Wednesday, December 18, 2019; The Long Trip Home

Wednesday, December 18, 2019; The Long Trip Home

Without a doubt, the least enjoyable part of any journey is flying to get to and come back from your destination.  On this trip, which began for us on October 26, 2019, we have circled the Earth in a eastward direction, including crossing the International Date line and the Equator.  

The Swisshotel Stamford in Singapore is a very nice hotel, and after our tours of Singapore, we have found it to be relatively central to most of the tourist attractions.  As far as amenities go, it was nice that they had USB charger ports on the night stands and desk, and a non-polarized 110v shaver power outlet in the bathroom, so we could have used our Sonicare toothbrush chargers.  The other outlets are 220v, but have a universal plug pattern so no travel plug adapter was needed for universal voltage electronics.  

The breakfast buffet was very extensive and very well presented- about as nice looking as they get.  But the food itself, despite a very wide selection, was just OK in quality.  They had odd waffles that were almost like puff pastry rather than the usual quick bread batter.  You could get eggs made any way you want, and also had a variety of soft boiled eggs held at very specific temperatures.  

We were expecting a bus to pick us up for our airport transfer, but instead, we had a private car- a nice full sized Mercedes with plenty of leg room in back, but one of our suitcases had to ride shotgun because the trunk couldn’t hold all our bags. 

Singapore and Hong Kong both have fabulous international airports that really make most of America’s airports 3rd World by comparison.  The bathrooms are huge, marble, wood and glass and even have some stalls with bidet toilets.  There are attendants that make sure there are no stray bits of paper towel on the floor, or splashes around the sinks.  And the stalls are big enough to enter with luggage.  And even the toilet paper is very nice.  You come to really appreciate that after traveling through Europe, the Middle East and Asia. There are huge duty free shopping malls and free wifi that actually works.  There are also ample places to sit and furniture that hasn’t been languishing since the 1950’s.  Free charging stations abound, and there are even free internet desktop computers and iPads scattered about.  

Our flight from Singapore to Hong Kong was 3 hours in duration.  We had economy seats, but our wonderful travel agent booked us nice bulkhead seats with plenty of legroom.  You can actually even stand erect during the flight.  The second flight from Hong Kong to Vancouver, BC, was premium economy.  This featured recliner-like seats with leg rests and about 30 degree recline, so it was possible to get some sleep.  That was on a Boeing 777 with dual aisles.  We only had one alcoholic beverage service, so that wasn’t as nice as Delta’s Premium Economy, where you could get as many drinks as you wanted to.  

Cathay Pacific had a decent variety of movies to choose from.  Since we had recently had a Star Wars Trivia, Ben decided to work his way through the original Star Wars Trilogy, and the last 2 movies (The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi).  They didn’t have the silly prequel movies (Episodes I, II and III), so no Jar Jar Binks.  

We had a preview that there might be some troubles with our itinerary when we were unable to confirm the final leg of our trip, which was from Vancouver, BC to Seattle on Alaska Airlines.  Apparently, they wanted us to present our passports in person.  But a complication arises in that our Cathay Pacific flight into Vancouver BC dumped us off at the isolated Customs and Immigrations and security quarantine area, and you could not proceed through Customs and Immigrations without a boarding pass.  They had an automated kiosk for those without pre-printed boarding passes, but our passes failed to print because the airline needed to check our passports.  They ended up sending someone from their ticketing counter through some secret passageways into the quarantine area with boarding passes, but that took nearly a half hour.  

Then the bags that were checked from Singapore through to Seattle, had to be matched up with each passenger before passengers were allowed to proceed with Customs and Immigrations.  You had to show them the actual baggage receipt tags while tags on the bags were scanned remotely.  Once a match was made, the bags get sent on to the next flight without any passenger contact, and the passenger is allowed to go through Customs and Immigrations.  But even after nearly an hour, our bags were never scanned coming off the Cathay Pacific flight, and we were held in quarantine until after boarding began for our flight.  We had to beg to have an exception made for delayed bags so that we could make our flight, and we were the absolute last people on our flight.  

When we arrived at Sea-Tac, our son John had arrived several hours earlier and we were all booked on a airport shuttle home.  Our flight sat on the ground in Vancouver nearly a half hour waiting for clearance to take off, so our flight arrived a half hour late, giving us just 10 minutes to get from the gate to the pickup lane.  So Janet went with our carry on bags and rode the shuttle with John, while Ben had to wait for the luggage to not arrive so he could file a delayed or lost baggage claim.  He ended up on the next shuttle, which was 2 hours later.  

But we completed our journey, arriving home safe and sound, despite missing our checked bags.  Hopefully those will arrive in time for our next cruise in just 10 days.