Of course, these are small samples – but, if you’re looking to sojourn on the East Coast, these could function as a bit of a guide.

The Bus:

I took Megabus and BoltBus most frequently when traveling to Boston or DC. I had even written about how bus travel seemed to be up-and-coming, with buses equipped with wifi, in-seat power, and a sense of dignity, and for a poor student, the price, even purchasing a day in advance, was most friendly. Most of my trips to Boston on BoltBus were flawless – the buses were on time, clean, the power and wifi worked, and the driver even wielded a walkie-talkie for constant checks on traffic conditions. I highly recommend BoltBus.

It’s MegaBus where things went a bit wrong. Don’t the smiling MegaBus man fool you, unless he’s smiling out of spite. I don’t think I have ever had a MegaBus departure that left on time. On one trip to Boston, the driver got lost leaving New York, circling aimlessly in the Bronx for an extra hour, until he finally found his exit north. MegaBus also ascribes to the Ryanair brand of locating their bus stops in some locations. In Baltimore, my poor friend, Matt, had to drop me at some mall in Northern Maryland we could only locate with a military spy satellite, in the middle of a frighteningly remote park-and-ride lot. On that trip, they outsourced their physical bus to another company, so no wifi, power, and listening to movies on overhead monitors with volume so enormously loud that cracks began to form in the windows. My fault – I had forgotten my earplugs and eyeshades to drown out the cacophony.

On one, and only occasion, I took (what I thought was) the auspiciously named MVP Bus to Baltimore. Their ticket office was a shack next to a video store on 34th street. Before boarding, I saw an employee board, light a piece of insense, and walk the aisle of the bus. I wasn’t sure if it was some ritualistic protection ritual (like how Air Nepal sacrifices a goat on (literally) its airplanes) of the bus itself, praying that they could make one more trip down the New Jersey Turnpike on bald tires and with an axle held together in the middle with Big League Chew, or they couldn’t quite figure out how to clean the remains of a dead body out of the seats, but I survived the ride, my lack of personal safety on the bus itself quickly trumped by being dropped in the middle of Downtown Baltimore at the end of the ride.

The worst part about the bus, however – and this is not the bus company’s fault – is that simply, returning and leaving New York, at any time of day or night, is an extremely excruciating experience. It takes an hour to leave to head up to Boston. The Lincoln Tunnel, at 11pm on a Sunday Evening, would’ve been quicker if I had gotten out and walked through the tunnel from New Jersey. Plus, and this is a pipe-dream, I wish buses would make more stops in New York. Yes, I understand this request is a selfish, logistical nightmare, but man – on returns from Boston, that went right by Columbia, I would’ve paid a lot just to be able to exit. Instead, I’d be howling and pounding at the windows for the driver to let me out up at Columbia, only to take about an hour more crawling down Fifth Avenue, past Bergdorf Goodman’s and other shops I’d probably be asked to leave if I ever entered, to Penn Station, where I’d exit the bus, trudge to the subway, and take it about 90 blocks uptown.

Pros: Inexpensive, and a bus never flipped over, caught fire, or was taken hostage by a band of marauders. Wifi and power (when they’re working) are super cool. MegaBuses double-decker buses are pretty sharp.

Cons: Getting in and out of New York on wheels is horrifying at any time. Drivers sometimes get lost. Megabus outsources its buses to random bus companies, and sometimes, features scarily remote bus stops.

The Plane:

I took US Airways Express, once, when I found an excellent last minute fare, from La Guardia (LGA) to Baltimore (BWI). The flight departed about an hour late (late incoming airplane), featured a smart-aleck flight attendant who insisted on announcing obscure Maryland suburbs on final approach to BWI over the PA, battling for vocal superiority over the growling dual-props of the Dash-8, but dyammmm, was it quick.

Sadly, I forgot that US Airways flights do not earn 500 mile minimums to non-US Airways elites, and I topped out at a whopping 337 miles, with no Star Alliance Gold Bonus. Thanks, US Airways!

Pros: Cannot beat the speed of the actual journey itself. Very psychologically empowering.

Cons: Well, the speed of the journey is mitigated when factoring in travel time to the airport, and waiting in the inevitable La Guardia evening departure delays. No freaking 500 mile minimums. Sheesh.

The Train:

Ah, personally, I think the train is the finest form of transport up and down the Eastern Seaboard. Train stations are often centrally located, right in the heart of the city. Trains are not subject to congested roadways (obviously), and while the cars crawl into New York City, the train speeds by on its reserved tracks. I took Amtrak up to Albany, and back to New York from Baltimore, and thought it was just fantastic. There was in-seat power, lots of legroom, and the mental appeasement knowing I was headed direct to Penn Station, not having to fight down Fifth Ave with taxis, pedicabs, and Sabrett’s carts.

Unfortunately, Amtrak has an on-time record of -5%. Coming back from Albany, the train was delayed 90 minutes because the heat of the evening raised concern over the metallic expansion of the tracks. Unlike an airline, you can’t really “stand by” for earlier trains, even with a delay. As well, trying to print your ticket at a station is like living in a real-time Kafka-esque nightmare – no matter how many forms of ID, credit card swipes, reservation numbers, or destinations I entered, the machine could just not locate my reservation, or print my ticket. Eventually, somehow, and for some reason, on the 75th entry of my reservation number, it decided that I did indeed have a reservation for that day. A minor gripe, but no wi-fi on non-Acela trains, either. Amtrak’s website is clunky and poorly designed, as well. It could really use a bit of streamlining.

And, I’m not quite sure about Amtrak Guest Reward points, either – I don’t think they actually exist. No matter how many usernames and passwords I’ve configured, I cannot find how many points I’ve accrued from my three Amtrak trips. I think Guest Rewards is some kind of points purgatory, and I will never, ever see them again.

Finally, farrrrrrrrrck – Amtrak is damn expensive. Almost as expensive as flying. It’s not always particularly expedient, either. Acela trains from DC only seem to save, uh, about 20 minutes from regularly-priced slower trains. If you’re taking Amtrak to Boston, too – it’s the same amount of time as the bus.

Pros: A zippy way in and out of cities. Stations are centrally located. In-seat power, big seats, lotsa legroom. Uh – ostensibly, there’s some sort of frequent traveler program.

Cons: Astonishingly pricey. Delays are rampant and inevitable.

Overall? I’d take the train. I love the time savings of not having to travel to the airport (but, those savings might be lost in delays), going right to a centrally located station, plus, there’s always something so relaxing about train travel – just staring out the window, hearing the rails click, and the world pass by on the US’ woefully inadequate and obsolete rail infrastructure.

But, you can’t beat the price of the bus – but, sometimes, the hassle of entering and exiting NYC simply flatten me, and I just cannot handle it.

Part 1: Planning: Or, How I Learned to Delete Crucial Flight Segments and Think they Still Existed

Part 2: Lufthansa First Class Lounge, JFK

Part 3: JFK – Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa

Part 4: Frankfurt First Class Lounge, FRA – London Heathrow (LHR) on Lufthansa

Part 5: LHR – Istanbul (IST) on Turkish Airlines

Part 6: Rapid Exploration of Istanbul

Part 7: IST – Hong Kong (HKG) 0n Turkish Airlines

Part 8: Hong Kong Foray, Too Late for Dim Sum, and with No Skyline in Existence

Part 9: HKG – Bangkok (BKK), on Thai Airways

Part 10: Arrival in Bangkok, Review of Hilton Millenium Bangkok;

Part 11: Day One in Bangkok;

Part 12: BKK – Shanghai (PVG) – Tokyo (NRT) on Thai Airways and All Nippon Airways;

Part 13: It’s Raining Yen, Hallelujah – Tokyo Madness (with bonus text and photos of my January trip!)

Part 14: Review of the Hilton Tokyo, (plus bonus review and photos of the Conrad Tokyo, from my January trip!)

Part 15: NRT – BKK on All Nippon Airways (the Durian flight)

Part 16: Bangkok, Day Two

Part 17: BKK – Munich (MUC) on Thai Airways, Including the (what turned out to be) very, very, very overhyped Thai Airways first class lounge and spa

Part 18: Arrival in Munich, a Bavarian Day in Munich, with beer, sausages, and the BMW factory

Part 19: Review of the Hilton Munich City

Part 20: MUC – Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa

Part 21: No, You Can’t Use Our Phone – Review of the Hilton Frankfurt (preview: consider solidly not staying there)

Part 22: FRA – Detroit (DTW)  on Lufthansa, including the oh-so-fun First Class Terminal

Part 23: No Crew, No Brotherly Love – DTW – Newark (EWR) on Continental Express, Plus Wrap-Up, and Final Thoughts.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Part 2: Lufthansa First Class Lounge, JFK

In less than one minute standing in JFK’s terminal four, the TSA decided to identify me as a suspicious passenger.

For one of the first photos of the trip, after entering the terminal from the AirTrain, I had leaned over the railing of the stairway leading to the check-in level, and well, attempted to snap a picture of terminal activity. Unfortunately, the stairway overlooked a TSA bagging screening checkpoint, and one of the TSA screeners, doing his best job standing around, saw the flash of my camera.

“Hey! Come down here!” he yelled to me.

Sigh.

Less than a minute in the terminal, and I found myself in trouble, and about to receive a haranguing from a TSA employee, on my less than Ansel Adams-esque composition of the terminal, which happened to contain a stretch of a checkpoint, containing brightest, most intellectually qualified, and most diligent citizens, standing around in their faux-law enforcement uniforms and tinfoil badges.

“It’s okay,” I said nonchalantly, to my girlfriend, Elizabeth, with whom I was traveling on this Homeric crossing of the continents, as we descended the stairs. “This is exactly what the TSA does – make some big deal out of absolutely nothing.” Sadly, it doesn’t appear that cool to be accosted by the TSA – the equivalent of being  stopped by the United States Postal Service police, or the contracted security force of a nursing home. I mean, come on – it’s a TSA checkpoint, for fuck’s sake – not the holy tabernacle or as if I’m taking photos of someone changing through their dorm window. Yes, I’ll sell these photos to unsavory and dangerous organizations, who need to know the intricacies of American shampoo removal procedures. Give me a freakin’ break.

With a bored look on my face, I strode up to the checkpoint. And thus, the interrogation began.

