Tuesday, July 31, 2012

Travel Day: An Airbus Odyssey Old and New

To get from Los Angeles to Phnom Penh required two airlines, an overnight in Tokyo, and flights on one of the oldest and the newest Airbuses. Flight SQ11 to Tokyo left LAX from the international terminal and we were required to take a bus to the plane that was parked all the way at the end of the runway. I had a seat one upper deck and there was a separate jetway that went directly to the top deck. It required a lot of inclined walking but it was ok. There is a ton of room up there and the seats are quite comfortable. There is a small locker right under the window where you can put a small backpack or magazines. I put my wipes and book there. I always wipe down my tray table and every surface that I'm going to be touching for the next 11 hours. Singapore Airlines' entertainment system is called Krisworld and it is quite extensive. There's got to be a month's worth of shows to watch including TV and movies. I ended up watching three episodes of the HBO show Veep, The Hunger Games, and The Avengers. The fed us a dinner right after takeoff and another dinner before landing. The entire experience flying with Singapore Airlines is just awesome and they put most other airlines to shame. The thing about flying the A380 is that it is very quiet inside. It's almost eerily quiet.



We arrived in Tokyo Narita airport around 7:00p and the sun was almost gone. After a very very long walk to immigration and customs, we headed outside to the shuttle area. We caught the Hilton's free shuttle from the airport and were in the room by 8:30p. in the morning we had the nice buffet that is standard in all Asian Hiltons and it was great.

Since we were only about 2/3 of the way to Cambodia we still had another full day of flying to do.

This time we were on Thai Airways which is also a great airline, but doesn't compare to Singapore. Our flight to Bangkok left at noon, but we were at the airport 3 hours early.

We walked around the mall before going through security then we went to the ANA lounge until the flight was called. This flight was almost 6 hours long and I watched Twenty-one Jumpstreet and John Carter. We had almost a 2 hour layover in Bangkok before catching the last flight for the day. That flight was on a really old A300 which is the first type of jet that Airbus started making. So we had been on the newest Airbus and the oldest.  The distance between Bangkok and Phnom Penh is a little more than 200 miles so it was a quick 55 minute flight.

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