Never Take a 30 Hour Plane Ride

I'll start with a few quick observations:

1. Singapore is DAMN far away
2. To quote Good Morning Vietnam -- Singapore is "hot and wet! That's nice if you're with a lady, but it ain't no good if you're in the jungle"... I guess that's what you get for being 1 degree north of the equator. --- It's gonna take me a while to get used to swimming through air.

So, about the most hectic trip ever - I got dropped off at the airport Wednesday morning with an hour and a half to catch my flight. There's were now lines, and I had an e-ticket, so I should have been in the clear, right? NO! The automatic e-ticket machine sent me to the old fashioned person-standing-behind-a-counter, who told me that Singapore will not let me in. Since my only proof of depart from Singapore was a return ticket from Beijing in December, two months after the 90-day tourist visa cutoff, I could not get a boarding pass. My parents had left, and I had 20 minutes until my flight began to board - I was screwed. Since I didn't bring my cell phone I had to resort to the pay phone to get in touch with anyone. I tries the travel agency, which was based in California, but surprisingly no one was working at 3:30am Pacific time. After updating my parents with the new developments, I went back to the ticket agent to try to buy a refundable ticket out of Singapore which I would immediately cancel once I got there. Since my plane was scheduled to leave in 10 minutes, he gave me my ticket to San Francisco and told me to deal with it there.

Once I arrived in California I talked to my Dad who told me he had been on the phone with the Singaporean embassy who said I needed to go online and purchase a train ticket to Kuala Lumpur and print out my confirmation to show to the desk agent to get my plane ticket out of the states. After looking everywhere and asking everyone where to find a computer with a printer in the airport (SFO has zero public computers), I was forced to leave and take a 30 minute taxi into San Francisco to a hotel that had a business center where I bought a $100 dollar train ticket that I probably won't use and then take another $40 taxi back to the airport where I would have 1 hour to catch my plane. Of course the check-in line was about 1 hour long... Again, ten minutes before my plane was supposed to take off and ten minutes before my heart stopped from anxiety, I got to the ticket agent who said "so I assume you've heard your flight was delayed two hours?" Phew.... but that means I was panicking for nothing. I got through security, found my gate, and immediately purchased a big bottle of duty-free vodka.

Being in the international terminal of the SFO airport was almost like being in Asia already. I had lunch at a Japanese restaurant run by Chinese people who were talking about all the customers in Mandarin. Everyone waiting for my flight was Asian. The Indian man sitting next to me at the gate, with no social qualms whatsoever, leaned toward his wife and let out a long, loud burst of curry scented gas just to remind me that I'm not in Kansas anymore, this is going to be quite a culture change. They were, of course, sitting right behind me on the flight, but they moved up to the seats next to me because they just happened to be unoccupied. Somehow whenever a meal was served, whether it be Japanese chicken or ramen noodles with bread, the gassy Indian couple was served a special curry dish. Needless to say my flight was not the best smelling one that I've had. I took a sleeping pill which lasted 3 hours... It was a long flight.....

When we reached the Asian side of the Pacific and finally and saw land for the first time - Japan - I started to get pretty excited. I guess Asia had always seemed so far away that it never felt completely real to me, so seeing the Japanese landscape below firsthand was pretty cool. Flying into Hong Kong at sunset was beautiful. I never imagined it to be such a breathtaking city. Seeing all the signs in Chinese characters and hearing it spoken in the airport was getting me really excited for the upcoming semester. Of course since our flight was delayed two hours I had to race to the gate for the Singapore flight, which I just made, but not before Chinese bureaucracy decided that since I had bought duty free items in San Francisco and not in China, I would have to check my backpack.... just another thing to add to my anxiety level. I slept for most of the flight and was ecstatic when we landed, not only to be in Singapore, but to be finally done with the 30 hour trip.

I got to customs, very nervous that they wouldn't accept my train ticket receipt as valid proof of departure and that I would have to be sent back to the US...

The woman at immigration asks:

"Are you leaving by plane or train?"

"Train"

"Ok have a nice stay." Stamp, stamp.

Jeeeez... alll that for nothing. I pick up my backpack from baggage claim and see the Indian couple looking for a taxi. I helped them carry their bags and we shared one into the city, saving me 5 bucks. I got to my hostel at 2am and fell asleep. The end. I'll write about Singapore later, this was long enough.