Flight 1: In the books

My first trans-pacific flight, and definitely the longest flight of my life! The plane was supposed to have wifi and power outlets, sadly it did not. But that's not necessarily a bad thing, as if I'd had those things I'd probably have sat on my phone the whole time and not introduced myself to Ali (as referenced in my previous post).

Shortly after take off the crew came by and offered us a choice of two meals; beef and rice, or pork and rice. I opted for beef. It came with an interesting and unidentifiable salad, fruit, a truffle, and a choice of beverage of which I chose water. I would have gotten a cocktail but the attendant and I were already getting a little lost in translation and I didn't want to drag the interaction out more than I had to.

Then came an attempt at sleep. Even with one of those goofy neck pillows I couldn't really sleep well. Add to that that I had no idea of how much time had elapsed and I can't say for certain how much sleep I got, but it wasn't a lot. 

After waking up I spent some time chatting with my seat neighbor, I covered that in my previous post. After a time we were offered a second meal, which I assume was around what should have been breakfast time as we were offered only coffee and tea with this meal. The choices were japanese congee, which is basically rice pudding, and something that was unintelligible even after asking him to repeat it 3 times. I went with the congee.  It came with a bread roll, fruit, yogurt, and coffee, all of which was pretty tasty. The congee tasted good, and I would recommend it to anyone as long as you're ok with the consistency being somewhat like snot. 

For the times in between eating, sleeping, and talking, I watched the screen on the back of the headrest in front of me. The only mode I watched was the map of where we were at that also rotated through various stats such as our airspeed and elevation,  but that was mostly because my unit was broken and it was the only mode that it would display. The kids in front of me were watching Despicable Me, which I totally would have preferred, but watching our position on the globe change ever so slowly wasn't so bad. 

Now I'm sitting at the gate in Taipei, waiting for my plane to board. Asian airlines are pure gold for people watching. It's an overcast morning here in Taiwan, I'm not sure what it's like in Saigon right now, but I'm excited to get there and see it for myself.