Author’s Note: I labeled this blog a short story because both my daughter and my sister have critiqued that my posts should be shorter. I’m going to study that concept and see what I think about it but a least for now I’ll just label it Short Story Style in the title when I know it’s long, which this post is heading towards. Long…because we’re on a plane. Traveling across the Pacific. 23 hours or so to our destination. How many words makes too long? What makes for enough content to provide entertainment and information? What changes would benefit my writing style? Would love your feedback dear readers. What do you want to read here? Leave your comments here on the blog or message me via @theinquisitivescorpionstale on Facebook Now, back to the blog post 😉
We flew into LAX, smooth and easy from Reno and made our way for transportation to the Super 8. A quick overnight hotel with no frills. The man who does the booking (the hubster) was crying the blues over his penny pinching, dollar squeezing error with this one. He thought it included airport shuttle. Which it did, but only from the hotel to the airport. Ah well, $20 later getting fleeced by the airport taxi who hit us with a “minimum”, (and never started the meter) and we were in our room. Simple but clean and close. Perfect. Except we could have had a better room for the same expenditure. Haha. Thankfully this “mistake” ($) doesn’t make my agent irate, or me. But guarantee you he scores it as a “loss” when telling his “stories” of the magnificence of his “skills”. (As he relates this story over a bottle of wine with friends somewhere down the road. For those of you who know my husband, you can already picture the scene. Hahahahahaha.) I make fun, but seriously we get to do so much more because of his savvy and I must say our ability to not always require the best. Just clean. Evaluating actual reviews, not the stars when shopping the travel sites is crucial to insuring good value and sometimes opens the door to superb quality at a ridiculously low price. I think my honey should coordinate “tours”. Lots of “on own” time but the best value for the dollar with the added comfort of someone being around with his stature. Flexible dates and no preconceived notions would have to be the premise of these tours because they would actually be our travel. You know, #cometravelwithme Boom! He has a new job. We continue to travel. I grow my blog and we travel some more. Hahahaha. If you believe…
But I digress. We decided to “walk for food”. Dreadful. A few hotel spots and no “neighborhood” except for fast food and c-stores and we were determined for “healthy”. We did find a Dollar Store and got lip gloss, sleeping pills (just in case of on plane craziness), hard candy, bag of snack mix (👹) duct tape and super glue. My man already needed a headphones repair. We made our way back deciding for food at Hangar 18 at the Marriott. Let me just say, “there goes healthy!”. I cannot fathom that we as Americans can’t accept food for foods value and not have to dress it up. We really are trying to eat “raw” not processed, lean meat, low carb diets and it is difficult in this country when eating away from home regularly. Ridiculous. I think the restaurant industry better start to recognize it or they are going to fall on their faces. Farm to table. Okay, right. Here’s what we got at Hangar 18 at the Marriott.
This $18 burger was good quality and way satisfying but I literally could not find a plate on the menu as written that was healthier. (I skipped all but 8 fries or so and could have gotten a salad for a $5 up charge by simply chose not to!) I also justified it that hamburgers is not an item I would order in Thailand most likely so…jumped off that cliff.
I had scoped out the self serve laundry at the hotel before we left and got us back to fresh and clean and repacked before bed time. We woke Tuesday morning to nothing we would eat at the hotel breakfast. It was individual canned fruits, (not even a fresh banana) and Yoplait at best. Skipped it. We did drink coffee, it’s a priority to us! The shuttle was on time and we were off to the William Bradley Terminal. Airport check in with China Eastern and security pass was a breeze. This booking we had done through our Chase Rewards Travel account. *See info below; great value! We could not get our seat assignments online so I had called Chase and the customer service agent assured me he had gotten China Eastern on the phone and we were assigned seats, one being a window seat. This was confirmed at check in and our bags were checked through to Bangkok. Smooth sailing!