“What are you doing?” belted the officer.

“Taking pictures of the terminal,” I responded innocently. (Was there another answer for which he was looking?)

“What for?” the TSA employee continued, I’m sure, buoyed by the fact that some part of his day didn’t involve his hoisting an oversized floral print rollerboard from Auntie Edna returning to West Palm Beach onto the conveyor belt, and waiting for his slack-jawed co-worker to click the button on his three-button keyboard to change the x-ray image from blue to orange a few times, just like the training manual said to do, and then move the baggage along.

“I’m a travel writer,” I replied. “I document each part of the trip.”

“Well, don’t take pictures of us,” he commanded, looking at the blurry image on the screen of my camera. “And now, I’m going to delete this photo,” he said with the all the dramatic intonation as the guy  who narrates movie previews.

What? Absolutely not! Injustice! He’s trampling on my civil rights! They’ll have to drag me away clapped in irons, three officers on each arm, my shirt ripped, and hanging about my neck, sweat on my brow, with my screams of “Remember me as a hero!” echoing through the populace’s minds and hearts, splashed in dramatic black and white glory on the front pages of the papers, a folk here for decades, flouted by injustice and disrespect of the TSA.

“Sure,” I replied. I really didn’t care. It really was a terrible photo, anyway, and in fact, before this defender of liberty had caught me, I had planned to take another one, in hopes of not blurring the image.

After he finally ascertained how to delete the image, he took a quick flip through the other images (ooooh! pictures of school friends and United Airlines meals!), handed me back the camera, and sent us on my way.

I don’t think Elizabeth was very impressed.

Exonerated, we walked to the end of the bustling terminal four, towards Lufthansa check-in, and headed towards the first class check-in desk.

The agent didn’t even respond when we walked up to the desk. Instead of allowing an uncomfortable silence to proceed, and a bit confused at what he wanted, I greeted him with a very eloquent and jovial, “Hello! We’d like to check in!”

“First class?” he responded skeptically, eying us over, as if I’d just told him I had indisputable evidence that the earth revolved around the sun. No, sir, I can’t read your very clearly marked signs, and I’m illiterate, and, I know you’d love to huffily dismiss me and my traveling companion to the “other” check-in desks, and smugly curly one corner of your mouth into a condescending and reproachful purse of your lips, while you marvel at our stupidity and provincial comportment, but, sorry, yes, first class.

Funnily, all of a sudden, he was cracking jokes and treating us with basic human dignity, marveling at our itinerary, and profoundly disappointed, it seemed, that he wasn’t able to print any boarding passes besides our London segment.  A clear testament to customer service, today – only provide any customer service, if the customer holds some worthy station or credential. With the little TSA incident, the trip was off to an auspicious beginning.

Lufthansa check-in. Seems pretty well marked, to me.

Check-in activity at the Lufthansa counters, minus the hallowed TSA checkpoint.

Boarding passes to London in hand, slipped into the very chic Lufthansa first class boarding pass sleeves (one of the coolest parts of the Lufthansa first class experience, in my opinion), he asked us if he needed an escort through security, to the lounge. Now, as someone who has done a few international first class trips, and, as I will vigorously defend, likes the occasional trip in international first class not because I “refuse” to travel any other way, or because I think a first class trip is a tonic for a struggling ego, and I think I am now better than someone else (remember, I’m simply a con-man who knows how to milk and parlay frequent flyer miles), but I’ve never, ever understood the idea, or appeal, of an escort (at least one through an airport). Airlines like to provide escorts to first class passengers, as if the first class passenger either, can’t deign to walk without a toady from the airline shuffling after him, or, because international first class passengers can’t be bothered to know such rudimentary and low-class facts as their gate number, or the direction of the security checkpoint. Really, it doesn’t appeal to me at all. I’m an idiot when it comes to directions (sometimes, I get lost walking home), but I don’t need an escort, and again, I’m not sure what people see in walking with an employee and exchanging a few minutes of awkward conversation, while the airline representative checks his watch and mentally calculates the number of hours until he can go home for the day. Even Elizabeth, a neophyte to the whole “international first class” thing, really couldn’t see any reason for an escort, based on the look on her face.

The always-cool Lufthansa first class boarding pass sleeves. I try not to be an ostentatious dude when on a mileage-funded first class trip, but even I like these little things.

Boarding pass.

Boarding passes to London in hand, we headed through security. Even with a few years of regular travel behind me, I still have not perfected the art of heading through security. I am terrible at this whole security thing. Somehow, in addition to my rollerboard and backpack, I always have at least three extra bins, for some reason, and am always scrambling to toss the contents of my pockets into one bin, moving my other bags along, and removing my shoes in one motion, while a line of 40 angry travelers builds behind me. On the other end, I emerge discombobulated mess, camera, phone, keys, pen in one hand, laptop under one arm, belt slung around my neck, shoes in the other hand, passport in my mouth, while somehow tugging an unzipped rollerboard and backpack, while simultaneously trying to keep my pants from falling down, and fishing a coin that’s lost in the crevice of a TSA gray bin. Somehow, I shuffle to a seat, bow legged, so my pants don’t slide down any further, where it takes another 30 minutes to repack and recompose myself.  I never get any better.

After the fray, I took a few moments of existential reflection.

I had told Elizabeth it wouldn’t actually feel as if we were traveling, until we had escaped security, with boarding pass in hand. The week before had been treacherous, with an organic chemistry exam that Monday, and a biology exam on Thursday, that, given the option of taking the exam, or being shot by firing squad, I would have easily volunteered for firing squad. Now, sealed in the sanctity of the airside section of the terminal, I could finally shut down about half the circuits in my brain, and slip into a haze of a break from school, further anesthetized by our impending attempt at hedonism, and perhaps the sweet, swimming euphoria induced by a few libations in the lounge.

With two shoes on, (I hadn’t left on behind at security, with my 35 bins), we made a left turn to the Lufthansa lounge. At JFK, Lufthansa houses the biz class, Senator, and first class lounge in one space, with each status or class of service, occupying a higher respective floor, perhaps in some attempt at a metaphor of societal representation endowed by a piece of plastic in your wallet, or the seat number on your ticket.

Liz mugging the first class ticket sleeves.

Lounge entrance.

Upon entering the lounge, we were informed by the agent from Long Island (judging by the brogue), that the true first class section of the lounge, the top floor, would not open until 3pm, one hour before the first Lufthansa departure of the afternoon, ours, to Frankfurt, which didn’t seem to give first class passengers much time to use their official section of the lounge. She also asked if we needed an escort to the gate, and seemed awfully bewildered as to why we declined, making sure, about four times, that we didn’t need someone to walk us 500 feet to the gate. “Are you sure?” She pressed. “It’s using a different gate today. You can usually watch it come in through this window, but it’ll be on the other side today.” I truly appreciated her concern in us not being able to see our airplane until departure, but I assured her we’d be able to find gate two, as opposed to the usual gate four.

Like all Lufthansa lounges, the Senator lounge at JFK was nicely and cozily designed – complete with the typical Lufthansa soft lighting, wood  paneling, chrome fixtures, squishy chairs, and famous coffee machine. Sadly, though, there isn’t the fine food selection usually found at most Senator lounges. If you want to nosh here, you’d better like premade sandwiches, which, for some reason, really, really disgust me. They simply look so bland and insipid with their severed crusts, and who knows how long that filling has been sitting around. Looks like a hotbed for botulism, to me. Unlike most Senator lounges, though, it hadn’t yet become too crowded, with our arrival about two hours before departure of our flight. Usually, Senator lounges, especially the lounges at Frankfurt and Munich, look like a subway station after a sporting event has gotten out, minus the public drunkenness, assaults, foul language, and belligerent taunts. And, like any good Senator lounge, there exists no complimentary wireless internet). We were told we must wait until we walked ten feet up to the first class section, if we wanted to use wireless, otherwise, I had to mortgage something to pay for wireless T-Mobile service. While I don’t enjoy a lack of complimentary wireless, I must applaud Lufthansa at their fervent an unapologetic defense of no free internet in the lounges, worldwide, and their refusal to budge. Truthfully, it’s just become kind of funny.

Wanting to engage fully in the hedonism of the lounge, we had decided to lunch under Lufthansa’s auspices, and had forewent eating that day, and simply decided to relax in one of the comfy chairs, sip a glass of champagne, and stare lazily into the cold, hazy JFK day, while waiting for the first class section to open.

Some shots of the Senator section of the lounge:

Seating, complete with Lufthansa's famous lounge chairs.

Reverse view of the lounge.

More seating, with bar in background.

Munchies and sparkling water. I'd probabaly commit murder for the wasabi peanuts in the Lufthansa lounges.

The famous Senator lounge coffee machines. They've always been there when I've needed someone.

I'm sorry - there exists nothing more vile than pre-cut, crustless, pre-made sandwiches, for some reason. Refrigerated bread - yeccch. And, who knows how long they've been sitting around? I think hepatitis comes free with the shrimp ones.

Champagne, and a few nibblies.

While gazing upon the dreary day at JFK.

Feeling ravenous, around 2.00pm, we decided to head up stairs, which was like trying to enter some fortress in The Hague.  In the effort to separate the different classes, one simply couldn’t just walk up the stairs, or take the elevator. Oh, no, no, no. The lounge employee had to enact some sort of insane security ritual, which including fetching another employee to grant him clearance to call the elevator, a retinal scan, fingerprints, vetting by a US Department of Justice attorney, and a six-month background check. We ended up taking the stairs.

Essentially, the first class area at the JFK Lufthansa Lounge is a narrow mezzanine, with a small seating area with munchies, newspapers, and a self-serve bar filled with enough alcohol to take down a Chico State frat house. It’s truly a site to behold. Beyond the postage-stamp sized seating area, is a narrow hallway, with a self-serve buffet, filled with all the finery and elegantly prepared food options for first class passengers, with tables and the back. I must say, though, Lufthansa certainly knows how to gussy up their first class lounges. I find them simply beautiful – with wonderfully arranged food under inviting lights, and marvelously set tables. Plus, in this configuration, you can look down on the business class and Senator passengers, and like the Middle Ages, when you tire of a certain food offering, you can simply throw it over your shoulder, over the mezzanine, and laugh spitefully as your prosciutto makes a three point landing on the bald pate of a serious looking German executive. No, not really.

