Hi Hanoi Travel Blog | Chapter 1
The flight to LA was described as “very open” so after a few minutes we moved across the aisle to have a row to ourselves. We then spent the next 40 minutes terrified that someone would come over and say the most powerful three words in the English language: “that’s my seat,” forcing us to return to our assigned seating — the ultimate walk of shame. We lucked out and all the seats around us filled. The flight attendants warned us three times not to “upgrade” our seats or they’d charge us $138.
An elderly couple sat behind us and enjoyed some friendly complaining. At one point a flight attendant passed by and the man said, “Hey, where are you going?”
The flight attendant said, “sorry?”
And the man said, “We’re gonna need you back here!”
She said, “Of course, how can I help?”
He said, “I’m just kidding. But now we know how to get your attention.”
His partner scolded him. “Don’t harass the staff,” she said. “This is why you always got in trouble with your teachers.”
“Her name was Mrs. Heller,” he said. “What did she expect?”
We landed in LA around midnight and listened to ska versions of Christmas songs over the loudspeakers for nine hours.
I had my first-ever chai latte. Why did it take me so long? It saved my life. I told Nhi I had heard somewhere that “chai” means “tea.” She was not impressed by this. Then we watched L.A. Confidential on Nhi’s laptop, and fortunately the sex scenes only showed up when a bunch of people were crowded around us.
A guy had the aisle seat on our row for the 10-hour flight to Tokyo. A flight attendant came over to him before liftoff and asked if he wanted to switch to a window seat up front where there was no one in the middle seat. The guy said no. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I’m fine here,” he said. I realized too late that I should have bullied him into it. Instead, he sat next to me for 10 hours and watched the Blackberry movie and his sweater kept touching me. I’ll grant him this, he gave me perspective: it turns out there are airplane scenarios even more disturbing than crashing into the Pacific Ocean.
My chai tea betrayed me in a deep and powerful way digestively, and on the flight to Japan I was forced to join the #2 Mile High Club. I became what I’d always feared the most: a horrible gollum in a tiny bathroom making unspeakable sounds with his asshole. Sounds that would make the devil weep with terror. It got to the point where I started speaking to God like Jed Bartlet in Two Cathedrals: “Have I displeased you, you feckless thug?” I may never recover from this.
