Tokyo, Japan
It’s been nearly four months since I’ve been out of the country and with my new role at Grameen Foundation (which I still need to actually blog about), I’ve been pretty tied up with work in the office and some limited domestic travel. As of yesterday, that’s all changing. I’m now in the early stages of a three week trip through southeast Asia that will include the Philippines, Vietnam, and Cambodia.
Things yesterday didn’t get off to a terribly good start. Due to a glitch in the Northwest Airlines computer systems, I ended up standing in line at the Seattle airport for approximately five hours… the vast majority of that time spent while Northwest was able to do exactly nothing. The guy in charge said that their systems were down worldwide - not across the US, but around the planet - and they couldn’t check in bags, check passports, etc. Then, when the systems started coming back up again they were able to process people with e-tickets but my paper ticket held me back even further. (Why a paper ticket, you ask? Probably because Vietnam Airlines flight from Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh doesn’t really handle e-tickets well). I have to say, I’m pretty pleased with my patience and apparent zen-like ability to just stand in one place for several hours… I got a little frustrated with the whole paper ticket thing but eventually was given a handwritten “concourse access pass” that allowed me to go through security without a boarding card (weird), had a hand-written tag on my checked luggage that would theoretically get it to Manila (scary), and hauled ass out to the terminal… and got in another line.
No boarding card means stand in line again, and I was now getting a bit anxious with visions of 10 hours in a middle seat on the way to Tokyo. Instead, I ended up with a “boarding card” that was, literally, a piece of blank paper with my name and the words “open seating” written on it in blue ink by the gate agent. OK, well, they let me on the plane and lo, open seating turned out to mean that the seat next to the exit door in the very first row of economy class was actually free. Hello, leg room.
A few Xanax, a Jack and coke, and a bit o’ red wine… and I slept the next six hours or so, waking up in time to work for an hour or two before landing at Narita. At that point we were about four hours late on arrival and I had missed the connection to the flight to Manila - which meant that I missed the field work for Village Phone that I had left four days early to be able to attend. I’m bummed about that - was looking forward to getting a little Village Phone work in and seeing deployments in a new country - but so it goes… and as a result, I ended up taking the decision to spend an extra day in Tokyo instead of just doing the 24 hour flight delay, hang out at the airport hotel thing.
I was going to stay at the Park Hyatt, a dream of mine since the first time I saw Lost in Translation, but discovered (after thankfully reading the fine print on their website) that the great bar where Bill Murray sits and has his whiskey closed on MONDAY for renovations. Bummer. Instead, I had a quick IM chat with Marcelo who is handily in Chicago hanging out with Jen and Nolan and ended up at the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku, where Jen & Nolan spent the Tokyo portion of their honeymoon last year. Fantastic place, reasonable room rates by Tokyo standards, and a toilet that really requires a help desk call or reading the manual.
I’m here working from the room now, with a checkout in a few hours followed by some wandering in Shinjuku, the long bus ride to Narita, and then hopefully a flight to Manila tonight… One note, though, on the expense of high-end hotel bars in Tokyo. I sat down last night at the hotel’s Sky Bar for a much-needed bourbon and discovered that a single shot of Booker’s was going to cost me $20. Yikes. Needless to say… I had several. Not the most fiscally prudent thing to do but the view was lovely and I was thirsty.
And so it goes…