We took a seat at a table, and finally fully relaxing into vacation mode, and a gleeful run at the buffet, trying little bits of all the wonderfully inviting options, enjoying more champagne. Of course, with champagne, since my first time having unfettered access to a bathtub full of Krug on Singapore Airlines last year, I’m exceptionally careful to moderate my consumption, with the hopes of not waking up with a head that feels like the inside of a Pachinko machine. Our attentive server, however, kept topping up glasses with abandon.

First class seating area, with part of the bar the size of Nassau County, in the background.

Goodness gracious.

Lovely tables.

Nicely set table.

Gee, more liquor.

Spectacular buffet, even with pre-cut sandwiches.

Hot selections.

Love the cheese and olive setup.

For those who like menu retyping (I have to say, I kind of do – reading them, that is, not the actual act of retyping), here’s the listing for the first class section that afternoon/evening (by the way – the lounge is catered by the DO&CO restaurant group, who has the best damn catering in the sky, and on the ground. They provide the meals for Lufthansa, Austrian, and Turkish. Even economy class food by DO&CO is better than any first class meal (domestic or otherwise) on a US airline. I’ll stick by that one):

Buffet:

Antipasti:

• Prosciutto
• Parmagiano reggiano
• Selection of black and green olives
• Grilled vegetables
• Hummus
• Buffalo mozzarella / basil pesto
• Mediterranean shrimp salad
• Crudités  / blue cheese-chive dip [blue cheese - yeccccch. -Ed.)
• Salami "cacciatori" [Not sure why that's in quotes. -Ed.)

Finger Sandwiches:

• Chicken avocado
• Lipateur [Lipitor? -Ed.] / tomatoes / lettuce

Wraps:

• Roast beef wrap / tartar sauce / arugula

Salads:

• Greek salad / tomatoes / cucumber / black olives / feta cheese
• Smoked duck / Mango salad
• Arugula with cherry tomatoes
• Dressings / French / Selection of premium olive oils and vinegars

Soups:

• Tom Ka Gai / Thai chicken soup / coconut milk / fresh cilantro & chilli [sic]
• Carrot ginger soup / croûtons
• Viennese style soup / beef / noodles / vegetables julienne
• Selection of ovenfresh (what’s with these made up compound nouns? Who wrote this menu? William Faulkner?) breads

Steak and Salad:

• Seared fillet of beef / tomato carpaccio / rosemary chips / truffled arugula salad

Pasta & Asia:

• Rigatoni with tomato salsa / grilled eggplants [eggplants?] / pines [a tree?] / basil pesto
• DO&CO’s chicken curry / basmati rice

Traditional Dish:

• “Züricher Geschnetzeites” [Again, why is this phrase in quotation marks?] / swiss [sic] sautéed veal / roesti

Specials:

• Smoked salmon / cream cheese / capers
• Vegetarian spring rolls / sweet chili sauce
• Steamed Chinese Dim Sum / soy sauce
• Maryland crab cakes / mixed salad / ponzu ginger dressing
• Frankfurters / freshly grated horseradish / Dijon mustard

Desserts:

• Do&Co’s mousse au chocolat
• Fresh fruit salad
• Passion fruit panna cotta
• Strawberry macchiato
• Apricot crumble cake
• DEMEL’s apple strudel / vanilla sauce [A true weakness of mine, even with the raisins]
• Viennese style Kaiserschmarm / plum & cinnamon chutney
• Selection of sorbets
• Austrian style chocolate soufflé

We noshed a bit from the buffet, trying just a touch of the beef stroganoff (which, I couldn’t find on the menu), the chicken curry, shrimp, and grilled vegetables, and cheese. I’m always a bit skeptical of food from a buffet, but, by golly, they got each dish right, especially the grilled asparagus, though I knew I was taking a risk when eating the asparagus prior to boarding an airplane (for those who aren’t blessed with the famous asparagus gene, read all about it on this Wikipedia page). I am one of the 22% of the population that possesses the necessary autosomal genes.  We rounded out our first assault with the always lovely pretzel bread, cheese, and an excellent grilled eggplant. s in most Lufthansa first class lounges, I was ecstatic (no, really) to note the reggiano. I simply adore how in the Lufthansa first class lounges, someone takes a giant wheel of the famous reggiano, and essentially performs an excavation with miners’ tools, and places the wonderful, craggy pieces of the fine cheese hewn from the wheel, in the wheel itself. Beautiful, and enormously delicious. I’ll have pictures of the reggiano quarry in later installments. Overall, A nice amount, with a small taste of many items, not too much, and not too overindulgent.

We then decided, hey, why the hell not, to order a round of crab cakes, and a round of dim sum to split. Most of the dim sum was tasty, some a bit suspect, in terms of odd flavors and textures hidden behind the translucent sheet of noodle, like a Portuguese Man-o-War. Elizabeth wasn’t too hot on the crab cakes, which, I thought, though a bit mushy (perhaps reheated?), tasted quite nice.

Inital run at the buffet.

Crab cake(s).

Dim sum.

With a bit of dessert and coffee (sadly, the famous Demel pastries, notably the tartelettes, were quite disapointing, and had the texture of wet newspaper, and only tasted slightly better), we made left the lounge, and walked, escortless, to the gate.

Part 1: Planning: Or, How I Learned to Delete Crucial Flight Segments and Think they Still Existed

Part 2: Lufthansa First Class Lounge, JFK

Part 3: JFK – Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa

Part 4: Frankfurt First Class Lounge, FRA – London Heathrow (LHR) on Lufthansa

Part 5: LHR – Istanbul (IST) on Turkish Airlines

Part 6: Rapid Exploration of Istanbul

Part 7: IST – Hong Kong (HKG) 0n Turkish Airlines

Part 8: Hong Kong Foray, Too Late for Dim Sum, and with No Skyline in Existence

Part 9: HKG – Bangkok (BKK), on Thai Airways

Part 10: Arrival in Bangkok, Review of Hilton Millenium Bangkok;

Part 11: Day One in Bangkok;

Part 12: BKK – Shanghai (PVG) – Tokyo (NRT) on Thai Airways and All Nippon Airways;

Part 13: It’s Raining Yen, Hallelujah – Tokyo Madness (with bonus text and photos of my January trip!)

Part 14: Review of the Hilton Tokyo, (plus bonus review and photos of the Conrad Tokyo, from my January trip!)

Part 15: NRT – BKK on All Nippon Airways (the Durian flight)

Part 16: Bangkok, Day Two

Part 17: BKK – Munich (MUC) on Thai Airways, Including the (what turned out to be) very, very, very overhyped Thai Airways first class lounge and spa

Part 18: Arrival in Munich, a Bavarian Day in Munich, with beer, sausages, and the BMW factory

Part 19: Review of the Hilton Munich City

Part 20: MUC – Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa

Part 21: No, You Can’t Use Our Phone – Review of the Hilton Frankfurt (preview: consider solidly not staying there)

Part 22: FRA – Detroit (DTW)  on Lufthansa, including the oh-so-fun First Class Terminal

Part 23: No Crew, No Brotherly Love – DTW – Newark (EWR) on Continental Express, Plus Wrap-Up, and Final Thoughts.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Part 1: Planning: Or, How I Learned to Delete Crucial Flight Segments and Think they Still Existed

Ah, trip planning. Nothing wells up the romantic traveler in me like ruminating over a potential destination, dreaming up a routing, and imagining myself clomping around some unknown city immersed in a language I do not speak, signs I cannot read, and a hotel I cannot find. Simply training my eyes over map resounds with enormous possibility and potential, as I cut a path with my eyes, and wonder what I would find at each stop along the way. Some of my finest trip planning memories involved an evening with Deutsche Bahn, the national German rail company website, simply entering desultory pairs of cities as they flowed into my mind into its itinerary planner, and observing in quite awe and reverence the immensely long journeys, stopping through sometimes 15 cities, that the website could fashion. I could, if I wanted, on a train from London to Istanbul.

For me, trip planning hearkens back to a certain fundemental enjoyment of the pleasure of travel, the fun of the unfamiliar, and how planning represents a beautifully ignorant stage of the journey, where, not having been to the destination, I’ve only mused, plotted, and planned based on a few maps laid out on the desk. Except, instead of a leatherbound atlas, where I can inch my finger over the slick pages, or spinning a globe that mandates my next destination based on where I plant my pointer, I have a web browser and a search engine to try to throw together a chain of cities. I like the basic, rudimentary enjoyment of simply thinking of a destination based on where one simply might want to travel, because it sparks some unknown and intriguing internal interest, travel, like John Muir would’ve liked, to “throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence.” That’s real travel, travel before it became besmirched with Sandals Resorts, the insipid rationale of picking a destination based on where a hotel is offering a discount in points redemption, the ability to consume chicken strips and fries for every meal instead of ever looking for local cuisine, and whined about the temperature of mixed nuts ad naseum on an internet forum.

Hell, I get all-romantic traveler when booking a mileage run. There’s something so anthropologically valuable and edifying about even visiting an airport for an hour during a mileage run, looking, observing, enjoying being awash in the canniness, that it’s all pretty much the same as my home airport, but delightfully just a bit different,  . Plus, it’s fantastic knowing that you’re sleeping on the floor of the Medford, Oregon airport knowing it’s for the plight of redeeming your miles later, for that actually romanticized vacation.

For me, I like crazier destinations. I get too restless in beach environments, and I do love a good hike, but more as a day trip from a larger vacations. I want cities: noise, lights, rough neighborhoods, trauma centers, the necessity to push my traveling acumen to make spontaneous decisions when the conditions change, or I find myself lost in a cement maze. I like a little piquancy of the destination, as well. The more remote, war torn, politically precarious, the better. Previous trips over school breaks had taken me to Uzbekistan, Macedonia, and Iraq, and I potentially wanted to fill spring break with something equally as adventurous. For me, too, as a destitute student, who will be filing a tax return with a whopping four-figure salary for 2009, price remains an important margin of consideration. While I absolutely love London, Paris, Sydney, and Berlin, hemorrhaging pounds and Euros is not quite in the budget, currently. For now, I’ll head to a city where a few US dollars at the currency exchange window prompts a return of a pile of local currency with several hundred zeroes after it, so devalued that I will never, ever be able to change it back into US dollars (see Tashkent, Uzbekistan).

