Second trip - Day 2

Sent: Friday, June 01, 2007 4:06 AM

Subject: Day 2

Technically this “Day 2” covers more than 24 hours, but who’s counting.

The Malaysia Airlines plane, as I said yesterday, is a 747-400.  I am flying business class which puts me on the upper deck.  I have a window seat and no-one in front of me except the Captain.  The seats are just like the ones on the Northwest flights last year; the control to adjust the seat has 15 buttons.  It will lay nearly flat and give you a back massage.  This may sound a bit overboard, but after 20+ hours in flight, I am sold.  The choice of movies and music on the personal TV screen was pretty poor. 

The flight from LA to Taipei, approximately 14 hours, is mostly overnight and nearly all over water.  I did manage to fall asleep around 90 minutes after takeoff, helped by a lot of food and free wine (did I mention I like business class?).  I awoke some time later, feeling like I really slept a long time, only to discover we still had 10 hours remaining.  I am almost sure I swore out loud.  Because the flight was overnight, there was really nothing to see until near the end when we crossed over Japan.  It was mostly overcast, but I did manage to get a dawn photo of Mt. Fuji (attached).  Still 4 hours to go by that time.

I want to pause a moment to say something about Asian airlines.  By no means have I flown them all, and I haven’t flown the one everyone claims to be the best (Singapore Airlines).  Nonetheless, I would fly Malaysia Airlines, Cathay Pacific, KAL, JAL, or any other of the international Asian carriers over any and all US airlines.  The flight attendants are unbelievable.  Everyone smiles, chats with you, refills whatever you need, whenever you need it.  And every flight thus far has been on time.  I will not be booking my next Asia trip, if there will be one, on Northwest.

The food on this flight has been pretty good.  They feed you dinner shortly after takeoff, a snack around 3 hours before landing, and breakfast an hour later.  For dinner I selected the filet, which was good. This came with a salad of sorts; thin slices of beef on top of diced peppers and cucumbers.  All of this was on top of a material that I positively cannot identify.  It was thin and round, about 3 inches in diameter. It was dark brown on the bottom side, slightly translucent and colorless on the top.  I thought (and my neighbor as well, another American) that maybe it was some exotic mushroom cap, but the translucent part had the texture of the fatty parts of a beef roast.  I honestly have no idea if it was animal or vegetable.  It also had very little flavor (of course I ate it).  For breakfast I had some noodles with seafood.  The Malay’s are big on noodles.  This was excellent.

Taiwan was overcast and foggy when we arrived (6:00 AM Friday local time – 5:PM Thursday CST).  The sun was just coming up.  The view of Taipei from the air looked very much like parts of mainland China.  The buildings are very utilitarian, little ornamentation.  Many appear to be concrete, some covered in very plain ceramic tile.  The land is somewhat hilly on this western side of the island, and the roads and towns follow the contours of the land so everything looks a bit jumbled.  I saw very little traffic, but that was probably due to the hour.  Many manufacturing facilities, some emitting a lot of smoke, but mostly they looks pretty clean.  Taiwan’s economy is built around light manufacturing and electronics, not heavy industry.

We landed and taxied to the terminal, which like everything else looks utilitarian.  We all had to deplane, even though this was our plane to KL.  While I was waiting in line to exit, an announcement came over the PA saying “Will passenger (my name here) please see the ground crew upon exiting the aircraft”  I thought to myself “this can’t be good”.  As I walked off the jetway, there was a girl in an airline uniform holding a sign with my name on it.  I must admit I was concerned.  It turns out that in LA, I was supposed to go to the ticket counter to check in, even though I already had a boarding pass for this flight from miss “Kooloo Looper” in Minneapolis.  I have been using e-tickets for so long I just forgot that step. Oops!  I hope this doesn’t mean they didn’t load my luggage.  I guess I will find out in when I get to KL.

The Taipei airport is nothing special; long corridors with moving sidewalks all strangely going the same direction, many Duty Free shops, mostly selling liquor, cigarettes, perfume, the usual.  I walked the terminal for about 30 minutes but couldn’t find an ATM.  My phone worked, so I called home to let them know I made it this far OK.  I also managed to get a WiFi signal so I was able to send “Day 1” from there, also got my e-mails (It is a working trip after all) so I can write responses on the flight to KL and send them later.

We took off for KL around 7:45 AM local time.  This leg is around 4 hours – a walk in the park by now. 

I will continue this later.  I am too tired to think.  I am in my hotel in KL.