News and Views

We got home from Asia about 7:00 pm last night. Our clocks are still turned around and I can barely stay awake this afternoon, but I had no trouble getting up for basketball at 5:00 this morning. In fact I wouldn’t have had trouble getting up at 3:00 since I was awake anyway.

I realized that in the past three weeks we flew 11 times; 11 take offs and 11 landings, on 4 different airlines (Southwest, Eva, Vietnam, and Cambodia Airlines). Gisele’s ear was fine on these last two flights, after having her eardrum lanced. She is glad she did it.

In the past we have almost always flown United Airlines anywhere in the world. Back when I was with Intel it was a reasonable choice and we built up a lot of miles. Last year we used our remaining miles upgrading a trip to business class, so we are no longer tied to what has become a second-rate airline. This time we flew mostly on Eva, a Taiwan-based airline. The difference was significant. The United planes seem old, many of them don’t have individual TVs at each seat and they are cramped. You can pay extra for “Economy Plus” and get a few more inches of legroom, but nothing else.

On Eva every seat has a TV with DVR-like pause/resume capabilities, and a long list of movies to watch. On this trip I saw “Frozen”, “12 Years a Slave”, “Captain Phillips” and a documentary on Angkor Wat. Eva’s premium economy (called “Elite”) comes with several additional perks. Besides more legroom, the seats are wider and recline further with foot rests. Luggage is tagged priority and comes onto the carousel sooner. Elite passengers board early and get off early, and have their own check-in counter. Unfortunately the recline was not quite enough that I slept really comfortably, but it was better than vanilla economy. I wish we could afford to travel first or business class all the time, with the fully reclining beds, but it’s just too much.

Our flight out of Taipei was delayed almost an hour and our connection in Los Angeles was tight. I was really glad we participate in the “Global Entry” program. I’ve mentioned that program before. We got off the plane, walked past the long 30 – 40 minute lines at US Immigration directly to an open kiosk. Scanned our passports and fingerprints and were on our way in less than 5 minutes. We walked to the luggage carousel where we were the first ones from our flight, and within 5 more minutes our priority bags came out of the chute and we were on our way. We made the Southwest flight and got our luggage rechecked with little time to spare. We certainly wouldn’t have made it without Global Entry.

It was quite an adventure. Vietnam was not what I was expecting, especially around Da Nang. I’d like to go back there and spend a couple of weeks. Cambodia was closer to what I expected, though very different from the insanity of “The Killing Fields”. Everywhere we went in both countries people were friendly and welcomed us (and our US dollars of course). But it’s nice to be back home.