One journey ends, another begins

I have arrived.

Both Malaysia airlines and China Airlines were very pleasant and efficient to deal with in handling the rebooking. Both flights left the tarmac precisely on time and arrived precisely on time. Both had wonderful service, and the food was... well, ok, not everything can be perfect, right?

I maintain, however, that LAX is a nightmare. I did get some chances to practice what little Chinese I knew. One group of Taiwanese women seemed to think I was amusing, since I spent so long trying to discuss the simplest of matters with one of their husbands, who was only a little bit more proficient in English than I am in Mandarin. They also apparently thought my height was amusing, since they asked me to be in a few pictures with them--I don't think any of them were five feet tall.

The transpacific flight was uneventful. Thank goodness; I had been getting quite sick of things being eventful. The in-flight entertainment options were pretty decent, but except for the GPS views and occasionally the very puny games available, I ignored them. My seatmate was part of a group of CS students from UCSD going to Taiwan for a 2-week vacation; I had some decent conversation when we were both feeling bored. I must have gotten some ok sleep, too, since he said he watched both Iron Man and "some Ashton
Kutcher movie" and I only ever noticed the last 5 minutes of the former. I read A Wizard of Earthsea, listened to some music, but mostly just tried to sleep. My new in-ear headphones actually did a better job of comfortably reducing the noise level of the plane than earplugs did.

The Taipei airport was impressive in many ways. It was huge, clean, efficiently organized, uncrowded, and quiet. The terminals looked like malls; the employees of each store stood ready and waiting for customers in their entryways, but didn't harass anybody like mall employees in the US tend to do. The variety of expensive gadgets you could buy there is surprising.

Gadgets weren't on my mind, though. Food was. I found a noodle shop where I again got to practice my Chinese; I ordered a beef noodle soup that was $7. It was a big, filling bowl, and came with mango juice and a side of vegetables that I can't name. It was also delicious; it qualified simultaneously as the cheapest, most filling, and best meal I've ever had in an airport.

I didn't have long to linger, though, and quickly made my way to the gate lounge, where I was again impressed by the poshness of it all. My flight was completely boarded within 5 minutes of the first boarding announcement (LAX took an hour), and off we went in our Airbus. This time I watched about half of Iron Man, and then it was touchdown in Kansai International. That's when the reality of my trip finally caught up with me, and I started grinning like an idiot. With the extra day's wait, I had been in zombie traveller mode for long enough to lose track of the duration; the idea of an actual destination had started to elude my mind as I just went from one place to the next in airports and planes.


After calling Kelsey, my dad, and my school to announce my safe arrival, I headed off to the shuttle service to get to my dorm. After a 45 minute wait and then a three hour ride, I was there. I'm going to hold off on my initial impressions of the city. Right now I'm overwhelmed and exhausted. The most obvious bits of news to share, though, are that I found my dorm, and the internet works (and it's quite fast, actually).

I'll have plenty of amusing pictures (at least I think they're amusing) once I get settled in enough to spend time on that--hopefully tomorrow. For now, it's time to sleep. Tomorrow the real adventure begins!

A boarding pass!

Things are now officially turning for the better: I have a boarding pass to hop the pond, I'm officially booked for the Taipei to Osaka leg, and my suitcase is apparently already waiting for me in Osaka.

Time to go head through security!

LAX

So one thing I've noticed about LAX, which has been confirmed by just about everyone I've talked to, is that there are lot of very friendly, helpful employees who are all very quick to answer any question you may have. Even if they have no idea and the answer has no basis in reality.

Malaysia airlines opens at 9:40 pm, not noon or 9 am. I took a 7-hour nap and a shower though; I do feel much better. I'm about to head back to the airport. Hopefully everything goes a lot smoother this time...

Delayed

My flight taking off from Albuquerque was delayed by 3 hours and 37 minutes. My layover in Los Angeles was supposed to be 4 hours long. I got into the gate at the far end of LAX at 12:45, and my next flight was at 1:15, with one minor glitch: since it was an international flight on China Airlines and I had paper tickets, I needed to check in at the front of the International terminal 45 minutes before the flight. Do the math, and if you guessed that I didn't make the connection, you win.

United has been pretty decent to deal with, except for the hours. Their ticketing and customer service was closed when the problem popped up; I had to wait three hours to talk to someone, and I hadn't yet found a spot where I could get free wireless here at LAX. But, the agent there rebooked things for the same time but a day later, and gave me a couple of meal vouchers and a hotel for the day. But, China Airlines and Malaysia Airlines (with whom the reservation was booked, so they have the final say) will not be open for customer service type stuff until noon. I have to talk to Malaysia to make sure that I'm not going to get screwed in some creative new way--if they try to go that way, I can sign over control of the whole thing to United and get a 1-stop, 1-plane flight from here to Osaka. I have to talk to China Airlines because they have my bag. It's 9:45 now; I've been awake for almost 28 hours and I'm drooping badly, but I have no intention of leaving the airport or going to sleep until this is sorted out.

I have been taking pictures here and there; expect a gallery link highlighting the journey to Japan sometime after I get there.

A note on travel agents and shipping

Do. Not. Use. cheaptickets.com

I booked my flight with cheaptickets.com. My original itinerary was to take off from Albuquerque to Los Angeles, three hour layover, LA to Taipei, Taiwan, two hour layover, Taipei to Osaka.

They managed to lose my flight from Los Angeles to Taipei. The other two tickets were still valid, but a few days ago the Malaysia Airlines flight from LA to Taipei got cancelled. The agents at cheaptickets gave me a call and said that I was being switched to a different flight. Well, when I got to the airport tonight, I found out that they hadn't actually done that. The ticketing agent for United (who was absolutely wonderful) managed to fix it, but there was a lot of phoning, holding, and stress involved. I finally had a connecting flight again an hour before the scheduled takeoff of my departing flight.

As a side note, cheaptickets's hold music is Pachelbel's Canon in D. About three or four minutes of it, and that's it. Between the ticket fiasco and trying to find out about an extra checked luggage item earlier, I spent about two and a half hours on hold today--they are completely inept at getting anything resolved, let alone quickly, and will put you on hold "for a moment" after one or two questions, where "a moment" really means thirty minutes. I'm still too frazzled at the moment to properly describe their sheer incompetence.

I booked with cheaptickets because they had the cheapest ticket price. I saved maybe a hundred dollars because of it. My first lesson to pass on to any other first-time international travelers: buy from a name you've heard of before. A big company that's been around a while might be worth the extra money in the event that something goes wrong.

On a completely separate note from the airline, one of the things that I had planned all along was to take a bike with me to Japan. I have a pretty decent road bike--nothing too flashy, but it was worth a lot more than I paid for it--and a while ago I had gotten a UPS shipping quote for it saying it would cost me something like $171.80 to ship it directly to my dorm in Kyoto. That was a little bit more expensive than the cheapest new bikes I can expect to buy on the Japanese side of things, and not much more expensive than shipping a bike to some places in the continental US, so I was quite excited about that.

I went to print the shipping label today and it was $645.23. I decided not to do it. All indications after speaking with their customer service say that the rate calculator on the web site must have been completely screwed up, because no combination of mistakes we could think of gave us anything less than double the old figure. I suppose the lesson here is not to check a shipping estimate until something is actually boxed and weighed, so that if the price seems too good to be true, you can run with it right there.