Zzz wrote:Did you make Hong Kong yet? Or is it part of the SE Asia destination?

I had a little fun there exploring around Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon) at night-- It's like a scene from Blade Runner and can be pretty active. Always watch your wallet. During the day, the ferry ride across the harbor and the bus ride to the top of the Victoria Peak on Hong Kong can be kinda cool, but it's a tourist trap up there. Enjoy the view and then haul ass.

In YVR now, HKG in 3 days...yep Kowloon is on our list, Nathan road right! Cheers

After a day wait in Vancouver, we headed over to the Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge around 7:30pm. They had a great currie & rice soup, drinks and dessert. Given the quietness in the lounge, I took the opportunity to catch a shower (unlike other lounges and airlines around the globe, Air Canada does not provide ammenity complimentary bags. Those usually contain toothbrush, toohpaste, deodorant, etc), very nice and roomy glass and tiles stall! Then I went back for another serving of soup, surfed the net and boarded our aircraft. My flying partner scooped one of the 4 upgrades available in first class but no such luck for this cat although I was quite happy because that meant I would have the whole 3 seats to myself given that I had the window, he originally had the isle and no one in the middle...sweet, I was looking forward to a solid nap. But... to my surprise, two fellows walked towards my seat (the second last row), one of them was a rather large lad and sure enough he squeezed in the middle while the other took the isle seat. So there was no sleeping to be done on this segment, just watched couple movies, Clint Eastwood in "Trouble with the curve" and another flick about bike courriers in downtown NYC.

6:30 am local time marked our arrival at Toronto Pearson, YYZ. We had a spectacular night view of Toronto City with its lit CN Tower. Once inside, we hurried up through a very quiet and clean terminal to US connections door, filled up the customs cards, scanned in the boarding pass, went through US customs (the officer was very nice and jovial for an early Tuesday morning!) and finally through the security...all good, we passed. Next stop Air Canada Maple Leaf lounge international where an amazing spread of fruits, juices and treats awaited us. I headed for yet another shower as this will be my last one before arriving in Myanmar!

Time to head over to our gate for LAX departure... more later (I had a good laugh this morning upon arrival at the lounge...I watched the news on TV and folks in LA are "freaking out" about the "cold"....HMMMMM...more like warm spring to me BCT

Well just landed in LAX and it aint cold!! Super nice, I love it, the wind, the view from the upper parking lot (view on arrivals and departure although not great but watched our Singapore 380 bird fly in back from Tokyo). I totally lucked out in Toronto and scored an upgrade in first class, great breakfast then fell asleep for a couple hours. We walked the "U" shaped LAX terminal to catch some much needed sun and check out the view of the mountains covered in snow. The approach was great, over Hoover dam (missed it due to sleepage) and all the neighbourhoods on the mountains and all...lets be clear, all the mountain properties have tennis courts and pools...wonder what they do for living! Landing the 321 was uneventful, few 380's parked all over, Quantas, Korean, etc.

While walking around the the outside of the terminal, we noticed a black suburban pulling to a red carpet, I recognized the long curly hair dude from that tv show TMZ and the burb was surrounded by Paparrazi... so I did my duty as a good tourist and pulled out the camera, stood on a concrete ledge way above everyone else and got nice shots of this gorgeous women who exited.... now I can recognize Tom Cruise, Clint Eastwood and John Candy and that's about it so had no clue who this gal was but the TMZ dude told me it was Miranda Kerr....quick Google search reveals a stunningly beautiful australian model.

Then the ritual began, line up at the US customs, went through no problems in the quick lane thanks to the Star Alliance gold status, then into the Star Alliance lounge where I'm at right now, starving but thought prudent to update here first! Now heading to the spread to pack up on snacks. We changed our downstairs seats on the 380 to upstairs Row 77 I think... its a nicer view

Once fed up on snacks, will hit lounge showers, pick up some mags and hit boarding. For those bored out of their mind or wanting to see something pretty cool, you can track progress live on www.flightaware.com Type in Singapore Airlines and flight # 11 . It will track all the way to Singapore including our stop in Toyko. Then from Singapore to Yangon its flight 998. Once you type in flight #11 and click enter, it will show you a different route than the LAX-SIN, so scroll down the screen and select todays flight, 15-Jan-203 Los Angeles to Narita Its a neat website.

By the way, fantastic spots here to fly, I'm impressed, very different scenery than Yukon & Alaska,

Updates l8ter,

cheers, BCT

Sounds like t's all going good so far. Looking forward to pictures.

Thanks for sharing your adventure. You are just south of the Aleutian chain right now about half way across the Pacific. Airbus A380-800, 459 knots at 37,00 feet. Wonder what your fuel burn is Flightaware is pretty cool.

Arrived in Singapore! It was a long haul from LAX to Tokyo Narita but luckily we had seats on the second floor in the back and its a two seat config with huge storage space up there. Beautiful flight attendants...holy smokes!! The meals were great,they give you menu and all you can eat snacks including fruits which is great. The landing at Narita was great, taxiing amongst 47's, 380's, trip 7's and quite a few 87's. We quickly went through security once again (here in Asia you go through security at your boarding gate unlike in North America where there is only on control point which gets you in the "secured zone") and hit the lounge for a shower.

The showers are pretty amazing..they have heated toilet seat, now we need that up north Then we feasted to some fresh on site made sushi and snacks and boarded onto the same plane 30 minutes later. The flight to Changi Singapore was just over 7 hours for which I slept 6 but made sure not to miss the meal! On final for 2 Left we flew over the water, I have never seen so many cargo ships and boats of all sorts floating around, it was night time so it was quite a light show!

The terminal was absolutely quiet, only a few police officers carrying H&K MP 5's and few tourist but otherwise everything was locked up (4am) and no one around. We made our way to Terminal 2 from 3 and hit the lounge where I'm writing from now...I'm letting my feet and legs deflate as they have increased in circumference quite a bit from being up there for a while, my shoes are quite tight. A bit of grub here then off to jump onto trip 7-200 to RGN (SA # 998). So far no clouds, nothing but sunshine since we left Vancouver, hopefully the streak continues!

Talk soon!, Cheers, BCT

How's the trip going? Didn't get stuck in Singapore did you? Good luck and keep us posted. Very jealous, sounds like fun.

Sounds like fun James,
Glad to see all is going well for you.
Keep us posted and stay safe.

Ken in Alaska

Update?

Anyone know did he ever get out of Singapore? Them heated toilet seats are nice but you have to keep an eye out for things coming out of em. Arent you guys wondering? It was January 16th since we last heard from him.

I wonder what has happend to BCTundra?

Anyone heard from him?

Thread went dead after Singapore...

Hope all is good. Not even a post in the building a Tundra thread...

AKT

His stats show he was on here today @ 4PM, but who knows about the stats around here!
I sent him an email @ Hotmail just now.

This is starting to get good! It's like a mystery novel!

Re: Aktahoe's Alaska Heli Ski Thread
Kev, Most sincere condolences for CC.... we are all pretty shooken up here only 60 miles away, in our backyard, the very slopes we've shredded in year's pass. Thoughts and prayers will be with CC's friends and family, J-M
by Backcountry Tundra
Mon Mar 04, 2013 9:52 pm

Forum: Around the Campfire
Topic: Aktahoe's Alaska Heli Ski Thread
Replies: 29
Views: 1469

I sure hope he can finish the story here. Some winter i would be tempted to try that myself. Its sortve like a challenge in taking off weight in airplanes as to compare to getting aroound the world for maybe less than a 1000 bucks.

JM's home & OK. Just not posting here for some reason.