Vancouver, scheduled to leave half an hour before me, was still there as we pulled back.
As expected, the plane was a museum piece, but I was again a little surprised to find an Airbus in this land of Boeings. Oppressively chirpy video announcements told me that Ted wants me to do all kinds of things, including following instructions and fasten my seatbelt. As soon as we were airborne and in the impenetrable fog, I stuck in my earbuds, put on my eyeshades, closed the windowshades and drifted off into a twilight zone of fitful, unfulfilling sleep.
Bangkok
