Day 7

(LAX to SYD)

I hit the airport at 9:45PM for an 11PM flight to Australia, maybe what some would consider cutting it a little close. In fact, when I walked up to the check-in counter, they said: “Aaron?”. Wow, this new VAustralia Airline (Virgin Australia) is really on their game! “Yes”, I replied, “how did you know?”. “Well, you are the only one on the plane that has not checked in yet.” Ah hah, good thing I wasn’t checking an luggage. “Can we see your travel Visa, sir?” “Um, I wasn’t aware that you needed a travel visa for Australia.” SHIT! “No problem, sir, we will call the embassy and print one out for you right here.” WHAT?!?!?! I guess travelling biz class has it’s perks. I can’t believe they were able to just print a travel visa for me at the check-in counter 45 minutes before I’m supposed to board. With that near fiasco behind me, I walked through security in 15 minutes and made it to the gate just in the middle of the boarding process. If I had waited another 20 minutes or so to get to the airport, I would have missed this flight. No Worries!

The plane was amazing. A glass of champagne was definitely in order before takeoff, and it seemed like everyone was enjoying this pre-flight ritual.

I feel so excited about the trip. It’s been amazing already. The guy next to me runs a company that focuses on outfitting children in the developing world with glasses so that they don’t become blind later in life, which is what happens to most of them. He does this by running a company that manufactures and sells innovative optical technology and donates about 30 percent of their profits to the humanitarian side. Just amazing. Only on travel like this do you meet people of this sort; makes me feel as though living in HK might open so many other avenues for me.
Some of the cool things are that they actually turn the lights off and have lights of the stars on the ceiling to help you sleep. They have touchscreen monitors with hundreds of movies and tv channels, radio, cd collection, games, it’s insane. I started with an episode of the family guy, which was hysterical. Then I moved onto watching the dark night again while I had my dinner and had two glasses of wine followed by two glasses of bailey’s on the rocks…what the waitress in Dallas called adult milk…yeah. Dinner was excellent. A crab cake to start, then red snapper and an apple tart with vanilla ice cream to finish. I mean, I can’t believe this qualifies as “airline food”. (That “I mean” is to be pronounced like Ben would say it). Next, I changed into the sleep suit that they give you, yeah that’s right, they give you a very comfortable sleep suit as well as a bunch of other amenities. Two lunesta and I was out for the next 8 hours. When I woke up I asked the stewardess how much long till we land, and she said: “an hour and a half, sir”. I could not believe my ears, this was the easiest 14.5 hour flight I had ever taken! Ok, it’s the only 14.5 hour flight I’ve ever taken, but since the seat goes all the way down to a bed, I slept soundly for so long that it seemed like a normal night’s sleep. We arrived in SYD at 10AM plus one day so I felt pretty normal upon arrival in the Land Down Under.