And Away We Go

There is just something about getting up at 4:00 in the morning that seems wrong no matter what the reason. Nevertheless, that is how our day starts, to make a 6:00 am flight to Chicago. It’s 180 degrees in the wrong direction of course, but at the time we booked out tickets, it all made sense given that our connections in both Chicago and Hong Kong were very short, meaning we’d get to Bangkok at about the same time as we would flying through San Francisco, but without the long layover. The Chicago to Hong Kong leg is scheduled for 16 hours, but we’ve flown some pretty long flights over the years so don’t really think much of it. Besides, it will be all novel for Nick, who is joining us on this trip.

During the course of the year, I spend a lot of time with my butt in a coach seat, so these overseas flights are the one place we tend to splurge and use our frequent flier miles to book business class. This trip is no exception, but through a “death by papercut” sequence of events, we’ve ended up upgrading our tickets from business to first so we can stay together. It’s an over the top splurge, but since the theory behind this trip is to provide Nick with a once in a lifetime experience, I manage to make peace with the extra cost (while I bust Angela’s chops a fair amount for her affinity to Sheratons, my addiction is sign up bonuses for credit cards, which definitely come in handy here).

As with any domestic first class travel, the Seattle to Chicago leg is nothing spectacular, but that quickly changes as we find our seats for the flight to Hong Kong. With our knock off North Face backpacks, we once again channel the Clampetts, a role reinforced by the number of pictures that we take of the cabin. There are only two other people in first class, and although they are a few nice older couple on their way India, the gobstopper sized ring on her finger makes it pretty clear that there are indeed people (other than investment bankers and politicians) willing to pay the rack rate for first class (makes me wonder how that bill tastes when the backpackers roll in).

The crew is amazingly friendly, and soon has Nick on his way to the cockpit for a tour. They also show us the little apartment that is reserved for the crew when they change shifts (on this flight they say they rotate every 4 hours) which is kind of cool and something I haven’t seen before. The plane is a Boeing 777, and the pilot tells us it is only a month old.

While it would be hard not to admit that flying in the front of the plane isn’t a whole lot more enjoyable than flying in the back (whoever invented the lie-flat airplane plane deserves a Nobel Prize), 16 hours is WAAAAY too long. Even though we have plenty of room to move around and options galore on the entertainment system, being confined to one space for so much time has us going a little stir crazy. On top of that, Nick has developed a nasty sounding cough, which the dry air inside the plane only makes worse. Suffice to say, that when we touch down in Hong Kong we are more than ready to get off.

So 20 hours in, Nick sporting a look that is a combination of shell shock (from the amount of flying), exhaustion (what 11 year old sleeps when they have their own entertainment system with 100 movies?), and a sickness, we head off to yet another plane. By the time it lands in Bangkok, he says he is ready to live here, not because he likes what he sees, but because he isn’t looking forward to doing this all in reverse.

I am writing this in the Bangkok airport, where we have spent the night on some hard metal benches, trying to catch a few hours of sleep and adjust to the time zone. Originally, we were going to spend a few days in Bangkok, and would have welcomed the nice, warm hotel bed, but with the flooding, we made the choice to continue straight through to Chiang Rai. That flight leaves at 6:50 in the morning, so rather than hump our stuff over to a hotel only to have to check out 4 hours later, we have become squatters.

90 minutes more airtime to go and finally we’ll be done. The unknown now is whether we will actually make it out to see Chiang Rai today, or if Day 1 of Nick’s Great Thailand Trip will be spent with the covers pulled over our heads almost comatose.