But, this spring break, I would be traveling with my dear ladyfriend, Elizabeth. Surprisingly, Elizabeth, uh, didn’t really care for my initial suggestions of Lagos, Nigeria, Liberia, Somalia (really), or a drive from Merrakech to Dakar, Senegal. Being the tactful negotiator that I am (uh huh), my side tempered its offers, and suggested Kuala Lumpur. Elizabeth sounded keen on Thailand, a destination where I had not ever been, but my youngest brother, Peter, raves and drops into a world of reverie upon the mention of the world Thailand (I think, in another life, he’d be one of those white guys with dreds who runs a used bookstore in Chang Rai). Thailand sounded a-okay to me, to be honest (I guess I didn’t push to hard for Somalia). I also suggested Tokyo, knowing we’d be using miles, and would have access to a stopover desintation. Now, Tokyo violates the “less-pricy” option, but now with four visits, some hotel points, and a bit of moxie, I’ve managed to live for suprisingly little in Tokyo, without surviving on Clif bars or sleeping in Shinjuku station.

Thailand and Tokyo it would be. As which I described some time ago, I threw together the award, using Aeroplan miles, a biology class, and a lot of time. Read that scintillating tale here.

With an award set, taxes paid, and minds looking forward to emerging from the arduous academic slog that lay in that week ahead, I decided to royally screw up our Aeroplan award, by inadvertently deleting the Tokyo segments from the entire itinerary, as an unfortunate byproduct and miscommunication of finding some more interesting routings for the outbound and inbound flights.

A few days after booking the award, when I should have been studying for my organic chemistry midterm, I decided that I should have another go at manipulating the booking to Tokyo, Bangkok, and Munich over next week’s spring break (yes, that is just what I now do on Friday nights). As also about which I wrote, I felt satisfied with the award, but also felt pangs of some sort of dissonance, as if the award itself did not feel completely perfect, and as if something, just something, might be missing from the finalized award. In truth, I was not so pleased about the final Munich – Dulles segment in United’s erratic and lackluster international first class cabin (I know, I know, it seems prissy to be whining about the quality of an international first class cabin, but when you’re using miles, I like to maximize the return. As Mark Twain wrote, “You pays your frequent flyer miles, you makes the choice”). I knew any changes to an Aeroplan award would result in a 90 Canadian dollar change fee (making out like a bandit over in the US, by only paying 87 dollars! I’ll take the subway one stop with the remaining change), but if I could improve the final, or a few segments, of the trip, forking over 87 bucks was well worth it (BTW: in response to reader Todd’s recent question, the total cost of the award, initially, including the over-the-phone-booking-fee of 30 bucks, came to 199 bucks per person. Not too shabby for tickets that, by my research, rang in at $20,475 apiece, if purchased outright).

Giving Air Canada a call, I began to investigate some alternate routings. I wanted to see if Swiss’ Airbus A330 with their new-er first class config might be available, in either direction, from Chicago to Zurich. The agent reported that Swiss had two first class seats from Chicago to Zurich on the outbound, but without some sort of change of one of the other segments, adjusting the outbound routing from the original New York – Frankfurt-London-Bangkok-Tokyo jump to New York – Chicago – Zurich – London – Bangkok – Tokyo hop would violate the maximum permitted mileage of the award. Okay, I thought, and such a change would also potentially leave the United Munich – Dulles flight intact. I decided to investigate a bit further.

On the ANA tool, I began to look for alternate flights from Munich or Frankfurt in Lufthansa First Class. I really wanted Elizabeth to try the First Class Terminal, a somewhat gimmicky/servile/unnecessary but ridiculously fun component of any Lufthansa First Class flight from Frankfurt. Using Lufthansa’s route map, and some good ol’ fashioned ingenuity, I found two first class seats from Frankfurt to Detroit. Fantastic! And, just to make the outbound even more fun, I found availability on Turkish Airlines, from London to Istanbul to Hong Kong in their Jet Airways wet-leased airplanes with fun little first class suites. The routing, as well, would allow us a quick stopover in Istanbul, and Hong Kong.

I should’ve been suspicious of the ease with which the agent made changes to the awards, and collected my 90 dollar (Canadian) change fee. To my credit, I distinctly remember saying, which would prove fatal, I guess, “Oh, so this new routing permits enough time to make the Bangkok – Narita connection?” to which the agent responded in the affirmative.

I was just a touch shocked when I opened the e-mail confirmation of the new itinerary, and saw that the Bangkok – Tokyo segments. Calls to Aeroplan were unsympathetic, mostly hovering along the tack of “the original routing was illegal, anyway, and, we have no made the routing legal.” Feverish to return to Tokyo, and to show Elizabeth the magic that is dear Tokyo, we decided to book an economy class award ticket from Bangkok to Tokyo. United had no availability (surprise!), and wanted 40,000 miles, per person. Air Canada found a working routing, via Shanghai one way, and nonstop on the return, that permitted enough time, and wanted only 20,000 miles, per person. Taxes paid, and the original integrity of the routing had been secured.

The final routing reveals itself.

A few days later, we would throw more than just a pound of tea and a loaf of bread in our packs, and instead of hopping the back fence, we’d hop on the Long Island Railroad to JFK for 27,976 miles of travel.

With the spontenaity, duration, and non-efficient routing, it seemed like a grueling trip, perfect for the hungry traveler. I hope John Muir would be proud.

Part 1: Planning: Or, How I Learned to Delete Crucial Flight Segments and Think they Still Existed

Part 2: Lufthansa First Class Lounge, JFK

Part 3: JFK – Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa

Part 4: Frankfurt First Class Lounge, FRA – London Heathrow (LHR) on Lufthansa

Part 5: LHR – Istanbul (IST) on Turkish Airlines

Part 6: Rapid Exploration of Istanbul

Part 7: IST – Hong Kong (HKG) 0n Turkish Airlines

Part 8: Hong Kong Foray, Too Late for Dim Sum, and with No Skyline in Existence

Part 9: HKG – Bangkok (BKK), on Thai Airways

Part 10: Arrival in Bangkok, Review of Hilton Millenium Bangkok;

Part 11: Day One in Bangkok;

Part 12: BKK – Shanghai (PVG) – Tokyo (NRT) on Thai Airways and All Nippon Airways;

Part 13: It’s Raining Yen, Hallelujah – Tokyo Madness (with bonus text and photos of my January trip!)

Part 14: Review of the Hilton Tokyo, (plus bonus review and photos of the Conrad Tokyo, from my January trip!)

Part 15: NRT – BKK on All Nippon Airways (the Durian flight)

Part 16: Bangkok, Day Two

Part 17: BKK – Munich (MUC) on Thai Airways, Including the (what turned out to be) very, very, very overhyped Thai Airways first class lounge and spa

Part 18: Arrival in Munich, a Bavarian Day in Munich, with beer, sausages, and the BMW factory

Part 19: Review of the Hilton Munich City

Part 20: MUC – Frankfurt (FRA) on Lufthansa

Part 21: No, You Can’t Use Our Phone – Review of the Hilton Frankfurt (preview: consider solidly not staying there)

Part 22: FRA – Detroit (DTW)  on Lufthansa, including the oh-so-fun First Class Terminal

Part 23: No Crew, No Brotherly Love – DTW – Newark (EWR) on Continental Express, Plus Wrap-Up, and Final Thoughts.

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Prologue: the Genesis of the Simple Trip Report

How thus begat the Simple Trip Report.

Ah, yes.

Recently, I noticed a reader comment posted on a  more popular miles n’ points blog by one of the more fervent flunkies of that particular blog, and another blogger himself, deriding my ability to churn out my “simple trip report” on my trip to Iraq last September, and mocking my sheepish apology posts when I could not produce a segment of a trip report in a timely fashion.

I won’t delve here into too much into the detail of the frozen pace at which I am penning that trip report. I’ve already described that rationale here, but in quick summary, A., school is freakin’ busy, and, yeah, in hoping to gain successful admission into an accredited, United States M.D. program for Fall, 2011, sure, school becomes an excuse. Frankly, I don’t feel I should have to apologize for making med school admission a priority, but when some people, who, I guess, seem to have all day to sit and click through airfares and forums, begin to grouse about a lack of content, I start to feel the need to justify my inattention to the blog.

B., too, as I stated earlier, I just can’t sit down and crack out a trip report. I try to craft an actual narrative, full of cohesive, coherent events, a strong, protagonist (me), whom I hope readers feel they get to know during the course of the report, with some actual cogent thoughts and feelings about the destination, the art of travel, philosophy, and reflections on life, spiced with humor, and penchant for pertinent observation that goes beyond whether the olives on a plate were positioned at proper angles using a compass and calipers, and mostly, try to make people truly laugh and enjoy the somewhat crazy trips I take. Oh, and, hey, how about some actual dialouge?

Though I will never, ever match the caliber of these two travel-writer gods, I strive to report like Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux, the absolute best in the business, who weave lengthy, meaty narratives, full of beautiful writing, that, at times, have caused me to collapse with laughter. Theroux and Bryson have a philosophy of not simply reporting a trip, literal action, by literal action, but by creating an experience, that feels unique, and marked by their particular styles. Bill Bryson is my absolute travel writing hero, though, he would never, ever stoop so low as to type a first class menu verbatim, I must confess to liking that sort of thing. Unlike many trip reports, too, I actually like to report about the actual destination. While the transport is of the utmost fun and importance, surprisingly, I actually like the destination, too! I find it truly sad I have to make such a flippant phrase, but in most aviation-related trip reports, it seems that people couldn’t care less about the destination, deciding to splash a few pictures, and a few lines of halfhearted and cliche’d text about whether they’d return to the destination, or not. To me, that’s really too bad. I love the airports, the planes, and the destination, which is why, in my reports, you find it all.

