Tripping the Flight Fantastic
The older I get, the better I used to fly. 😅 But flying Cathay Pacific sure helps these old bones. Terrific meals, huge smiles and wine with meals! Our 16 hour flight path to Hong Kong was the polar route, across Baffin Island and the Arctic Ocean.
Because of our route, we crossed the International Dateline fairly early in the flight, time travelling to the next day on the calendar. Unlike the Prime Meridian which follows the 0 degree line of latitude through Greenwich England, it meanders around various landforms. I thought that Labrador and Newfoundland were one of a few outliers from a standard time zone, but there are some that even vary more than that. You can play "Where's Waldo in Bizarre Time Zones" here:
The landing approaches to Hong Kong are kind of unnerving. The runways jut out into the ocean and are rather narrow strips of land. I watched the belly camera as we touched down on the topmost runway shown below. There was a disconcerting skid and a lot of water appeared to the right, then an adjustment to centre the plane again. And then a 12 minute taxi to our gate.
The 13+ hour layover was an attempted sleep-in with travellers from around the world. I had slept for about 2.5 hours on the plane and got a couple more in the airport. Our unwashed motley crew spread out on benches, carpets etc stood in stark contrast to the Louis Vuitton, Hermes, Balenciaga etc shoppers. One tall human pretzel somehow slept soundly while sleeping across a 5 seat bench with seat armrests. He had to be shaken awake! A fellow traveller tried the McDonalds and said it was much superior the N American locations.
The flight to Da Nang was only 90 minutes. We were sardined into a bus with no seats and driven to a Hong Kong Express plane on the tarmac. My seat mates were Austin, an American from north of San Fran and Phil born in Da Nang now with American citizenship living in Chicago. Both were late 20s and experiencing the Gen Z life.
I noticed lush Austin's hair immedietly and he told us he got a hair transplant in Turkey last year. Hair tourism is huge there, the Turks pioneered the technique and continue to improve the process. He is meeting his fiancée in Da Nang. He met her when touring Bali two years ago. She is Balinese and hopes to find work in California. But to marry her, Austin has has to provide scads of text conversations, pictures, letters proving the relationship is valid to the Balinese government. A long involved process.
Philip is Vietnamese. Hi is visiting his parents and sibs in Da Nang He explained that when he was born in Vietnam there was not a citizenship classification. He moved on his own to America, changed his name and got American citizenship. Now he wants dual citizenship. His quest is probably more difficult than Austin's, a process proving his true desire to the Viet government with old texts, frequency of phone calls to Vietnam, pictures etc.
A driver picked me up at the Da Nang airport and thankfully my hotel room was ready at 10:30 when we arrived. Temp was 25 with a light rain. Tho' still really tired, I took a walk around the neighbourhood, found a beautiful all wooden mom and pop restaurant and had a delicious ginger chicken meal with a pineapple smoothie. Caught a few hours of sleep and will visit the old town tomorrow.
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