As seems to be typical for us, this wasn’t our first plan for our annual fall vacation. We had initially wanted to go to Uganda / Rwanda to do some gorilla trekking. Unfortunately, about two weeks ago, Congolese rebels crossed the border and ambushed a safari jeep, killed both tourists and their guide and burned the jeep. We decided to alter our plans for the time being.
Elsewhere in the world, the war that Israel and Hamas are both blundering through has inspired the United States government to issue a caution to all Americans traveling abroad as a sort of vague and broad warning to protect themselves from an even more vague and nonspecific threat. American citizens, I suppose, were encouraged to stay close to home this fall where the safe and more familiar sights of Halloween, the MLB playoffs, and random mass shootings could bring them the kind of comfort and consistency that only the U.S. can provide.
So here we are in seats 34 K & L on our way from LAX to Tokyo Narita. There was a slight chance we could have gotten business which quickly degraded to only one of us possibly getting business (always a difficult decision) to ultimately having no chance after the standbys above us who had already been awarded business seats were then unceremoniously downgraded to economy as well. In a way, it became easier to accept our fate knowing that it wasn’t that close. United served its usual mediocre food such as strange waffles and eggs for a “breakfast” as we approached Tokyo to land around 3pm.
We both developed some headaches to go along with the mediocre food. United didn’t really impress on this flight. We then had a couple of hours to kill in Narita Terminal 1. For our connecting flight to Kuala Lumpur, we would be flying ANA. Nicole was gracious enough to use her miles to get us some business class seats for the roughly eight hour flight. This also gave us access to the ANA lounge in Narita, where I attempted to remedy the bad United food with some respectable Japanese cuisine like made-to-order noodles and a Kirin Ichiban that poured itself in a special machine.
We eventually made our way to the ANA 787 and took our seats in 2E and 2G. It was a much nicer seat and much better service than the last flight. We were bowed to repeatedly and given a menu for dinner that seemed to be eight courses. It was almost too much. I was eager to roll out the bedding and lie flat to get some rest. I eventually was able to do this and fell asleep despite the man behind me waking me up repeatedly with a gross hacking cough. An announcement woke me up about an hour before landing.
We touched down in Kuala Lumpur around 1215am the morning of November 1st having left for LAX in a rather aggressive Uber around 930am on Oct 30. It was a long travel day/days. We walked for a spell through the terminal before boarding a bus to take us to customs. Luckily everything went pretty quickly. We then got a Grab (Southeast Asia’s Uber equivalent) for a 45 minute ride into central Kuala Lumpur. We couldn’t see much on the drive as we were both tired and it was quite dark out. We checked into the Hilton Stesen Sentral (the central train station), showered, and called it a night.
passports & pepto bismol 