I have been dithering in my mind the best way to go about documenting our Asian Adventures in a logical fashion, when the trip itself was a bit scattered. When you travel on frequent flyer miles (thank you very much Chizz and Chizz's company) you fit your travel ideas into the limited frequent flyer allotted seats on each flight. So when we booked our main tickets to Bangkok and Hong Kong so many, many months ago, we hadn't really fleshed out our entire trip. We knew we wanted to go to a beach in Thailand, we weren't sure which one. We wanted to try and fit in a trip to Cambodia but we were uncertain whether to fly or go by some other method or really whether it was safe because of rising tensions between Thailand and Cambodia (it was). We ended up using Bangkok as our base and we went back and forth from there. Bangkok to Koh Samui (the beach) back to Bangkok. A few days more in Bangkok, then Bangkok to Cambodia back to Bangkok again. We wanted to go to Hong Kong, we knew, but ended up staying a bit longer because of the frequent flyer situation. So rather than tell a completely chronological story, I think I will break it down a bit by location.
But before I do that, let me tell you a bit about the actual travel. As I mentioned, Chizz had a gazillion frequent flyer miles. When we were booking the trip, we tried to do the whole thing business class but at that time the airline would only allow 2 FF mile seats awarded in business class per flight. So although we had enough miles and the seats were available, we had a quandary because there were 4 of us flying. I have loads of friends that routinely travel in business class and put their kids in coach. I just couldn't do that, Chizz was silent on the matter, so we all flew coach. It took us about an hour to book it over the phone. We booked on the phone because we had multiple locations and it was fairly complicated. When we finished, we ended up with a route that looked like this:
Leaving: We went from San Francisco to Singapore, 5 hour layover in Singapore and then Singapore to Bangkok, all on Singapore Airlines. Our trip from Bangkok to Hong Kong was on Thai Airways.
Returning: We went from Hong Kong to Vancouver on Air Canada (more about them later) and then from Vancouver to San Francisco on United.
In Between: We flew from Bangkok to Koh Samui and Cambodia both times on Bangkok Airways (more about them later but simply said my FAVORITE airline of the entire trip)
Okay, when we arrived at the airport in SF we found that our flight was actually going to make a short itsy, bitsy stop in Korea which we hadn't known about before. The kids were excited, hoping to get a Korea stamp in their passport (they didn't) but I was thinking that it would make the flight longer which is just what we needed since it was already about 30 hours of travel time. Actually it was just fine, we were just there long enough to get off the plane and stretch our legs, walk a bit and get right back on.
Let me say a thing or two or twenty seven about Asian Airlines in general. I think I am qualified now because I flew 3 different Asian airlines during this trip. They are flippin' phenomenal. You don't realize the difference in service between American based airlines and Asian based airlines until you have experienced it. And I am not talking about the ingratiating, over-the-top, somewhat annoying in your face kind of service. I am talking about genuinely nice flight attendants. The attitude was "I am glad-you-are-here-because-I-recognize-without-passengers-taking these-flights, I-wouldn't-have-a-job" kind of nice. I didn't see one attendant lose his or her cool during the entire 14 hour first leg of our trip. In fact I didn't see any attendant lose their cool or speak in any kind of a snippy tone until we were flying back. Every single flight we took on an Asian Airline served a meal of some kind and free drinks. Every single one, the 14 hour flight, the 5 hour flight, the 3 hour flights and the 4 slightly less than one hour flights we took. Some of the meals were more elaborate, some were sandwiches. But the point is every one of them served a meal, at no extra cost. And even though we didn't pay for the longer legs of our journey, we did pay for the shorter flights to Koh Samui and Cambodia. I know the price points, and they were right in line with what we pay in the US for short hops. In fact a few of them were cheaper.
This is the part whereI had inserted my rant on US airlines and unions and such but I have changed my mind about including it. I have already ranted so much about this in the past few weeks, that my kids start convulsing when they hear me go off. And I already bored just about every member of my family with this story one, two or maybe 16 times. So I am going to leave it alone. However - if you would like to hear it, give me a call I will be happy to go on, and on and on about it!!
When we were coming home, flying on Air Canada, I had a rude reminder that we weren't on an Asian airline anymore, Toto. It was about 2 hours before we were to land and the flight attendants were serving breakfast. I had noticed one woman sitting in front of me, kitty cornered. I noticed her because for a majority of the flight, she had her laptop out and was working on her photos of the trip and her photos were beautiful. I don't think she was a professional photographer but she was sorting them, deleting the duds, etc and I enjoyed watching the show. She had a set of headphones on that I have seen people wear before, the noise cancelling ones that have pretty big ear pieces. So the flight attendants were coming through and offering people their choice of eggs or congee. Congee is a sort of loose, milky, soup like rice porridge or cereal kind of thing. We saw it in just about every hotel we stayed at. Not my cup of tea but since this flight had about 90% Asians on it, quite a few of the passengers were making that choice. The photo woman didn't hear the flight attendant because of her head phones, so he tapped her on the shoulder and kind of gave her a "what do you want" look. The woman took off her head phones and said "excuse me?" and the flight attendant yelled "EGGS OR CONGEE, WHAT DO YOU WANT???" and I mean he yelled it at her, with such a nasty tone. She was embarrassed and I was embarrassed for her. The guy was a total jerk. Two rows up, one of the passengers asked what congee was. The same attendant said,very sarcastically, "some kind of Asian crap cereal" and rolled his eyes. All in full view. I was mortified. Even if this guy had had the worst possible day, it was no excuse for his attitude. I think it is very typical of the western flight attendant attitude: "You-are-so-lucky-I-am-here. It's-not-about-the-passenger,-if-you-are-lucky-I-might-allow-you-to-buy-a-$7-bottle-of-cheap-wine-from-me. But-only-one-don't-ask-for-another! " Or something like that.
Okay, that turned into a mini-rant - sorry. The flight over went pretty smoothly, although it was pretty long. I think the kids said we were traveling about 30 hours and that was about right. The toughest part was the Singapore layover. This is one of the nicest airports ever, it includes a swimming pool, about 50 restaurants, quite a few shops etc. We were there 5 hours, but it was from 2 am to 7 am so nothing was open. So close yet, so far. We did see the Butterfly Habitat, which we could walk through. I tried to take a photo but my lens fogged up. So we hunkered
down in some pretty comfortable chairs next to the Koi pond. Easily the biggest Koi I have ever seen in my life. But I thought what was really funny was the sign next to the Koi pond, 
warning you in order (1) Don't try swimming with the Koi (2) Don't feed the Koi and (3) Don't try to catch or eat the Koi. Really? I can see that people might try and feed the koi but have they really had problems with people trying to swim or catch the Koi? Wow!There was also free internet and terminals at the airport, so the kids and I surfed and sent emails while Chizz caught up on some sleep. At one point we were all kind of sleeping except for Kiki, who, which should be a surprise to no one who knows her, was still kind of playing around on the internet. The police approached her and she was ordered to show her passport, her ticket on the upcoming flight and the ticket for the flight we just took. Of course she had to come over to us, police in tow. They also checked our documents as well. It was interesting. Chizz thought they did this because the airport is open 24 hours and Singapore isn't too keen on vagrants sleeping in the airport. We noticed them asking for papers from everyone in the seating areas next to us as well, sometimes waking folks up to see their documents.
After 5 hours, we were on the plane to Bangkok. Uneventful flight. The nice thing about a 12 hour flight is that is makes 3-5 hour flights seem like a piece of cake. Which they are!
So next report, Bangkok!!
