Asia Steps

We left Luang Prabang Tuesday evening and were about to catch a flight to Vientiane when the power went out at the airport. Now, call me petty, but I think but I like to have my airports all wired 24/7. While I was entertaining all the possible catastrophes of this little episode, all of the airport staff, vendors and tuk tuk drivers were leaving for the day. It was, after all, past 8pm already! After a small delay, we finally took off to Vientiane where we spent a short night in a deserted strange looking hotel. Very early the next morning, we caught a flight to Pakse, the main getaway to the south of Laos. This time there was no power failure at the airport but rather a HUGE airplane size roach walking around the “security check” area.
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I wasn’t expecting to update the blog until arriving in Vietnam but now I am writing using free Internet access at the Japan Airlines Sakura lounge at the JFK Airpoirt where biz class and first class passengers nibble on Japanese snacks and sip wine until their flight. Today we learned that God is Japanese and he speaks Hebrew - as we were checking in at the Japan Airline counter, Kevin was telling me in Hebrew how he would love to fly business class one day. A second later, the airlines rep at the counter informed us that there has been overbooking for our flight and and normally we would have to be on a waiting list but instead, they’ve decided to upgrade us to business class!!! HHHHAAA! 14 hours in pure comfort!

This sort of thing only happens when Kevin is around, he brings a lot of luck into any situation. We’re now going to try this strategy at every gate, Kevin will say in Hebrew how he’d love to fly First Class (we should try that too, no?) and poof! We’ll be upgraded! We’re off to a great start!

Less than 12 hours left until our flight is supposed to take off at noon today. We hope the storm that’s coming in tonight won’t delay the flight. We only have a 2 hour layover at the Narita International Airport near Tokyo and the connecting flight only flies once a day. If we miss that, we may need to spend another 24hrs at the airport. Normally that would be an opportunity to get out and see some stuff but, expecting temperatures from the 60’s up to 90’s in SE Asia, we weren’t planning on taking any winter clothing on this trip and Japan’s winter is almost as cold as it is here in New York!
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