Essentially, some readers may not care for my trip reports, but some do, believe it or not (as they have told me, through e-mails and comments – really!). With each piece, I try to hone my craft and produce a strong finished product, and that, I’ve found, takes a lot of time. Even in writing the first segment of the actual trip report, the JFK Lufthansa lounge, I noticed it took five hours, but, wow, did I have fun piecing together a narrative, sparked by a hilarious interaction with the TSA, our nation’s true and very competent defenders, and did I enjoy reliving the memories of the beginning of the trip. I admit, with a long narrative comes a bit of selfishness. While I hope to entertain, I also document, for myself, a full and detailed rundown of the trip, what I did a particular day, what I said, and even what I ate. I have fun, months later, returning to read my own trip reports. This particular trip is still hot in my mind, and I want to make sure record all the details as quickly as possible, in a new trip report, and still, somehow, attend to the old one. Yeah, the logic is a bit skewed, but I also have a stack of menus from this recent trip that I need to move out of the way. I’d better start it now.

For me, an unpaid blogger, I have the privilege of making the act of writing a pleasure, not bound by deadlines and word count (though, of course, I could always use help in the word count department), and trying to produce a piece that simply doesn’t smack of utilitarianism in a hackneyed and dried-up template. Each piece I try to make new, original, exciting.

Oops, I guess I went a bit too much into the rationale.

But, nevertheless, returning to the milquetoast blogger’s comment, simple, my trip reports are not. No way. How on earth could a trip to report to Iraq be simple? How could the report on a trip to Iraq be simple? The asinine logic of that statement is bewildering. That’s exactly the point – I’m purposefully not going for simple, and that care for the writing takes time. Moreover, the vitriol seems to state that someone really likes my trip reports, and is upset when he/she can’t find one, but, I digress.

Let’s humor that particular blogger, someone who picks their destination on whether he/she can find a hotel deal at that particular destination, a sad travel philosophy that reminds me of a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Calvin looks at a newspaper, and remarks to Hobbes, “You can tell this chart is important because there’s an article next to it,” and let’s see if we can write a simple trip report, just to appease this blogger.

Here are the steps to describing a flight in a Simple Trip Report:

1. Begin your report by describing the imminent trip in the most unimaginative of terms. Phrases such as, “Well, the day had finally arrived,” and “The big day was finally here,” work well.

2. Discuss the check-in process, but only from the facet that you mention how “professional” the agent is, and how “promptly” you were checked in. Become impressed if the agent accomplishes something such as a seat change form 1A to 2A, and again, mention how “professionally” the agent handled such a life-and-death situation.

3. Head to the lounge. Discuss quality of snack mix that has a half life of 27,000 billion years and is loaded with enough MSG to take down an elephant, and compare with snack mix in another domestic airline lounge. These are the issues that people really need to know. As well, mention how “promptly” the lounge guard examined your boarding pass, and directed you to the lounge.

4. Board the airplane. Mention that you were “promptly” shown to your seats. Discuss ordering pre-departure beverages, and note the service time, using “promptly,” an unidentified pronoun, and passive voice. Example: “I ordered a pre-departure water. This was promptly served.”

5. Mention everything that flight attendants distributed, but only in passive voice, with clipped, inflowing sentences: “Menus were then handed out. Headphones were passed out. Newspapers were offered.”

6. Mention how “friendly” and “professional” the purser seems to be.

7. During meal serving time, mention again how “professional” the purser is (gee, ya think they’re a professional? Aren’t they getting paid to do this job?), how they addressed you by name, and refilled drinks in a “professional” manner. Use the word “polished.” Mention how impressed you are with fork positions.

8. Break out protractor and level to note angle of every lettuce leaf. Use the word “presentation” two or three times, because it helps convey that you are a fancy food critic, not someone examining irrelevant minutiae of airline food  that was made in a mass kitchen, and reheated a few minutes ago.

9. Describe food in more unimaginative terms, using caps-lock for emphasis: “Soup was AMAZING!” “Appetizer was INCREDIBLE.”

10. Mention the scenery. Describe it in the most prosaic of fashions, and use cliches to enhance your description, such as ” photos cannot do the appearance of that irrigation circle justice.” Take some more pictures, and then concede, “I’ll just let the pictures do the talking.”

11. Close the section by simply repeating yourself, and using the word, “Overall,” as if you’re closing a fourth grade book report: “Overall, the flight was INCREDIBLE. I have no words to describe the service, and cannot do it justice. The friendly purser was professional. Service was polished. Food was AMAZING.” Say the airplane landed (really?), and the captain “promptly” parked it at the gate.

That, dear friends, is barely a husk of a report. What does it really say? Nothing. It’s empty, banal, and utterly bland.

Are my reports that simple? They ain’t like that, that’s for sure. There are many, many good and thorough trip reports out there in the blogo/flyerosphere. I’d like to add mine.

And, that’s why we christen this trip report Simple, because, anything that follows the format of the aforementioned simple trip report, is like the Sandals Resort of trip reporting: quick, cheap, insipid and easy to swallow like a good rest home soup, tacky, bereft of culture, only fulfilling on a remotely superficial level, with no real purpose. It’s the free USA Today in the motel lobby. Because I try to match all those sterling elements, my trip report, will thus be Simple.

I hope the irony isn’t lost on the original commenter.

And with all of that out of the way, folks, let’s promptly begin this friendly and professional trip report. Only actually attempting the craft of writing can do it justice. It’s just that simple.

Anyway, The Simple Trip Report premiers tomorrow! (That’s after when organic chemistry lecture ends, at around 10am, and the first section of the report should appear at around 11am. That advanced notice is also for the grumblers).

Why is it The Simple Trip Report? Find out how one reader’s expertly crafted derision heavily backfires, and instead gives me the idea for a hilarious title.

Remember, it doesn’t matter what they say about you, as long as they spell your name correctly. And, most of the time, they don’t even do that (Grey v. Gray).

Sleep well, folks. I’ll be dreaming of carbonyls and enolate reactions.

Ohhhhhhh . . . . and, I’m also going to have a cool giveaway in the next few days! (from my own stash, not something where I bother a company to give me something to give away, though I wouldn’t mind, oh, if any companies are listening, a few Netbooks, Amazon Kindles, or Swiss chalets to give away, and try out for myself, of course, for review purposes. Yup). Stay Tuned.

Take the last trip report, for my trip to Iraq and Macedonia, for instance. Yeah, so, uh, it’s been a little delayed, because of life, and school (man, this applying to med school takes time! Who knew?) and truthfully, as sad as this fact may sound, I really like to sit down for a while and get into the writing, and try to craft something pithy and entertaining, with some actual value in readership, that illicit laughter, brain activity, and perhaps some reflection. I’m sorry – I really can’t sit down and cobble together the mass-produced discount-store-brand trip reports, that frankly, reflect a dearth of thought and little creativity, with clipped and bumbling passive-voice sentences such as, “Newspapers were offered” or, “Next, the breakfast was served.” This type of rote and soulless reporting makes it sounds as if one is simply recounting the facts of a trip report for a panel of judges in moot court.

It’s extraordinary. I’m incredulous how personally people take the lethargy with which I have crafted the Iraq report, as if the slow pace is some sort of glaring deficit of character, and the fact that they recognize this slow pace somehow imbues them with moral superiority. Seriously – some people reallllllllllllly need to calm down. It’s not that big of a deal. Hey – here’s something intriguing – did you hear the  sun exploded because someone didn’t finish their trip report? No, it didn’t, because it’s a fucking trip report!

So, uh, yeah – that’s the reason why putting out a trip report takes a while – when there is an investment in quality, and a high investment in school. But, still, people seem very insulted when I do not add to the trip report, and even, when I do. It’s not possible to win. Frankly, I don’t like how long the Iraq report has taken, and I don’t like that I have made so many apologies and excuses, and don’t like that I have be somewhat defensive. But, call me a weak human being, sometimes this whole getting into an accredited four-year United States medical school that’s not operated out of a Dunedin, Florida strip mall takes precedence over sitting and blogging. And, yeah, sometimes, I look up, and realize because school has been a priority, that it’s really been a while since I have blogged.

It’s funny – people love to sit around and wait for free content, enjoy it when it arrives, silently, and grouse and whine when it ceases for a bit. It’s like baseball umpiring – you only really hear from the crowd when you commit some egregious offense (yup, and as always, the people in the stands can see much better than the ump on the field). Sure, I could understand one’s frustration, if one is, uh, paying for a service – after all, a power company wouldn’t really work too well if it decided to take time off to work on their employees’ backhand or biathalon training, but, well, as surprising as it may be, I’m not really being paid to blog. I don’t care about making money, or being paid to blog. Actually, I really wish there were no advertisements or Google AdWord crud on these pages. I started this blog to remain connected to my English major educational background, enjoy the process of reading, writing, observing the travel industry, and really, having some critical thinking about travel, miles, and points. As much as I love traveling, frequent flyer miles, airplanes, and airports, it ain’t really going to be a living for me. Most importantly, I love writing. I love honing a difficult craft. A blog, for me, is not about spitting out reams of content for a mass audience – it’s about creating a wonderful finished project for a mass audience. The blog is more to celebrate the fun and art of travel, and critique the industry. I’m not really going to waver from that aim in exchange for sacrificing a particular brand of quality that satisfies me, as the writer. You know what’s fun about living in our society? If this blog doesn’t post to your rigorous free-content schedules, gee, don’t read it! You really don’t have to be here. I remain committed to finishing the Iraq report, and hopefully, making it rich and funny, but, yeah, it’s going to take a bit of time.

For the people who whine, bellyache, and irately type messages from the comfort of their living rooms, I’m not really going to apologize for prioritizing school, sometimes to an enormous degree. It’s cliche, but put your money where your mouth is, and stop reading. Funny, though, the reader who mouths off from the protection of his computer screen, always comes back to read more, and funnily, just can’t seem to leave, even with his very, very important frustrations. It’s happened before – the reader who blusters and bloviates in an e-mail or via the comments that he’s removing this pathetic blog from his blog reader or RSS feed, and then comes back to comment a few weeks later. There must be some quality here, if that reader keeps coming back.

If it really bothers you that much, I offer some very sage advice:  If the trip report schedule of a blog with miniscule readership really irks you and agitates you that much, seriously – just remove this blog from you life. It’s really not worth your hypertension.

And, to all those that have been understanding and supportive, funny, cheeky, and full of good-natured ribbing about the trip report, many thanks. Thanks for your understanding, and thanks for your readership. Thanks for understanding that life happens.

