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Bonjour from Paris! I know, I know ... How the heck did I get from Bangkok to France? Simple! I took a couple of long flights. The first flight took me back home to Los Angeles where I attended a few travel conferences, appeared on ABC News and almost got bowled over by Britney Spears as she ran from the paparazzi. Wow! Being at home is almost as exciting as being on the road! After all of that excitement, I hopped on an Air France flight to Paris for a momentous event. In case you haven't had your fill of Asia, join Mike Manna as he takes us on an accelerated tour of Tokyo. Or, join our newest writer Aubrey Lampkin for a quick visit to Vietnam.
BANGKOK AIRPORT
I left off last week from Chiang Mai, Thailand. From there, I flew 47 minutes back to Bangkok on a packed 747-400. This time, I saw a much nicer side of the Suvarnabhumi International Airport. The international section is so much better than the domestic area. Beyond the first round of security are a whole slew of restaurants, fast food eateries, shops and more shops. There are over 90 stores, many of which are high-end designer boutiques including Bally, Bulgari, Cartier, Chanel, Coach, Dior, Fendi, Ferragamo, Hugo Boss ... But my biggest gripe with the airport is that passengers aren't allowed to bring water on to the plane. It's so stupid it makes me want to scream. Understandably, passengers can't bring liquids through the first round of security (to get to the terminal with the shops), but then you have to go through a second, more rigorous round of security, to get to the actual gate. They don't allow liquids through there either and each passenger's carry-on is searched by hand. The liquids ban is a joke in itself but what is even more ridiculous is that passengers can NOT buy water or any other liquid at the gate. Waiting around 45 minutes to board the plane, I felt like I was in prison -- why don't they have vending machines with drinks?
PHEW! I GOT UPGRADED
By the grace of God, I got upgraded to THAI Airways' Royal Silk class (business class) at the very last minute; 7pm for the 7:30pm flight. This was not an easy one to finagle and it's too long a story to get into but everyone told me it wasn't going to happen because the flight was oversold. That made it all the more special when I got the upgrade page: "Mr. Jet, please come to the counter to get your new seat assignment." Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! What was crazy is that while economy was still boarding, I kept seeing a guy hovering over me like a hawk. It turned out he was staking out the only empty business class seat, which was next to me. When they shut the plane door, he asked if someone was sitting there. "Not to my knowledge," I replied. "Great!" he said ... then plopped down beside me! Under my breath, I muttered, "Whoa, brother! You're going to get into some serious trouble when they catch you!" Turns out, he's a frequent flier and dislikes flying economy on long-haul flights more than I do. He said that the agents had promised him an upgrade but then said there were no available seats. When he saw an open seat, he felt entitled to it. Talk about ballsy. Flight attendants usually catch these people every time and within minutes ... but this guy got lucky. Real lucky. I don't recommend this approach at all. They normally not only embarrass you but I've heard stories where at the end of the flight, the sneaky passenger is hit with a huge bill for the full fare of the trip. In this case, it would have been around $8,000.
BANGKOK TO LOS ANGELES
As my cool but sneaky seatmate would attest: It sure is nice to be sitting in a phat business class seat on a 13-hour, 35-minute flight. Thai Airways Royal Silk class seats have 60 inches of pitch and a 170-degree recline. The configuration up here in the A340-500 series plane is 2x2x2. The seats are also in a shell so they don't invade the space of the person behind you when you recline and all the seats have state-of-the-art entertainment systems. They include a large format touch-control screen with a wide selection of films (30 movies, 110 albums of music, 31 games). They also have power outlets for laptop computers (115VAC). But surprisingly, the headsets were cheap, not the noise-canceling headphones you'd expect.
INFLIGHT SERVICE
Before takeoff, the flight attendants (FAs) passed out water, juice and champagne along with amenity kits and a menu. Immediately afterwards, they handed out newspapers/magazines, steaming hot towels and drinks. At that time, the FAs took orders for dinner. There were three meal services (here's a scan of the menu and drink choices). The food was good but I only tasted two out of the three as I was out cold for a good five hours of the flight. But I do know that the flight attendants, wearing their colorful uniforms, were amazing and worked their tails off -- including thoroughly cleaning the bathrooms every few hours. They worked so hard that when we arrived, they looked completely exhausted. Can you blame them?
