Up, Up and Way Far Away

First off, few things feel less satisfying than a one hour flight to begin a journey. You go through the entire hassel of checking your bags and going through security, then you gotta sit and wait. Then you sit and wait in the terminal. Then you sit and wait on the plane. Then you finally take off and wait until you can turn electronics back on because your paper book is in the carry on that wouldn't fit in the overhead bin and got checked instead. But all too soon that time is over so you turn off the electronics and wait to land. Then there's waiting through the long taxi to the terminal.

And all of this waiting for what? For a 5 hour wait for the next flight! Ok, so this part was just particular to me, but the whole one hour flight was still annoying. It certainly did not make me look forward to repeating the process twice more in the process of getting to HK. My advice? Remember to keep the physical book accessible.

On a lighter note the food was ok, and United Airlines will defintely not let you starve when you fly across the ocean with them. I haven't really thought too long and hard about my consumerism habits until they started serving meals on my 12+ hour flight. So much garbage with everything wrapped in it's own layer of plastic and a new set of plastic silverware and condiments each time. It seemed like a far cry from bulk mango and trail mix I'd picked up before I left home.

But the most startling American thing about my flight was these:

Ok, so I have to admit that I was pretty excited when I first saw this, and they did have an excellent movie selection (basically I ran out of flight time before I ran out of movies I wanted to watch). But after 12+ hours and only 3 or 4 words out of my two seatmates I was feeling a little less keen on them. Granted I think the guy at the window didn't speak much English but every time I looked around the plane everyone was absolutely glued to their screens, even to the point of not noticing the stewardesses handing out drinks. And here I was expecting to have some interesting conversations with the people around me, silly me.

A flight change in Tokyo led to more of the same, followed by a surprising easy entrance in to Hong Kong thanks to some wonderfully clearn directions from one of my new bosses. One taxi ride, ending with help with luggage up to my new box of an apartment (more on that another day) and a quick trip to the nearest 7-11 and I finally feel like I've arrived in Hong Kong. Now it's time to explore, I'll let you know what I find!