New Trip to Asia

As a result of my training over the summer and Nicole's work on the set of Homeland this fall, we had not gone away on a real trip in some time. And that, of course, is if you disregard New York, DC, New Jersey, Richmond, Denver, Florida, and Houston. We had initially had our eyes on a United flight out of San Francisco that would have gone direct to Seoul to start our trip, but for some reason everyone is traveling right now. It would have been a challenge to even get on the flight, much less get business class. We were then settling on Delta, but noticed that elite customers were using upgrades to take the few remaining business class seats. With limited options remaining, we took American to Haneda airport in Tokyo and used miles to take us from there to Seoul. All of this would be in coach. As we had to remind ourselves, there was a time when each of us only flew coach, and it cost a lot of money to do that. More than $1.30 anyway.

What separates this from previous trips is the general lack of planning. We left LAX without a hotel to spend the night at. We only have a general idea of where we'd like to be and when. After a couple days in Korea, we will continue to Beijing, then Hong Kong, and finally Taiwan. I used the airline wifi to book a hotel when we were somewhere over the Pacific. This is all in the interest of flexibility, but there's something to be said about knowing where you'll be and when that probably calms the nerves. Perhaps this is why people do tours...