Tag Archives: Plane

How to survive a long flight

HOW TO SURVIVE A LONG FLIGHT

(By Vy)

1. Sit impatiently as the plane is delayed due to technical difficulties.

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2. Run the battery out on your phone playing Candy Crush Saga.

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3. Watch the plane take off.

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4. Ask for tea from the flight attendant. For some reason, it tastes like seaweed.

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5. Stare out the window for at least 3 hours. Once in a while, glimpse a nice view.

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Clouds over the Midwest.

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Mountains in Alaska.

The shoreline of what I'm pretty sure was an Alaskan island.

The shoreline of what I’m pretty sure was an Alaskan island.

The Japanese countryside, near Tokyo/Narita.

The Japanese countryside, near Tokyo/Narita.

Pretty clouds are pretty.

Pretty clouds are pretty.

The sun setting over the Pacific Ocean.

The sun setting over the Pacific Ocean.

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6. Discover that your flight entertainment system has J-pop. Jam out.

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7. Watch the obligatory crappy rom-com, then watch it again.

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8. Realize that your flight’s only halfway through.

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9. Go to the bathroom when you don’t really need it. Discover that your legs are painfully asleep.

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10. Constantly check the time in both your starting point and destination. Get confused over how many hours are left in your flight.

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11. Resign yourself to the fact that your flight it pretty much going to go on for infinity, so there’s really no point in trying to calculate this anyway.

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12. Arrive at one of your layover points a half hour before you need to catch your next flight.

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13. Discover your next flight is another 6 hours long.

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14. Finally manage to fall asleep…

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15. …for 15 minutes.

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16. Wait.

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17. Suddenly realize, 10 minutes before landing, that this is really happening. You’re about to go to the country you’ve been the most scared to visit. Your heart rate goes up. You get the butterflies. Your knees go weak.

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18. And away you go.

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By the way, Vietnam is freaking awesome.

In which I spend 13 hours more or less playing Tetris

NOTE:

While I’m in Tokyo, I will have no free internet. Therefore: Me posting this means that either I am mooching internet off one of the other kids, or paying 100 yen per fifteen minutes of wi-fi. Yikes.

Also, be sure to check my tumblr, where I’ll be posting photos!

I wasn’t expecting to write a post about going on an airplane. After all, I already did that last summer. I thought it was just going to be another plane ride. Cramped, long…you know, standard.

As it turns out, it was quite a different plane ride, for two reasons:

  1. I was (am) completely sick the whole time.

About three days before departure, I came down with the worst fever I’ve had in years: runny nose, the chills, fatigue, headaches– the real deal. Luckily, I was blessed with something called “ibuprofen” that can alleviate the symptoms somewhat…

But I was still delirious the whole time.

I’m pretty sure I used up all the tissues on that plane. At one point I filled a barf bag with tissues so I could take it back to my seat.

But that’s irrelevant. More importantly, this plane was…

This plane was recently launched by Japan Airlines, hoping to provide a better experience for those traveling for Japan. A typical plane ride has, you know, movies, TV shows, and music to entertain its passengers. But this one also had…


As you can imagine, I did not get much sleep on that plane ride. Did I mention that I’m addicted to Tetris?

And the food they served us was a step above ordinary freeze-dried, notoriously gross airplane fare. I was served seafood curry for dinner that night.

They fed us so much food. So much. By the end of the ride, I looked a little like this:

But in the end, after a 7-hour bus ride to Boston, a 13-hour plane ride to the Tokyo/Narita airport, and a 1-hour drive into Tokyo itself, I reached the youth hostel safely. And that’s all that matters, right?

And besides, I think the whole experience helped fix my sleep schedule.

But at that point, I had received an inordinate amount of sleep and was charged to go for the day. Coming next!