Anyway, with all of that waxing philosophically, I did just return from a damn cool trip to Istanbul, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Munich. As with someone who loves to write, I’m really itching to write the next trip report, and really, really do want to get started on the writing of the report while the events and details are still prominent in my mind.

But – to ensure that things actually get going (yeah, I’m not so self-righteous that I’m just never going to finish), I’m only going to start posting segments after I’ve completed most of them. I’m going to try hard to write one a day, or every other day, and then post one a day. It’s guaranteed content! Even the most rote thinker can appreciate that approach. I’m looking to begin posting the report in a week, to a couple o’ weeks, as I start creating each segment, and have each on hand, for a guaranteed post.

Makes sense to me, and guarantees content for the reader. Hey – I’m all about self improvement, here.

In the new report, we’ll have some kick-ass segments. To whet your appetite, plane and hotel nerds, look for (besides full reports of the days in each city):

-Lufthansa first class, first class lounges, and the always ridiculously fun First Class Terminal;

-Turkish Airlines first class Suites (sumptuous);

-Thai Airways first class, and the Bangkok Royal First lounge;

-Hilton Tokyo, Milton Millenium Bangkok, Hilton Munich City, Hilton Frankfurt;

-The protest fray in Bangkok, and the utter horror and helplessness of watching a redshirt be beaten in the street, and left for dead;

-And, again, lotsa pictures and rundowns of the daily activities and fun in each city.

Should be one helluva report, from one helluva trip. Happy reading. Thanks for stopping by.

But . . . I wanted to begin my return with an update to Part II of my 24 hours in Erbil, Iraq trip report. I decided I’d rather add a bit each day than leave the writing completely for long stretches. I’ve added as much as possible today, before leaving work, and heading to MCAT class. I’ll add a bit more tomorrow, and slowly, and actually surely, we’ll finish up this sucker (especially, because in just a few short weeks, there will be another trip report due!)

I’ve added full disclaimers/rationale/instructions for reading the new section within the original post. Click here to be magically transported to the report.

Ah, yes – there is much to discuss – my trip to Tokyo in January, some views on the industry, and a new spring break trip back to Tokyo, and onto Thailand, using Aeroplan miles! (At least, in theory).

Welcome back, and welcome new readers. Of course, you can reach me at waapblog@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter, for more updates.

Thanks for coming back, or just stopping by, dear readers.

Part 1: New York LaGuardia (LGA) to Washington National on US Airways

Part 2: Washington Dulles (IAD) to Frankfurt (FRA) on United

Part 3: FRA – Vienna (VIE) – Skopje (SKP) on Austrian

Part 4: Arrival in Skopje, and Day 1 in Skopje

Part 5: Day 2 in Skopje

Part 6: A bit more Skopje

Part 7: Daytrip to Pristina, Kosovo

Part 8: SKP – Zagreb (ZAG) – VIE on Croatian Airlines

Part 9: VIE – Erbil, Iraq (EBL) on Austrian

Part 10: Erbil, Iraq

Part 11: EBL – VIE on Austrian

Part 12: Hilton Vienna Stadtpark

Part 13: VIE – Zurich (ZRH) – JFK on Swiss International Air Lines

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Update, 03/01/10 (More Added!):

I’ve added some of the second segment of the Erbil, Iraq section of the trip report, within the original post. If you have already read Part I of this original post, simply scroll down to the (hopefully) clearly-labeled beginning of Part II! Thanks for reading.

(Part II encompasses the remainder of my first day in Erbil (in a somewhat piecewise fashion). Part III will run down my day exploring the city, and the fun/danger of returning to the airport in a sandstorm).

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(N.B.: I realized this section is so damn long/and there existed life time constraints and did not want to overwhelm readers and force them to drop off because of something of Tolstoyan proportions. I am, therefore, dividing this section into the first day/night, and the second day. I hope breaking the the report makes it just a touch easier to read).

Part 10, Part I (For Now)

One thing’s for sure: they don’t lie about the heat here.

As I descended the airstairs from the Austrian Airlines Airbus A320 to the apron, the heat clamped down like a shop vice, in almost buffeting, billowing waves of sheer thermal energy, almost certainly overwhelming my synapses that had never felt such a heat before. I almost expected the rubber soles of my shoes to melt as they hit they baked concrete, and I would leave a trail of rubbery footprints as I tugged my suitcase to the entrance to the terminal. The heat, combined with the austere look of the sand-colored landscape, the piercing whine of the airplane’s auxiliary power unit, and the fact that I found myself in a country with absolutely no plans, and no idea where to go, crescendoed to an intense sensory experience.

Finally on the ground.

I walked towards the terminal, where a doctor in scrubs with a stethoscope slung around his neck, silently twisted my Boston Red Sox cap from my head (remember – I really liked the logo of this particular Sox cap! I’m in no way wearing the cap because I am a Sox fan, or a huge tool, like 95% of the people who wear Red Sox caps), and pressed a thermal strip thermometer to my forehead, ostensibly to assess whether I had a fever. With the heat of a kiln outside, though, I’m not really sure how he could’ve taken an accurate reading. Nevertheless, I was apparently temperate enough to pass the health inspection, and I continued to passport control, through a much cooler, boxy, slightly utilitarian terminal building with slick floors, more reminiscent of a neighborhood rec center than an arrivals hall.

Passport control proceeded uneventfully, almost anticlimactically, for the last step before my official foray into Iraq. An immigration officer, a woman, I was intrigued to note, silently scanned by passport, and stamped it with a red admonishment that I must register my address and obtain a visa within ten days, and then, stamped it with the official “Republic of Iraq” stamp, a long, elegant, rectangular stamp that I was pleased to note occupied two entire boxes on a passport page. I stopped to admire the stamp, and made sure to let the ink dry (I can’t tell you how many passport stamps I’ve marred because I’ve snapped my passport closed before the stamp has fully dried) . I felt as if I had accomplished something already, simply by having an Iraq stamp in my American passport.

And then, I stepped out of immigration, into the official arrivals hall, suddenly confronted with the immediate reality that I had cleared a health inspection, cleared immigration, and now, found myself, actually, in the country, free from constraints of airport security, and, well, free from someone guiding me, and telling me where to stand, and which line to occupy. As I had many times before on this larger trip, replete with lack of preparation, I found myself standing, autonomous, forced to make a move.

Actually, for this part of the trip, I had planned significantly more than I had Skopje or Kosovo – by which I mean, I had read a blog post from ultra-hip-and-high-on-life writer/blogger/subversive Chris Guillebeau (who, incidentally I might add, once followed me on Twitter, I was quite pleased to note, but, then sadly stopped, probably because my posts didn’t always sound as if they are written by someone on a constant IV drip of MDMA) about his 48 hours in Erbil, from where I learned of a hotel at which to stay, and perhaps more importantly, after the debacle taxi ride from the airport in Skopje, the name of the taxi company that would ferry me from the airport to the main part of the city.

The arrivals hall at Erbil is quite small, with a few advertisements on the walls, an unoccupied tourist information booth, a rather sorry-looking snack bar, and a few benches. I spotted an advertisement for the one taxi company from the airport, “Hello Taxi!” This time, I was certainly prepared to pay the 25 bucks it would cost to take me from the airport to the city, except I had no cash in my wallet. A perpetual bad habit of mine is not to carry cash, because I spend it relentlessly. Instead, I rely on plastic, which gives the impression/illusion/false perception that my spending is more controlled. If I need cash, I reckon, I can always find someplace to use my ATM card and obtain cash back, or find an ATM machine. Perhaps it was my American ethnocentrism, but, I assumed with today’s almost universal connectivity, that I would certainly find an ATM machine in the arrivals hall of the airport. That dream ended quickly.

I was almost immediately approached by an enthusiastic guy from Hello Taxi! asking me if I need a ride into the city, and to where. Another ethnocentric fault that sometimes ethnocentric fault that sometimes plagues me – I assume that everyone in a foreign city knows the location of everything within their city, quite a stupid assumption, I know, because I often realize in San Francisco, I can barely communicate to people names of streets and routes because, I, myself, do not know names of all the streets, and instead, know routes by sight. After telling the driver I wanted to head to the Hotel Shahan (another Chris Guillibeau recommendation!), he really seemed as if he had no idea where to find it. I whipped out my laptop to show him a copy of the image of the hotel I had found on another website, and after conferring with some other taxi drivers, seemed to know where to go.  A larger problem, however, loomed prominently – my lack of cash. Apparently, another guy translated, the driver would not take me into the city without seeing the money first.

“Okay,” I responded. “Are you willing to take me to an ATM” – then, I remember that ATM is a distinctly American term and I must be clearer – “a machine to get money? I’ll most certainly pay you in town – I just don’t have any money on me now.”

The drivers conferred for a moment.

“No,” one said. “He is concerned that that machine will not be working, and that he will have to pay the owner of the company out of his own pocket.”

I try once more – saying, I really, really promise to pay the money, but my attempt is refused, to which a burly Australian man in sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt, standing with a cellphone took an amused noticed.

“Who are you with?” he asks, a question I would hear about a million more times over the next 24 hours. Everyone assumes visitors to Erbil work for a military contractor, or for the UN.

“Oh, I’m not with anyone,” I reply sheepishly. “I’m just here for tourism. I thought it’d be a cool place to check out.”

“You just came here,” he replies, leaning coolly on a table next to the exit.

“No, I’m on a larger trip through Eastern Europe, and thought I’d pop of to Iraq.” Yup, I thought, just like that – I’m just a casual traveler who decides to head to Iraq.

“How long do you have here,” the man asks.

“24 hours,” I reply.

He shakes his head. “That’s too bad. I think about three days would’ve been perfect. Where are you trying to go?”

I tell him that with no ATM, the taxi company didn’t want to risk taking me into town, and that I needed to head to the Hotel Shahan.

He doesn’t seem to know the hotel either, but a guy standing next to him, a shorter, bearded Iraqi guy, after repeating the name to himself a few times, said he knew where it was.

The Australian guy was still clearly amused. “You should always have a bit of cash on you,” he chides nonchalantly.

“I know, I know,” I say contritely. “I should’ve gotten some before leaving Vienna.”