PRISONERS ON A PLANE
When we pulled up to the gate at LAX, the captain asked everybody to take their seats for a few minutes as they needed to tend to some business. Everyone was a little reluctant until they saw two LAPD officers board the plane and walk towards the back. Moments later, off they came with two prisoners in handcuffs and four plain-clothes officers who were escorting the convicts. I've flown with prisoners on my flight before and they almost always sit in the last row of coach, which I think they did this time too. I would hate to be sitting in the seat in front of them, wondering if they were going to snap and choke me with their handcuffs while I was out cold. The good news is that that didn't happen. As we were disembarking, my seatmate said, "now that was an easy flight!" He was right. Thai's business class and my 'round-the-world trip was like a dream.
ARRIVING AT LAX
We arrived just before 7pm local time at Los Angeles' Tom Bradley International Airport, which is not a good time to land. Flights from all over the globe had just beat us in so the place was an absolute zoo. The immigration officers did a great job moving the lines at passport control. A line 60 people deep took less than 10 minutes. But my bag (I did a lot of shopping this time), took 45 minutes to come out and the three lines for customs were literally wrapped around the packed carousels. An American guy behind me said what a disgrace it was. "We are supposed to be one of the best countries in the world and they can't even get this right," he said. He went on to say that you would never find this in Asia or Europe. He was right. This really was a disgrace and I was not only ticked off but embarrassed that this is the way America welcomes home her citizens and even worse, welcomes her visitors. No wonder our international arrival numbers are so far down. It took over 40 minutes to go through customs making it the second longest customs line I have ever encountered – the longest was at DFW. There wasn't even a separate line for the crew! So they all had to wait like everyone else. If I were one of them, I would've snapped. Why they couldn't add an officer to each line to read the forms is beyond me. I saw plenty of officers walking around rudely telling people to get off their cell phones.
LOS ANGELES
The highlight of being home, besides playing beach volleyball and hanging out with my friends, was that I did three interviews for ABC News in a week!
Here are the links from segments
one and
two (the third hasn't aired yet). I also did a ton of radio interviews including
Peter Greenberg's show and
WGN Radio in Chicago. More good news: JohnnyJet.com partnered with MedjetAssist and I'll be a travel contributor to the Medjet eNewsletter. Exciting, isn't it?
THE BACHELOR
For all you ladies out there, I bet you'll be jealous when I tell you that I went to a small birthday dinner for a friend from Connecticut, at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and sat next to Andy Baldwin from ABC's The Bachelor. He's a cool guy and might be contributing travel stories to JohnnyJet.com in the near future. And yes, that's the beautiful Marla Maples next to me, who's also very cool!
BRITNEY SPEARS
Speaking of celebrities ... I was at the Ritz Carlton Marina Del Rey attending the Oneworld Airline Alliance media briefing when they announced their newest member, Mexicana Airlines. It was surreal to meet all the Chief Executives of Oneworld Airlines but truthfully, the most exciting part was when I was in the lobby, filling my glass with the best watermelon-mint juice ever, and all of a sudden, I see a group of what I thought were teenage kids running into the lobby. I thought it was weird that the valets were grabbing them (as a way to tell them no running in the hallways ... ?) but it turned out they were grabbing the paparazzi chasing Britney Spears. She literally almost bowled me over, running down the corridor. One of the paparazzi broke through and chased her all the way down the hall, getting a couple of shots before being tackled. If I hadn't been sipping my sophisticated KoolAid, I could've helped her out and given the pap a hip-check into the wall, but it all happened so fast I didn't know what was going on until it was too late.
BEVERLY HILTON
Also this week was the annual Canadian Media Marketplace, held at the Beverly Hilton. The Canadians put on quite a show by flying down all of their major tourism players (Air Canada, Via Rail, hotels and city and provincial tourism boards). Also in attendance were popular musicians, the 2010 Olympian Mascots, mixologists, chefs, even the zip-trekking guys from Whistler, who set up a line that people could fly across at the big party at Paramount Studios' Sound Stage 10. Since I rarely (if ever) stay at a hotel in L.A., I decided to spend the night. I've got to say: I was quite impressed with the Beverly Hilton's rooms and service ... the valet guys even left me a bottle of water in my car. The hotel just had an $80 million renovation and my room in the Wilshire Tower was spacious and plush. It had a flat screen TV, rain showerhead and a really comfortable bed. Two things I didn't like: I could hear horns once in a while from impatient drivers along Santa Monica Boulevard and the A/C in the room was right above the bed so it blew on my neck throughout the night. Other than that, it was a great experience. TIP: A friend taught me a trick to get free high-speed Internet access there. Log on to the Internet for the first time in the lobby using the free WiFi. Then, when you go up to your room, the system will remember that IP address and not the one in the room, which costs $10 a day. The Beverly Hilton, 9876 Wilshire Boulevard, Beverly Hills, CA, Tel: 310-274-7777.
