Journey over the Pacific
I’ve never been across the Pacific. I consider myself a decent traveller, but not once have I ventured over to the Asian side of the world. Last week, I finally got my chance!
Here was my packing progress:
Graham’s friend owns Budget Biz, so when we procured our Thai working visas, we asked him if he could help us. Oh man was he ever amazing. He knows how to find great flight deals and knows all the trade secrets. He even arranged for us to have an overnight layover in LA so we could hang out with him!
Our itinerary: YEG > YVR > LAX > (two hour refuelling stop in NRT) > SIN > BKK
Total travel time: 36 hours. Yikes. The break in LA was very welcomed!
Part of the perk of working with our friend is his knowledge of aircrafts and airlines. Despite the fact that Graham and I are budget travellers, he managed to get us seats on Singapore Airlines for two legs of our flights. Now, I didn’t know anything about airlines before, but after experiencing their awesomeness, I want to fly with them all the time.
We were greeted with hot face towels and menus (!) for the various meals we would be receiving. Alcohol was unlimited and we had two options for each meal that was served. That’s right, OPTIONS in an airplane. The meals were fantastic: pan seared seafood in a tomato sauce with vegetables and garlic mashed potatoes, smoked turkey with curried pasta salad, pork strogonoff with vegetables and pasta, smoked salmon with cucumber yoghurt salad appetizers, etc. All eaten with metal forks and knives, mind you. And for dessert? We were offered mini-pints of Haagen Dazs ice cream!
Our friend was sneaky… our two year anniversary (of the day we met) happened to be during one of our flights, so we received an anniversary cake and champagne to celebrate. We felt like royalty on our flights.
We arranged a four hour layover at Singapore’s Changi Airport and it was nearly not enough time to explore all it had to offer: free massage chairs, free foot massage chairs, gardens galore (orchid, sunflower, butterfly, cactus), free movies, and great wifi. So worth a stop there!
We arrived in Bangkok having spent the entirety of Wednesday in the air. We crossed over 14 time zones and only slept for seven hours for the latter part of the trip, so the last five days have been somewhat taxing on our bodies. Slowly but surely we’re getting used to the time difference… and the intensity of Bangkok (more on that in the next post).