“By the way,” the Australian guy asks, “Did you happen to see three African guys on the plane?”

Actually, I had, boarding in Vienna, but told them that they may have left already.

“Hmmm,” the guy says. “Those are who I”m waiting for.” In the midst of our entire conversation, the man kept checking with the Iraqi guy next to him, who I found out was the driver, discussing, in seemingly cryptic language, pick-ups, drop-offs, which vehicle would rendezvous where, and most scintillatingly, where the dogs were. I found myself utterly mystified by the conversation, wondering who the hell were these guys, and just for whom were they waiting at the airport.

I stepped outside for a moment, into the pounding heat, just to see if there were any other taxi options, or shuttle options, outside. From Chris’ blog post, I knew no other taxi company in Erbil, for some reason, could legally drive up to the airport, and thought I might find a larger taxi stand, or some sort of shuttle away from the exit to the arrivals hall. Nothing. Nothing at all. At that point, I considered trying to walk into town, or, well, perhaps, spending the next 24 hours camped at the airport. I re-entered the arrivals hall, and, well, stood around, wondering what the hell I should I do.

The two guys were still standing around the table by the exit. I decided to try my last possible option. “Could I pay you guys to take me into town?” I ask, essentially using the line, once again, that I promise I will head to an ATM and pull money. The burly Australian man, still waiting for the African guys, tells me to hang tight for a moment, and that they should be able to accommodate me. I take a seat on the bench, and wait, still wondering just who these guys are, and what they are doing.

Eventually, three tall, lanky African guys appear from immigration. I stand up an head back over to the table, where I find myself whisked into a world of cryptic language, jargon, and codewords, as if I am missing some much larger message. The Australian man is looking at papers, asking when the dogs should arrive, and seemingly coordinating some sort of lodging situation. He also tells his driver to pick up one SUV, and for the driver to tell another driver to bring another vehicle around the front of the airport. Then, still confused, the three African men, and I, all have a seat on the benches. “We’re going to take you,” the Australian man says, and introduces himself to me as Shane, and his driver as Ali. “If you don’t mind running a few stops.” Sure, I think, besides the fact that I have absolutely no idea what is going on, with the dropoffs, and the dogs, and that I am about to jump into an SUV with people I don’t know at all, I found myself extremely excited. The danger/adventure seeking traveler loved the idea of jumping into a random SUV in Iraq for a ride, and the unprepared/previously-shit-outta-luck traveler loved the idea that I had secured a ride into the city!

We waited for a bit longer, and finally, Shane motions for us to head out. I step into the heat towards a white Toyota Land Cruiser. Ali and Shane head to the front, and one of the African guys sits in the back. Shane tells me to toss my suitcase in the back, apologizing for the smell of diesel, saying he had spilled some in the back a few days ago. Not a problem, at all. Heading into a random SUV, with random folks, about to drive through the streets of Iraq, with a vehicle redolent of spilled diesel, welled my excitement even more, and made me think that I was, just perhaps, the most hardcore individual on the planet, and away from the cushy world of elite status, reserved lines, and hotel loyalty programs, doing perhaps the most badass thing anyone could ever do, if not, perhaps, the most stupid. I absolutely loved the moment. I couldn’t believe the absolute serendipity, the gravity of the situation, and its colossal momentousness. Situations like these, I thought, was the travel high I wanted to chase – away from comfort, protection, maps, and direction – simply relying on instinct, a bit of luck, and flexibility. Why the hell not?

With still more talk about where who would be staying where coming from the front, I finally asked Shane what exactly what the hell was going on, and what exactly he did. While I thought I may be heading out with a team of gun runners to make a delivery, with Shane about to hand me an M-16, asking me to cover him, and inquiring, “Do you know how to lay suppressive fire,” he was a security coordinator on an oil field in Northern Iraq, and managed the hiring, living arrangements, and coordination of security personnel on the oil field.  He had been in Erbil for three years. The African guys were dog handlers, roaming the grounds with the bomb sniffing dogs to inspect vehicles entering the field. Now, we were on our way to the housing developments where the Africans would stay. With the uncloaked mystery, I  still couldn’t believe how cool it was to be riding into town with an Iraqi security team.

After a short ride in the SUV out of the airport,and onto a dusty roadway, we stopped at a strip of staggeringly-western looking apartment buildings, and pulled into a small parking lot paved in fresh-looking asphalt, and surrounded by extremely precisely manicured grounds and hedges. These, Shane said, were the living quarters for the security workers on the oil field. He told me to leave my stuff in the car, and come on up for a look, if I wanted. The group rode an extremely modern elevator up to an extremely well-appointed apartment that appeared as if it had been transported from an Ikea catalog. Not exactly, I must say, what I had envisioned when landing in Iraq.

Welcome to Iraq! Western-style apartments.

While Shane and the others discussed various pieces of business, and finalized pickup times for the workers the next day, I asked the building manager if I might have a look around. The building manager gleefully responded by showing me around himself, clearly proud of the new development, modern furnishings, and louche appointments. He also offered me a beverage from a huge refrigerator several dozen times, and encouraged me to photograph everything, including the bathroom. I have to say – in a developing country, these buildings were much nicer than any apartment in which I have ever lived in the United States, especially my junior and senior year of college apartment in Berkeley, which featured a group of crack dealers living under our back stairs, a homeless woman who camped in our garage, several robberies, and whose architecture can best be described as bombed-out Motel 6. I would later find out that renting or owning one of these apartments contains prices that match the aesthetics – close to 5,000 bucks a month, rendering it all but impossible that any Iraqi, I was told, could rent such a place, and keeping them fully reserved for oil, defense, and security company business. I guess gentrification takes hold in the most unexpected of ways.

Well-done living room. Check out those hardwood floors!

Bedroom.

Simply beautiful kitchen, with the famous drinks refrigerator at the background.

We returned to the parking lot, where Shane, Ali, and I waited for Chris to arrive. Chris, as Shane explained, was another member of the security team, and tonight was his last night in Erbil, where he worked for three month stretches before returning home.

Chris was a slight, wiry, sandy-haired Brit dressed in quasi-camo with large Gilligan hat and sunglasses. I immediately found out he was a former SAS paratrooper, who now worked for three month stretches in Erbil, managing security on the oilfields. Based on his terse demeanor, and clipped phrasing, I’m guessing Chris saw a lot of action and probably killed a lot of people in his day.  I would not mess with this guy at all – even with his slight stature. Chris, moreover, was the only person I have ever heard use the phrase, “I’m not at liberty to say” – and actually mean it – when I asked him about how many dog handlers patrolled the oil fields. Every time he mentioned a time for something, as well, such as the departure of his flight early that morning, he referred to the event with Zulu time, such as “I’ll be at the airport at oh-three-fifty.” His main advice to me: “I’d stay out of federal Iraqi territory, if I were you.” He then proudly recited that Kurdistan, in terms of terrorist attacks, statistically, was safer than Spain at the current time, a fact that, no doubt, I’m sure, his hardcore security measures helped bring to fruition. It was Chris’ last night in Erbil, where he would return home to the Canary Islands, where he went scuba diving, and said his ex-girlfriend watched and took care of his house while he’s away. “Oh, that’s nice!” I said in response. “Yeah, it’s a great arrangement,” he said wistfully. I thought about asking him whether he still got to sleep with her, but kept my mouth shut. Knowing Christ, upon hearing such a lascivious question, he’d have me in a sleeper hold within seconds, with a Ka-Bar poking into one of my carotid arteries.

Ali dropped Chris at his apartment. Before dropping Shane at his apartment, he and Ali gave me a quick tour of the area, which, again didn’t feel very Iraqi, mostly, because it was the predominantly Christian area, Shane said.  Shane also pointed out a great expat bar/restaurant where, for 20 US dollars, you could drive racecars around a track. Normally, I cannot stand expat bars – usually filled with drunken, foul-mouthed Irish people, kids from Villanova for whom this particular study abroad program was the only one that had no language requirement  and whose lax scholarly requirements provided an opportunity to drink nonstop, one creepy old Dutch guy with a turtleneck under his blazer, who tries to talk to much, much younger girls, and convince them he knows the location of a much superior party. For some reason, there is always one such drunk guy. But – with racecars, and being in Iraq, this expat bar intrigued me. We also stopped at a hotel, where Shane inquired at the price for a room for me. Upon hearing the response of 180 dollars per night, Shane narrowed his eyes, furrowing his bald pate in incredulous response, asking what on earth for what 180 bucks paid. “Wireless internet,” the suit-clad man at the front desk responded proudly. Shaking his head, Shane muttered, “too expensive,” and we left.

We then drove to Shane’s apartment in the Christian district, where he was picking up his car, to meet his wife, and later everyone would join for dinner. Shane said I could tour the building, but was not allowed inside, because of security purposes. He told Ali to make sure he gave me his cell phone number, in case of emergencies, told me to sit up front in the SUV, and pulled the seatbelt down for me, before bidding goodbye. I thanked him profusely – the man had, after all, saved me from camping in the bushes by the airport. One of the nicest people I have ever met – unassuming, casual, and in his mild amusement for my unprepared traveler predicament, strong in his efforts to make sure I had a ride, knew where I was going, and even that I had things to do in the evening.

It was then me and Ali, he piloting the manual transmission Toyota, and me, in the passenger seat, cruising the streets of Erbil, Iraq, just like I do every day. We began chatting, freely, easily, at first, about school. Like most everyone seems to be, I stunned Ali with the cost of my premedical program, and almost caused him to drive off the road when I told him the cost of an American medical school. In Iraq, university, and medical school, are mostly paid by the government, amounting to a cost of maybe 2,000 dollars a year. We soon stopped for gas.

As I stepped out of the Toyota into the fierce evening heat, I couldn’t tell if it was slightly ironic, or not, to be getting gas in Iraq – such a pressurized epicenter of oil controversy of the previous years. I couldn’t stifle my chuckle when I asked Ali where this particular gas came from. “Turkey,” he said. Mulling the irony soon disspated when I had a moment of existential simplicity – holy shit, I thought. I’m getting gas in Iraq. As I’ve mentioned in previous trip reports, while I love the siteseeing, museum going, and popular-route walking, I have a particular love for fitting into the everyday and quotidian. As I’ve said before, the richest and most profound travel experiences come from when I get to sample the everyday life of a citizen – where do I purchase my office supplies? A spark plug? An industrial-sized tin of cocktail sauce?  Those experiences make me feel as if I am truly there, and not just some temporary itinerant with a passport and a hotel reservation. Now, I was purchasing gas (well, standing around while Ali fueled the car) in Iraq. Goodness gracious.

