The long way back

Just before takeoff from Narita Japan.

My flight itinerary back to Manila made no sense and most people who saw it agreed. I was scheduled to leave Narita Japan to Guam, then from Guam to Nagoya Japan, and then lastly from Nagoya to Manila -- the flight path was a jigsaw. Total time with connections was scheduled for 14 hours compared to a direct flight that takes 4 hours. Why? It was the cheapest flight package I could find by far.

I got to my bus just fine in the morning but realized I didn’t save enough cash to pay for it. I had to charge it. My bus left at 6 AM which would give me ample time to make it to the airport for my 9:45 AM flight. What I didn’t know though was that the bus had to make two stops on the way to pick up people. This made me very concerned if I could make my flight. I ended up making it just fine and even had time to eat a McDonald’s breakfast.

In line at McDonald’s, I met two flight attendants that were going on the same flight as me. One in particular was really friendly. On the flight we joked around which was nice to see the more personal side of a flight attendant. For some reason we boarded my flight 30 minutes before it was scheduled to on my boarding pass. On the ground and in the plane, the pilot said that they were having a hard time starting engine #2. We waited for at least 40 minutes.

In Guam, I was to connect and fly back to Japan. The Northwest Airlines crew had a little confusion over my tickets. I was paged to the counter at the gate where they had a boarding pass for me even though I already had my boarding pass. They just changed my seat. This wasn’t the first time I was called to the gate. In flight, everything was great -- a good dinner, the flight attendant serving me was friendly (and attractive), and I listened to several podcasts I didn’t know I had.

One podcast in particular really changed the way I think about traveling. It was a National Geographic Adventure podcast interviewing Tim Cahill, a travel writer for the Geo. He’s traveled to over a 100 different countries and so has had his share of mishaps and adventure. The interesting thing he said was that the best stories of adventure come about when you get lost. You can take the safe route that all the tourists take and is reliable but there’s no adventure or stories there.

“Getting lost is the essence of exploring... getting lost results in adventure.” -- Tim Cahill, travel writer

This really hit the spot for me because I always seem to worry about getting lost and not making it somewhere on time. It’s also completely true from what I’ve experienced in my travels. Now I can travel with a little less stress and almost look forward to the unexpected; as long as I and others don’t get hurt.

After my flight landed in Japan again, I felt that the rest of my travels would be straight forward and stress free. I was wrong. As I was getting off the plane, an airline worker held up a sign that said “Paging Mr. Jason Jue.” That’s me! The worker gestured to me to wait on the side and so I waited next to the flight attendant that was serving me. We chatted and I found out she was going to be on my flight back to Manila. It turns out that because our flight landed late, we had very little time to make it to our connecting flight to Manila.

As we ran through the airport, the NWA worker personally escorted us through everywhere we needed to go. For me, I wasn’t stressed because I knew we would make the flight because the NWA person was with us. Plus, I didn’t have to figure out where to go at the airport. I actually felt like a VIP. The flight attendant and I went through our own private security checkpoint and then to the gate. A worker at the gate asked me why I went to Guam. I said, “I don’t know.”

View of my day room at Manila airport

The plane to Manila was a large 400 passenger plane that was packed and noisy. There were a lot of Filipinos onboard. My second new flight attendant friend didn’t serve my area but we said “hi” a couple times. The flight was good and I ended up having a second dinner. I arrived in Manila at around 11 PM and did the usual immigrations and baggage claim. Though, I still needed to figure out what to do until my domestic flight to Tagbilaran at 5:45 AM. I preferred not to leave the airport and found out that the airport has a day room I can rent for one night (in my case, 4 hours). The room was small but good enough.

- jason