Hawaii: Oregon Trail 2012

You're probably wondering what the heck is up with this post title. My recent flights to/from Hawaii were probably as harrowing as the Oregon Trail, the only difference is that I miraculously didn't come down with some horrible illness like dysentery or have to shoot squirrels for dinner.

Last week I traveled to Honolulu to celebrate Lulu and David's wedding -- it was an EPIC holiday where our closest group of college friends, many (such as myself) who are scattered all over the world, were able to spend a solid 4-5 days together. It was such an amazing trip, one that I will never forget. However, I also spent many an hour stranded at Shanghai's Pudong Airport and Tokyo's Narita Airport before and after Hawaii. There's no point in hashing out the details since United/Continental's shitty service is now legendary, but to sum up my "Oregon Trail" included:

- total of 9 hours being stranded at Pudong and Narita, luckily both airports have free wi-fi
- 2 missed connections at Narita (once due to delay, the other because they sold my seat even though I had received a boarding pass already)
- 1 broken luggage handle
- 1 missing luggage wheel
- 0 attempts of compensation
- 1 really annoyed/pissed off/resigned customer

Wah, why are you leaving without me? :(

During my internment at Narita Airport, I found that there was lots of duty free shopping, nice lounges, and plenty of curiosities to keep me occupied... for the first 3 hours. :p Unfortunately Japanese Yen is currently completely pwning the US Dollar right now, essentially wiping out any duty-free benefits. The exchange rate is ~80Y = $1 USD, which is totally nuts since it is normally anywhere between 110-100Y/$1. All I ended up buying was a wedding card, haha. :)

The public waiting areas at Narita are nicer than your average First Class lounges, right?

I also stumbled upon the Origami Museum, which kept me entertained for about an hour. It was very interesting since their displays went way beyond your usual crane and boat figures -- can you imagine the amount of time it took to make these dioramas?

Everyone loves fairy tales!

Cinderella looks like she's about to eat dirt. The Prince looks a bit tipsy, or perhaps he's trying to look up Cinderella's skirt. O_O

This peep-hole was my favorite because it was a bit of an optical illusion, using layers with different depths that added up into a complete scene.

My next several posts will be all about Hawaii, but right now I'm still recovering from all the travel I did over the last week (Seoul, Hawaii) and am quite sleepy. I can feel my brain clunking along.... it's time for bed. Aloha....