The rather unfortunately-named Khak gas station.

Now fueled, we returned to the car, and continued our conversation. Ali, only 26, had a degree in hotel management, and had before working for Shane’s security company, had a job translating for the US Army in Bagdhad. His parents still lived in Basra, which, he assured me, had become much safer since the outset of the war.

Ah, I knew we would most likely get to the war at some point. I told Ali that I was a senior in high school when the war began, and we, as students, had attended war protests and walkouts, and marched like a bunch of quasi-hippies up the main streets in San Francisco, waving peace signs, blocking cars, interrupting the flow of traffic, and evading walls of riot police. “Yes,” Ali said with an earnest smile. “I remember seeing all the protests in the United States on television.” Here, Ali said, Bagdhad was getting better in terms of safety, government, and infrastructure, but was still quite dangerous. To compound the issues, he said, Americans, once greeted as liberators, were no viewed as simply having an aimless direction for the country, as placing federal Iraqi territory into a state of stagnation, with little progress over the past years. Again, I had to confront myself with a moment of existential lucidity – I was now discussing a war, literally happening just a few hours down the road, with a lifelong inhabitant of the country.

There were, of course, constant reminders of just how close the war stood to our position:

One of many freeway signs I would photgraph for the route to Baghdad.

With just a few turns, one could be in Baghdad in four hours from Erbil. To me, that reality seemed truly eerie and simultaneously impossible – as if it simply couldn’t be true that I had parked myself in the north of a country whose south remained embroiled in battle, a battle I had only ever watched from 8,000 miles away, in the US, in the media. The roadsigns for Bagdhad almost seemed just pieces of phantasmagoric imagery.

The talk shifted to the perceptions of Erbil. Ali drove, pointing out the massive pockets of developments in the new, modern, western style apartments, reminding me that only security and defense personnel could ever afford such a place. Most people in Erbil, lived in modest apartments, with rent closer to 400 dollars a month, with decent chunk going towards utilities and internet, leaving little to save. ATMs, Ali said, as we drove towards one of the few machines in town, were just only starting to catch on as a viable method of currency storage and transfer. Most all transactions, still, Ali said, were conducted in cash.

And, sadly, we will end abruptly there for the night. My sincere apologies – have to do a ton more tonight to get ready for the next week of traveling, and then have to be up early for a busy day tomorrow. Stay tuned for the next sections.

Part II Begins Here!

We continued to speed towards another higher-end hotel, at which Ali said I could find a working ATM. With our already loose and easy conversation, I decided to raise the fact, a bit triumphantly, about how friends and family expressed skepticism at my desire to travel to Iraq, and worried even further at my insouciance with any ostensible safety concerns over traveling to Iraq. People warned me in a varitey of ways, from empassioned (if even a bit angry) text messages imploring me not to travel to Iraq, to Facebook messages advising me not to become decapitated. While I concede I had moments where I questioned my decision to travel to Iraq, not in a manner where I would actually considering canceling my trip, but simply shaking my head in a stunned fashion at the somewhat, uh, unorthodox travel decision. Overall, though, I admit I wasn’t too worried about safety – especially with Chris Guillibeau’s article I read shortly before departure on travel to more tumultuous countries. On Erbil, he said, and forgive me if I paraphrase just a touch, “No one will bother you, and you will be perfectly safe. ” It seemed, I told Ali, that people almost overreacted to my travel plans, and simply would not be consoled by the idea that I planned to visit the Kurdish region, and area not involved in the war since the first week.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “When people from the company visit, they want armed guards, and armored cars.” He shook is head. There existed absolutely no need for such alarm and caution, he said. Moreover, the Kurds are very proud of their country, president, and safety record, and just how little their region has been involved in the fighting. Erbil, as he mentioned before, is slowly growing with outside commerce, bussiness, and visitors to match the demeanor of its populace, with housing complexes, companies, and neighborhoods proliferating more highly than ever before in the past years. The country just hasn’t, however, really embraced the concept of the ATM. I was about to visit one ATM machine of about two in the entire city.

In the late afternoon light and elongated shadows, we pulled off a main road into quite-full parking lot of a glistening hotel, a sparkling piece of evidence of recent development. Its modern, if not too aesthetically pleasing, design reminded me of the Intercontinental Hotel in Tashkent, another recently built hotel in a developing country, the edifice seemingly trying to just promote a pastiche of Westernism and globalization, while at the same time exhbiting all of the cheer and architectual prowess of an interstate office park. The lobby of the Erbil hotel  felt the same as the Intercontintal in Tashkent. After passing through a metal detector (which, no one seemed to be manning or monitoring), I stepped into a high-ceilinged, slighly dimly-lit, and densely furnished lobby, that seemed quite obviously bereft of soul, and as if every appointment was simply selected out of a pre-determined set in a catalogue and installed like a row of tract houses. In both lobbies, it felt as if everything, from the rugs, to the couches, to the plants, was coated in plastic, or perhaps, Teflon, to try to preserve an upscale-shiny-sheen that apparently the hotel needs to manifest to cater to UN contractors and security specialists willing to fork over 350 dollars a night for the apparent air of safety (read: unmanned metal detector) and the palliative feeling that so many unadventurous travelers need as a reminder that no matter how far they travel from home, and no matter how different a culture, hotels can still look the same and provide the same insipid sterility that they seek, thousands of miles away.

Luckily, the ATM worked – one machine quickly giving me that oh-so-wonderful fright that I suddenly have no money in my bank account (hey, a little money is still some money), when its screen reported severely that it could not dispense American dollars. Luckily, the machine dispensing in the local currency spat out a few crisp bills. I only pulled about 80 bucks, seemingly quite sufficient for just about a 24-hour stay in Erbil. I did not want to pull too much, and risk having to leave the country with my precious American dollars tied up in a surplus of local currency, and have the person working the currency exchange window laugh or pretend to be asleep when I tried to change money to American dollars (the experience of the uprorious cackles and paroxysms of derisive laughter from the person working the currency exchange booth at the airport is still vivid ihen trying to change my remaining stack of Uzbek Soum in Tashkent back into ten US dollars last spring). Ali assured me I could change money in the bazaar, as if even my asking of such a question of currency exchange location was so utterly simplistic and obvious. Where? I thought? Were there stands? A currency exchange office? Where in the bazaar? And, most importantly, where the fuck was the bazaar? I made a note to ask later.

We pulled out of the hotel into slighly heavier evening traffic, the Toyota SUV chugging in and out of lines of cars. As we drove, I tried to ask about offering some money to Ali or Shane, or at least paying for gas. Ali shook his head, almost offended that I had even asked, claiming any payment was supremely uncessary. “Well, you’ve been so helpful, you and Shane, I’d be stuck at the airport without you,” I stammered again. Ali shook me off once more. “You’re a guest in this country. And now, you can say you have friends here.”

Frankly, when I travel through more developing or rebuilding countries, I’m always so damn impressed by people’s relentless and unabashed altruism, and always so damn ashamed at my inadvertent skepticism. Yes, of course, in developing and rebuilding coutnties, there exist hordes of people happy to screw and scam you with what appears to be relentless and unabashed altruism, but in some of my favorite and most meaningful of interactions, there have been times where I have met people, most notably in Erbil, and in Romania, that simply give without attachement, pretense, or thought of receiving something in return. In traveling through Romania in early 2007, my friend, Ryan, and I, met a group of social workers with whom we became fast friends, and with whom we spent most of our time in Bucharest. One night, they offered to take us to dinner. Ryan and I refused at first, bawking at their offer, and tried to fork over money for our share. In turn, our Romanian friends seemed to take umbrage that we, apparently, would refuse their kind gesture, and at that point, questioned our refusal. Inadvertent skepticism, I reason. This idea that someone would never, ever, ever simply offer something, or give something away sans conditions or stipulations simply does not exist in America. If someone seems too nice, one immediately wonders where one will be screwed, scammed, or possibly thrown in the trunk of a car, robbed, and left for dead in a ditch. We’ve become so cautious, as a people in first world countries. Now, I realize my examples aren’t always so extreme, but they seem to manifest themselves in this fashion that I should always expect to pay for a service abroad. I wasn’t skeptical of Ali, Shane, or company, but then again, I wasn’t expecting to receive anything for free, either. But, no. True generosity does exist. Once again, I found myself incredulous at how much my new friends seemed to care for my safety, well-being, and favorable impressions of the country.

And, again, it never fails to impress me, either, how people somehow mistake the servile and obseqious attitudes of some hotel and airline employees, working for wages in the name of customer service guidelines detailed in a corporate handbook to pander to those with elite status, as authentic manifestations of human kindness. Take a chance, and find an authentic interaction.

Nearing the hotel - more signs for Bagdhad.

As we continued to drive, we talked openly about our potential futures and aspirations, with Ali telling me he’d like to use his hotel managment degree to open a five-star restaurant and hotel. “You should do it!” I cried enthusastically, my eyes widening at the prospect. Ali did not share my overly-apple-pie-laced sense of America can-do optimism, of simply taking charge and, though it sounds cliche, following a true aspiration (I guess I felt something similar, myself, when I shed my former life as an English major to study pre-med in a post-graduate program in New York). “How?” he replied. He continued to explain – practicality and financial considerations constrained practicality and optimism like a vice. I shut my glib mouth for a moment, and let the lesson fueled by my own ignorance steep for a bit. Soon, we found the wending city center, packed with people and traffic, and Ali began explaining some of Erbil’s layouts, pointing out a neighborhood only filled (and I mean filled) with doctors’ offices, main government buildings, the direction to museums, how to catch a taxi, and finally, after some circling, and asking for direction, the main citadel across the street from my hotel.

Initial shot of the citadel across the street from the Hotel Shahan - much more on the citadel in Part III.

Part II will continue!

I have written most of the segment. I will post it sometime after midnight, Pacific Time.