B-to-B and home (April 20 - twice)

Today, the allure of being home accompanied the alarm clock sounding. This was fortuitous as we needed a serious injection of motivation given the time the alarm went off

Reveille was at 0315 so that we could be in the car to the airport at 0400. At 0655, we departed on the 6 hour United Airlines flight #882 from Bangkok to Narita (Japan) where we changed planes but not flight # for our 11 hour 30 minute flight to Chicago where we changed planes, but curiously not flight #, for our 2 hour 15 minute flight to Boston. 

BTW, the first B in the title of this posting is for Bangkok; the second is for Boston.

Even at 4:00 AM, the service at the Mandarin Oriental was superb.  Based on our two stays, it is perhaps my favorite hotel in the world for service.  I have been fortunate enough to stay in a number of excellent hotels with excellent but transparently mechanical hospitality.  In contrast, while clearly following a formula, the staff of the Mandarin Oriental projected a genuine sense that every aspect of our stay was important to them.  And the food and accommodations were definitely world-class.    

Given a short night's sleep and the long day ahead of us we were glad we had experience passing through Suvarnabhumi, Bangkok's huge international airport on route to Siem Reap and again on route to Luang Prabang. We knew where to go and what to do making check-in, immigration and security screening routine although this time there was a second security check at the gate. The second check included everyone getting wanded and every piece of carry-on luggage being physically searched.

Our aircraft was a 747 and our (business class) seats were in the bubble. The relatively few seats, spacious layout and two restrooms made being on the "second floor" great for a long distance trip. The unexpected news from a stewardess that we would probably be changing planes in Japan came as an unpleasant surprise. Happily, she was wrong. Although we had to disembark with all our belongings and go through another security screening, we were back on the same plane and in the same seats for the flight to Chicago. In hindsight, although a bit of a hassle having to take our carry-on luggage with us, it was nice to get off the plane and stretch our legs.

We departed Narita on schedule. Before take-off, the pilot made a point of telling us that we would never be closer than 75 miles to the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear generator crippled by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Midnight came six hours early today as we continued advancing our watches to coincide with time zone changes. Flying over the Pacific Ocean, at one second to midnight local time, Wednesday, April 20 had come to an end. One second later, having crossed the international dateline, Wednesday, April 20 began all over again. (It was more fun when many years ago I crossed it going west-to-east on Christmas Day.)

The title of this blog posting includes "April 20 - twice" because it is actually a two-day report for the same day.

We landed in Chicago on schedule, went through immigration and customs quickly, changed terminal, then found that we had to go through a security screening again. It was the first time either of us had been through a body scanner in the USA. The connection time between flights being tight, we pressed on to the gate only to discover the flight was delayed.

We used the delay to reactivate the voice and data features on our iPhones and iPads, then call each of our daughters, each of whom we had talked with only twice the entire time we were gone, relying instead on texting and e-mail due to the high cost of calls. While at times it can be an intrusion, it was nice to have full voice and data capabilities. And it was great to be verbally back in touch with our daughters with the expectation of regularly being so in the future.

We left the gate in Chicago about 40 minutes late, only to taxi out to some location on the field where they shut down the engines. The pilot more than once told us the revised arrival time would be 9:00, even as he was restarting the engines and moving onto the active runway. This seemed curious given the current time, the one hour time zone change and the expected flight time. Finally a flight attendant got on the PA system and tactfully corrected the captain. We would be arriving at 8:00. A pilot who cannot read a watch is not a confidence builder. Neither is a co-pilot who does not catch the error.

We landed in Boston at 8:00, got our bags, found our driver, managed to stay awake the entire ride home, dragged ourselves into the house and promptly....went through the mail and watched some TV. We were both exhausted (Pam had slept about 5 hours on the entire trip; I had slept 1.5 hours) but needed to settle in before we went to bed. Pam went up about 10:15. I followed her about 11:00. Hopefully she fell asleep as fast as I did. (I say "hopefully because I am writing this paragraph 12 hours later and she is still asleep.)

It is good to be home!

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