| I slept reasonably well last night in the "B" gate area where there are some padded benches that even have a little privacy. At 4:30 AM I went to the transfer desk and got boarding passes from Bangkok to New York City. Phnom Penh doesn't have the computer network connections to issue the on-going boarding passes. We got away at 6:30, almost on time, and headed north for a six-hour trip to Tokyo Narita. The captain, a woman, said that Typhoon Rosie was off the coast of Japan but they didn't know how much effect it would have. It turned out to have a lot of effect. We were actually on our final approach into Narita when the captain suddenly pulled up the nose and announced we were diverting to Osaka because of windshear. It was an hour's flight to Osaka and we had to stay the night there. The first problem was that the airport had only one bus to empty the diverted aircraft that started stacking up in an outer parking area. It took five or six trips to get all the passengers from our B747 into the terminal. Then we picked up our luggage and got into other buses for the trip to the Hyatt Regency. It's a nice hotel, of course, but the airline didn't pay for meals although they did pay for the lodging. That was a new twist for me. The rate of exchange for the yen now is only 73 yen to a dollar (when I was here before it was 110 to a dollar!) and the prices are unbelievable so I asked for a convenience store and found one just a block away where I bought some sandwiches and some rolls for breakfast that were about one tenth the cost of what it would cost in the restaurants. A pleasant surprise was the really high-speed broadband in the hotel rooms in Osaka. It was the fastest connection I've ever used. I was really tired from the limited sleep at the airport the night before but stayed up till 1:00 AM to take advantage of the connection. |