We headed to the gate area talking about eggs, knowing we would not eat much of the flight food. Well, our image of omelette, toast and coffee soon disintegrated. Once again the options anywhere near healthy and fresh were slim and spendy. We landed on a shared margherita pizza, yogurt for me, tuna sandwich for Dean. At 11 a.m., we were sitting stacked in our seats on the plane. Thank goodness for the 5.3 miles yesterday and the 1.4 today in the airport. (A girl can dream 😉 At lunchtime we were served beef with rice potato salad, orange cream jello sponge cake, dinner roll with butter and water right after the flight took off. The rice was sticky, not bad. The beef I did not touch. The frozen broccoli and carrots were over cooked. Potato salad, I barely tasted was probably fine but weird with rice. The dessert was semi tasty. I had 1/4 of it. The dinner roll was hot and crusty. White flour. I ate it with the butter. Too bad there’s not a walking track on the plane!
These long haul flights are daunting. I would think it must be like chickens in a cage, cattle on the truck. They are part of the adventure tho. I am not a “vegger”. I typically don’t have the patience for it. Well, on a plane ride like this there is no choice. So you are stuck with some of my rambling. I also have a writing course I have read 5 chapters in. This is actually the second year in a row; I must launch the monetary side of these habits of travel and writing. Let’s hope I can absorb Great Escape Publishing’s concept. I just need to jump and figure out a little bit more of what makes it all click for me to become a working nomad. Life is work as work is life.
I watched my first movie. A benefit of the entertainment suite offered by the airlines meant to keep us all calm, in our places. Here is a quick review of The Big Sick: Messages contained within this dramatic comedy make it a worthwhile way to kill a couple hours. It was labeled comedy which it offered but my mind was drawing ideas from its orations about life. Beliefs. Values. A “Let it be” attitude. This non movie buff was well entertained.
Turbulence started to rock the plane about 4:50pm LA time. Not bad, just enough for me to have my fingers crossed that it wasn’t going to get rough. It did not. Dinner was served about 7. A lettuce and carrot salad with Caesar dressing, noodles with pork, melon and a dinner roll. I was happy for the fresh fruit and veggies and passed on the noodles. I had seen wine served with the first meal but I was saddened when I requested a cup of cab to find out they were out. (So much for that idea to get me to snooze part of the way.)
And so, another movie. Mad to Be Normal ran about 90 minutes with many odd twists and turns that led me to think I probably wasn’t really going to get it even when this movie was done. Yet, I couldn’t stop watching it either. The story of Laing and Kingsley Hall. I have to do my research to see if it is based on a true story. The fact that I’m still thinking about it warrants it as worthwhile to have watched for me.
I must say this plane ride once again made me realize the beauty of access to information we so easily have with our phones and the magic of WiFi or data. I must say I really miss it when I don’t have it. As I write, I would already have the answers to questions that popped in my head as well as would have created the researched links you will find here by the time I publish this “short story.” We, as people in an era of technology, really have to be increasing our knowledge out of sheer curiosity by leaps and bounds. I still think I may need my own Alexa. Next I listened to the Meteora CD from Linkin Park as I penned some of this and knocked out more studying.
And then we were fed again! Tuna salad on a warm roll, peanuts and a drink. I passed. Too many “not what I want to eat” items for one flight, generous though. As we made our way to Shanghai we could see that winter was spread across the countryside. Upon deplaning we could feel it. Our layover was just under 3 hours. Enough to walk some airport miles, shake off the stiffness and charge our phones. The flight into Bangkok allowed for a little dozing. Again food was offered which included 2 breakfast breads, yogurt and peanuts with a beverage. I skipped it again because I was already on the verge of my cat nap. Not quality sleep exactly but some shut eye! It was a smooth flight and as I finish this we have checked into a modest room at President Hotel Bangkok (Our Jr Suite was not available at 3am so now we get an upgrade to an executive suite for the inconvenience.) Great value found via Chase Rewards travel also just turned to super value! We slept a solid five hours and the city is buzzing outside. We want to get time acclimation accomplished quickly with this city 15 hours ahead of home. It’s time for adventure! I’ll keep you posted again soon.
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