Six Hours in Tokyo and One Night in Bangkok
Despite the debacle with Southwest Airlines, Jenny and I (and our baggage) made it to Los Angeles in time to catch our flight to Bangkok via Tokyo. Neither of us had been to either Japan or Thailand before, so this was the true beginning of the adventure.
Our six-hour layover in Tokyo began at about 5 AM local time after a very uneventful twelve hour flight on American Airlines; both of us spent most of that flight asleep. Upon arrival in Tokyo, we were amazed at the level of courtesy and respect displayed by the staff at Haneda Airport. In the U.S., we would expect to be guided to our destination within the airport by a series of signs, but in Japan, we were guided to our destination by people whose job it was to point out where to go and where not to go. We felt as though we were being welcomed as honored guests in the country.
At 5 AM, everything in the airport was closed. Our only option for food and drinks at that time of the morning was a number of vending machines scattered throughout the terminal. Luckily, these vending machines sell all sorts of snacks and beverages. Unluckily, all the instructions are written (and spoken) in Japanese, a language I don't know at all, apart from the very basics: "konnichiwa" (hello), "arigato" (thank you), and "eigo ga hanasemasu ka?" (do you speak English?). Obviously, it's not going to be very helpful to ask a vending machine if it can speak English. After making a valiant but failed effort to buy a sandwich out of a vending machine, I found a person who knew both Japanese and English, and she showed me the correct sequence of steps to follow in order to buy items from the machine.
To my surprise, what I had purchased was not just a sandwich; it was three totally different kinds of sandwiches in one package. There was a tuna salad sandwich with cucumber, a hard-boiled egg sandwich, and a ham and cheese sandwich. And boy, were they delicious. The yolks in the hard boiled egg sandwich were an incredibly deep shade of orange. The bread had the most incredible texture. It was a great snack. Other vending machine highlights included iced coffee and a re-hydration beverage called Pocari Sweat (definitely a strange and unappetizing name in English, but it tasted very good).
By 7 AM Tokyo time, the various kiosks in the food court had started to open for business. One of these kiosks served sushi. In the U.S., airport sushi is right down there with supermarket sushi in terms of low quality, but the sushi we bought at Haneda Airport was some of the best sushi I've ever eaten. The fish was incredibly fresh and had an amazing texture, and the sushi was served with a ceramic mug of very good hot green tea. I made sure to go back to the chef in the kiosk who prepared the sushi and tell him "domo arigato! That was delicious!" and he seemed very appreciative that the meal was an enjoyable one.
A couple of hours later, we discovered a kiosk that served frozen blended green tea with whipped cream on top. We bought two of them and tried them out. To our surprise, the drink wasn't sweet at all. The flavor was very refreshing. Even the whipped cream wasn't sweet.
The toilets in Haneda Airport were also pretty amazing. The restrooms were spotlessly clean and the toilets had bidets built-in! Jenny discovered that the women's toilets had a machine with a sensor that, upon sensing your presence in the stall, made the sound of running water in order to mask the sound of going to the toilet.
Our flight from Tokyo to Bangkok was on Japan Airlines. The level of service on this airline puts any American airline to shame. It seemed like there was a new meal, beverage, or snack being offered at least once every 30 minutes. The food was incredible, the snacks were delicious, and the beverages (mostly hot tea or coffee) were also very good. My sister and I were not seated next to each other, however, and when I asked the woman sitting next to me if she spoke English, she responded with "sukoshi" (which means "only a little bit"). So I spent most of the flight playing video games.
Oh, and the toilets on Japan Airlines? They also had bidets built-in.
Our arrival in Bangkok was fairly uneventful. There was an AIS booth selling SIM cards very close to our arrival gate. I bought one for me and one for Jenny. The booth only accepted cash, however, and at 1700 baht each, this ate up pretty much all of the Thai cash I had brought with from Las Vegas. But boy am I glad I had that cash on me!
Once through immigration and customs, I set up the Grab ride-hailing app on my phone, and we were off to our hotel. Bangkok has two airports (Suvarnabhumi and Don Mueang) and although we arrived at Suvarnabhumi, the hotel was next to Don Mueang to make it easy to catch the next day's flight to Krabi. This meant a one-hour car ride through Bangkok. People are more lax about traffic safety in Bangkok than I'm used to in the U.S.; I saw people riding in the backs of pickup trucks and there were plenty of occasions where I was sure we were going to crash into a motorcyclist.
Bangkok has the largest billboards of any city I've ever been to. Right outside Suvarnabhumi was a billboard that was the equivalent of ten ordinary-sized billboards all crammed up next to one another. And there were plenty of others that were just massive. When I return to the U.S., I'll never be able to look at billboards the same way again.
Upon arriving at the hotel in Bangkok, I was exhausted, and so I fell asleep fairly quickly. The next morning was a domestic flight to Krabi, which I will detail in the next blog post.