Tamar got a round trip ticket to HCMC, Vietnam on Japan Airlines for $1,440 including taxes and the additional $70 for weekend travel (both ways) with only 1 stop over in Tokyo. This fare was on sale for a limited time and would normally cost over $1,800. The taxes alone are over $700, half the price of the entire ticket. FYI: Weekend travel is Friday to Monday and costs an extra $35 each way if travel begins on one of these days.

I tried to book my ticket for departure mid-January but no such luck…no yet. I’m wait listed on Korean Air and Happy tells me that I should be able to get a sale price on JAL about a month before my intended departure, Jan 17th. Otherwise my ticket would also cost over $1,800 and Happy just doesn’t want me to pay that! I’ll just have to wait until the middle of December for the sale to come around. However, availability may become a problem since it’s just before Tet and the Chinese New Year (Jan 26, 2009).

Wa Minh Travel arranges visas for Vietnam (or anywhere else) for about $60 extra but they can’t procure multi-entry visas spanning more than a month which is what Tamar and I both need for this trip. For that you must apply directly with the Vietnamese embassy which never lists prices on their website and they have really limited phone hours.

We’re still up several hundred bucks from the $1050 round trip with Korean Air that I got in 2006 (including the visa) but international travel is just really pricey these days. Fortunately, the pho in the street is hot, delicious and still costs under a dollar!

View of Japan Airlines Planes from Cafe Avion

We’re sitting at the beautiful “Avion Café & Bar” at Narita Airport in Tokyo. We arrived early this morning and have over 4 hours before our next flight leaves for New York. We walked around for a bit and looked at all the goodies and yummy confections, we even passed a “Yahoo Cafe” where people can use the Internet for free. The “Avion” has huge windows overlooking the tarmac area where large airplanes are parked waiting to take off.

We ate a light breakfast on board at 3 a.m. (!) and were hungry again by 9a.m. We got gyoza dumpling and shrimp tempura udon to share, both were great! It’s so exciting to have Japanese food in Japan!

First of all there are no regular looking “seats” in the Japan Airlines Business Class. Instead there are huge futuristic, rounded pod-shaped units that look like something the Emperor in
Star Wars might sit in if he had invested some money to upgrade to a newer model instead of blowing it all on yet another Death Star. These seats don’t just recline, they extend flat for sleeping, have an adjustable leg rest with a foot stop so you don’t slide out when positioned at an angle and have a chair massage feature that rolls up and down your back.

Waiting on the chair is a hanger where you can put your jacket which is then promptly stowed in a closet by a flight attendant. The first attendant approached me in Japanese, offering me a selection of Japanese newspapers. I was still in shock over the size of the seats that all I could return to her was a blank look on my face. After waiting the required 3 seconds of passenger unresponsiveness she switched to English and I ended up with a Sunday edition of the NY Times delivered to my pod. There was enough leg room to store my laptop and my shoes and I traded them for the sealed package of slippers to wear during the flight. After all, this is an Asian airline and it’s always nice to keep the floor clean.

As is now standard on large aircraft flying inter-continentally, each person is equipped with their own private audio, TV, movie and game system. It took about 15 minutes to figure out the remote control even with the help of the 7-page, legal-sized, illustrated and laminated instruction manual. But all that was worth it since it also came with over-ear noise-cancelling headphones! The pod had its own electrical outlet which allowed me to save my laptop’s battery for the next unplugged stretch.

I forgot to mention that Tamar and I weren’t seated together since I was in the row ahead of her. The rows were spaced so far apart and the pod’s shell was so big I couldn’t even see her when I turned around. The deal as I understood it at the check-in counter was something like “we’ll apologize for overbooking the flight that you reserved months in advance and we’ll split you two up, but just smile and say ‘thank you’ since we’ll upgrade you. At least that’s how I recall playing that scene. Of course, the first thing we did after the newspaper and slippers was to look around for a candidate to approach about switching seats with one of us so that we could sit together. Hmm…that guy already has his shoes off and his eyes closed, this one is already twisting around to talk to his buddy across the aisle and two rows back. No chance. We approached one of the attendants who consulted her seating chart and returned with bad news that there were no available seats together on this flight. But just then, the woman sitting next to me, overhearing our little conversation had a brilliant idea. Why don’t they upgrade HER to First Class if there’s a seat available and let the nice couple sit together. I seconded that motion and, sure enough, a single First Class seat was available and Tamar and I spent the rest of the flight side-by-side watching Ratatouille (loved it) and helping each other with the chair controls and the remote.

Ok, no review of a flight, certainly no review of mine, would be complete without mention of the food. WOW, great food! It started out with a glass of champagne accompanied by a salad of greens and a Boursin-like cheese wrapped in zucchini. This was followed by a small dish of Swiss, smoked Gouda and pecorino cheese and cashew nuts. Then, a nicely printed menu with Western and Japanese choices was handed out. We both opted for Japanese, of course, and that began with 8 mini-appetizers including goodies like squid roll, king crabmeat, fried sea bream, spinach, steamed chicken and egg-cake. Tamar got a grilled Spanish mackerel and I ordered the beef and both were served with white rice, miso soup and were quite good. Dessert was a panna cotta served with coffee or tea. It’s really fun to eat with chopsticks on a flight and we even got a little red ceramic origami-style crane to rest them on between dishes.

Other meals, served upon request, followed throughout the rest of the flight. These included Japanese mushroom risotto, sautéed shrimp and scallops with garlic cream sauce and soup with udon noodles and a sweet fried bean curd (tofu) followed by chocolate crème brulée.

The main problem I had with Business Class was that there were just too many things to do and it’s very hard to choose how to occupy yourself and even harder to get everything done. Should I watch a movie, two movies, three movies? What about playing chess or tetris? I can use my laptop with its endless supply of electricity, should I watch more movies I brought with me or should I start writing this super long blog post? Maybe I’ll just catch up on emails. Sleeping in the pod was so comfortable and relaxing but I felt like I was missing out on all the other fun stuff to do. Oh well, even Business Class isn’t perfect!