Follow along with my photos.

Part 2: ORD-LAX-SIN

I got to the airport by 4:15 AM this morning for my 6 AM flight, and it was surprisingly deserted for a Monday morning. The security lines didn't even open until 4:30 AM.

As I write this, I'm sitting in the ORD C RCC. I had stopped by the B6 RCC earlier, and the person at the front counter was pretty impressed by my itinerary. She wondered how I had booked it. But when I went to the C RCC, to get a view of the runway, I think I confused the front desk person. I told her that my flight after this is to Singapore, and she asked me to see a BP for that flight. I didn't have one, but I did have the e-ticket receipt. She asked me if I was traveling in business class, and I said yes, but that I was also a Star Gold on an international itinerary (which permits lounge access for those of you non-*A people). She didn't seem to understand that, and she asked me if the Singapore code was SQ. I told her yes, and she typed that in. So I think SQ got charged for my RCC visit today! I don't know if that's how it's supposed to work, since I'm a UA *G but also traveling on SQ C. Anybody know?

I took some photos of the RCC, which you all will probably find quite boring, so that my family will see the difference between domestic RCCs and international lounges. It seems that the part of my trip they're most amazed by is that I'll get to visit the "Red Carpet Club" in all these Asian countries.

(Thanks to lucky9876coins for the trip report format.)


Monday, December 17
UA101
ORD-LAX
Aircraft: Boeing 757
Seat: 3D
Scheduled Departure Time: 6:00 AM
Actual Departure Time: 6:15 AM
Scheduled Arrival Time: 8:29 AM
Actual Arrival Time: 8:30 AM
Load: 100%


I got into LA around 8:30, and I was having some friends pick me up at 10:30 and show me around LA. So, I had a few hours to kill at LAX. I trekked over to the Tom Bradley International Terminal, which was quite a far walk. Luckily, I only had a backpack and a small wheeled suitcase. Once I got to TBIT at around 8:50, I found out that the Singapore check-in counters didn't open until 9:30. Oh well. I sat around a bit until they opened, and then I checked in. They almost didn't let me, since my flight didn't depart for another 11 hours, but once they found out I had no bags to check, they were able to (reluctantly) print out my boarding pass.

I entered the security line, which was a mess. There was no priority security (except for a few people who had passes from the airline, and I'm not sure how they got them), and to make it even more hectic, my friends called right as I joined the line to say they were 20 minutes away. I finally made it through, and right when I was standing in front of the amazing (by US lounge standards) food and drink spread at the *A lounge, they called to say they were here. I loaded up my backpack with lots of stuff from the lounge and ran out to meet them.

Our first stop was to pick up another friend on Sunset Blvd. I had never been to LA, only having skirted it on the highways (sorry, I mean freeways) and having spent a couple hours in LAX a few months ago, and all these street names seemed so famous and glitzy to me. I grew up in a family who hated LA (we lived in Chicago), but I tried to keep an open mind. Our first destination was Santa Monica, and we went to the Promenade and then to the boardwalk. We tried digging for sand crabs on the beach but were unsuccessful. After that, we went to Venice Beach, which is a 60s hippie place, and walked along the beach. We parked next to an old city bus that had been converted into a camper. Pretty crazy.

At 5:15 PM we got back onto the freeway to take me back to LAX, and I finally got to experience LA traffic. But we made it to the airport by 6:00 PM, which gave me plenty of time to relax in the lounge and snack up before I boarded my flight.

The business class side of the lounge, which is where I was, had a huge assortment of soft drinks, beer, wine, and some champagne and liquor. I was pretty tired already, so I just had a Diet Coke and some water. As for food, they had some dumplings (which disappointingly turned out to be veggie) and some minestrone soup (which is veggie by definition). They had a small selection of sushi, but what few pieces were there quickly disappeared and weren't replaced by the time I had to leave.

I regrettably didn't have time to check out the observation deck or sample some of the beer. I'll have plenty of time for that in Singapore, though, and it was way more fun to spend the day going around LA.


Monday, December 17
SQ37
LAX-SIN
Aircraft: Airbus 340-500
Seat: 11A
Scheduled Departure Time: 8:00 PM
Actual Departure Time: 8:15 PM
Scheduled Arrival Time: 6:20 AM +2 days
Actual Arrival Time: 6:10 AM +2 days
Load: 100%


My flight to Singapore boarded from gate 101, which was the very farthest gate. I walked up right as business class was finishing boarding and settled into my seat. No lines, no waiting. By this time, I had been awake for 24 hours straight (since I had trouble sleeping before my ORD-LAX flight), so my sleep cycle seemed to have reset, and I was feeling quite awake again. I had a few glasses of champagne and Diet Coke and started to explore the IFE.

It was announced that Superbad, the movie I most wanted to see, wasn't working. I settled on "Contract Lover," a Chinese movie about a Beijing man who hires a woman to pretend to be his girlfriend in front of his family in Guangdong. It was pretty hilarious, especially the white American actor who was included for comic relief. His character was a sissy gay man (and his portrayal would be pretty offensive in the US) with flawless Mandarin, and he seemed to be having great fun playing the role. Who knows, I speak some Mandarin, so maybe I could get roles in Chinese films some day!