AIR FRANCE
It was time to hit the road again and I was back at LAX Terminal 2 checking in for my Air France flight. It took a total of two minutes to get my boarding pass and the majority of that time was spent waiting for the agent to find out if it was okay if I brought two carry-ons on board. According to the Air France website, passengers are only allowed one carry-on but since both my bags were small, they cut me a break. Though, I'm not sure how much of a break I got because I saw a lot of other passengers, including those flying economy, with the same amount of luggage as me.
TERMINAL 2
Flight 69 was due to depart at 7:25pm but was delayed 45 minutes. That wasn't too bad especially since the 4:30pm flight had been delayed six hours. Yikes! There was a long line to get up to security but I saw a guy out of the corner of my eye walk to a not-so-visible elevator. Naturally I followed him. Sure enough, it was secret way to bypass the long line. The moment we stepped off the elevator, a TSA agent got out of his chair and checked our boarding passes and IDs. "This sure beats waiting in the line below," I said. "It sure does," he replied. "But hardly anyone knows about it." Now you do.
LOUNGE
Air France's business class passengers get to use Northwest Airlines' (their Skyteam partner) lounge. This has to be one of LAX's worst lounges. It's small, dark, old and in dire need of an upgrade. However, it does offer free wireless; no wonder so many people were sitting out front with their laptops. But across the hall is Air New Zealand's lounge, which just so happens to be one of the nicest lounges at LAX. It's only available to Air New Zealand, Virgin Atlantic and Air France first class passengers. Inside, it's bright, airy, has free Internet and all kinds of free drinks and food: chicken noodle soup, ready-made sandwiches, deli meats to make your own sandwiches, an assortment of cheeses and Caesar salad. They even have servers passing around lamb chops and vegetable quesadillas. It was so civilized, I contemplated stopping by even when I'm not traveling.
LOS ANGELES TO PARIS
There were two lines to board the plane: a long line for economy and a short one for premium passengers. The 777-300 plane featured Air France's new state-of-the-art seats. They are vibrantly colored and have footrests, even in economy, which is called Tempo. Each seat has an individual video screen, too. In Tempo class, screens are 6.4 inches wide, while in business and first they're 10.4 inches. The premium classes feature videos on demand. The seats are 21 inches wide. They recline to what is supposed to be a 180-degree angle, but don't actually go completely flat. At first glance, my headphones looked cheap and dirty but they were actually noise-canceling headphones, designed to reduce the noise volume. After rummaging through my lovely amenity bag, I discovered little paper covers for the headphones, which turned out to be a nice feature. The only thing missing was lip balm.
DINNER TIME!
The flight attendants were attractive, mostly between the ages of 30 and 40, and all cheerful. They came around with pre-takeoff drinks (champagne, water or fruit juice) and offered a variety of newspapers. We had a short taxi, maybe seven minutes, before taking off. Once over the Pacific, we made a sharp turn, right back over the airport. They rolled out the drink cart and handed out drinks and small boxes of mini crackers. Later, hot towels were passed around and dinner was served. For appetizers, the choice was salmon or dried beef salad. Then the hot meal: scallops, beef or the special of the day, which this time, was ravioli stuffed with peppers and eggplant. They also gave everyone a cheese plate. Dessert was a choice of sorbet (mango, strawberry and kiwi), chocolate cake (which looked better than it tasted), apple crisp or a fruit plate.
FLIGHT ATTENDANTS
Once the dinner service was over so, it appeared, was the flight attendants' work. The lights were turned out and that was it. The flight attendants didn't come by again on the nine-hour, 42-minute flight until breakfast, about 90 minutes out. We were off the coast of Ireland when they turned the cabin lights on and brought out the breakfast food cart (pancakes or an omelet). I was later told it's because of France's strong unions that they have to have so much time off. But if a passenger wants something, there's a self-service bar and one FA on call. Oh, the French and their breaks. It was just as well that my seat was very comfortable and I was able to sleep for a few hours. Air France, Tel: 800-237-2747.
VIDEO
Sorry, no video this week. But we do have all the Johnny Jet videos ever made on YouTube.
NEXT WEEK
Next week I will tell you about my trip to Paris and the momentous event. Au revoir!
Note:
This trip was sponsored in part by Tourism Authority of Thailand,
Canadian Media Marketplace
and Air France.
Copyright 2008 JohnnyJet, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.