I was seated in 11A, the first window seat on the left side. The seat next to me as occupied by a guy who, if I remember overhearing in my half-sleep correctly, flies this route very frequently and whose dad used to work for SQ. He had a fancy-looking flight logbook that he asked the FA to give to the pilot to sign, and the pilot (who was Australian) came back and personally delivered it to him.

After the A345's long takeoff roll and liftoff, we were plunged into a darkness we wouldn't emerge from until a few minutes before landing in Singapore. There was no point in opening or closing the windows, since you couldn't see anything either way.

Since this is my first trip report, you'll have to excuse my poor documentation of the meals. They were wonderful, except for my main course, and I only have myself to blame. About 30 minutes into the flight, the FA brought appetizers, which consisted of salmon and melon, crab cake, and one other thing. Next was my entree. I had Booked the Cook, and I chose the sushi. There was relatively little fish and lots of rice (underneath, not attached to each piece), and it was sashimi—which is my favorite food on earth, but I'd rather have some inspired sushi rolls than a few thin slices of sashimi. Desert was vanilla ice cream with raspberry.

Right after dinner, I went to sleep and didn't wake up until 2 hours until landing. The A345 doesn't have the new lie-flat business class beds, but they were still comfortable enough to let me sleep for 12 hours! And it felt great, since I hadn't gotten sleep in a long time at that point. Breakfast service had already started when I woke up. I ordered the BBQ duck entree, and they thought they might have run out, but they found another one for me. It was delicious. I forgot to take a picture of it, though. I promise I'll get better about that.

On the descent, I could see the lights of Indonesia (which, unbeknownst to me at the time, I'd have a closer encounter with the same day) and then the skyline of Singapore, which was relatively unilluminated at 5:30 AM. We had a soft landing into SIN and pulled up to the gate soon thereafter. I waited for everybody else in the cabin to exit the plane and then asked the FA for some extra US Diet Cokes, since Asian Coca-Cola Light doesn't taste as good to me. She got me a couple ^, and I headed to the SKL.

In Singapore

I got breakfast at the lounge and then took bus 36 into the city. I hopped off somewhere along Orchard Rd and walked around a bit, then headed to the Crawford Hawker Center. It was delicious! I tried some 水饺汤 (dumplings in soup), 鸡饭 (chicken rice), and 猪肉饺子. I really missed the tasty, quick, and cheap Chinese food that I always had during my stays in China over the past couple of years. After Crawford, I went to Raffles Place and walked over the bridge, past the Parliament building and the Supreme Court, and to the Esplanade.

After this, I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do next, but I had this crazy idea to go to Indonesia. It's only a 45-minute ferry ride away, and it'd be a cool experience. So, I went to a cafe to look up the Wikitravel page, and then rode the MRT to HarbourFront Centre and caught the Penguin ferry to Batam Center.

On the ferry, I happened to sit next to an American couple who had been in Indonesia for 8 years and who currently lived in Bandung. The man was doing tsunami relief work, spending 20 days a month in Aceh, and the woman worked at an international school. They gave me lots of helpful tips and made up for my total lack of preparation for this sidetrip into Indonesia!

My trip there began inauspiciously when my taxi driver took me to the wrong place and then started telling me how boring this place was and how I should go to Nagoya (the name of a business district, not the Japanese city) instead, but it was pretty obvious he was lying, and so I just paid him the agreed upon fare (30,000) and got out. I crossed the street and some children whose parents ran the sort of stalls that sell soft drinks and other snacks immediately came up to me and started saying "hello." I talked with them for a while (and some girls around my age came, too, and practiced their English with me). I wasn't really sure where I was, since the taxi had taken me who-knows-where (but only about 5 minutes away from the ferry terminal), but I knew that I'd be safe if I were hanging out with these families at the markets. I suppose I could have immediately hopped in a taxi going back to the ferry terminal when my original taxi cheated me, but this way turned out more fun.

Anyway, after about 25 minutes of talking with these people, some police showed up and asked me where I was going and what I was doing. I was initially pretty worried, since I thought they might try to extract a bribe or something and I mistook their lack of colloquial English for hostility (anything in broken English can seem angry when it's spoken by an Indonesian police officer , but it ended up that they just honestly thought I was lost (which I was) and wanted to help. They ended up driving me back to the ferry terminal and telling me how much they loved Michael Jordan. I could have wandered out into town again after that, but I had to get a bunch of presents, so I just went to the adjacent mall and shopped for the rest of the time.

I took the 8 PM ferry back to Singapore and then took the MRT to the airport. After a quick SKL shower, I fell asleep on the Singapore lounge couch for six hours. Thankfully I was able to suspend my sense of dignity, since it must have looked pretty ridiculous to see me sleeping on the couch. I certainly wasn't the only person, though. It was kind of like a slumber party, in fact, only without truth and dare.

My next flight, to Bangkok, is at 10:40 AM this morning, so I'm just hanging out in the lounge until boarding begins.