Flying to Indonesia
Posted by marshall Fri, 25 Mar 2005 01:00:00 GMT
The first flight was from LAX to Taipei on a 747, and had quite a lot of people on it. Each seat had a personal entertainment system with a touch screen and remote control. The entertainment system offered various movies, TV shows, music programs, and even interactive games. I watched The Incredibles and LA Confidential (the latter of which had some pretty funny edits to get it airline-suitable), and I also saw part of the Spongebob movie, which was mildly amusing. The interactive games included a "World Traveler" program that taught basic words and phrases in various foreign languages. I spent some time learning Japanese numbers, days of the week, and months. I played a game of Solitaire on it too. I wasn't able to sleep much...maybe 3 or 4 hours, but it was difficult to tell since it was night the entire time.
I got into Taipei just after 5AM local time. When I got off the plane in the Taipei airport, the China Airlines staff said to go to Wing B for my transfer flight. I took the "skytrain" (a simple above-ground tram) to the other terminal and then had to walk a good long way to get to Wing B. When I got there and went through security, I looked at the screens and noticed that it said my flight was in Wing A. I walked around for about half an hour before going back out through security and finding some China Airlines people who told me that the computer system was wrong and my flight was indeed departing from Wing B, Gate B1R.
There's a "transit lounge" area just before the security checkpoint for Wing B that advertised internet access. It basically looks like a food court with no actual restaurants. Off to the side there are several desks with US-style power plugs and phone cables for plugging into a modem. They have some obscure Engrish instructions for how to dial, but it turned out that I didn't need them. There were two wireless networks available when I opened my laptop: one named "EZ-UP" and one named "ezon". The first one had a poor signal, but was open and free to use. The second one had a full signal but wanted me to sign up and pay. I just used the first one and put up with the slower speeds.
At around 7:30 AM local time I decided to head to the gate. I grabbed my bags and went through the security checkpoint again. As I got to the top of the stairs following the checkpoint, I noticed that my bag didn't feel very heavy...at least, not as heavy as it should with a 17" laptop and several books in it. I opened it up to check, and much to my horror I discovered that the 17" laptop was missing. I had left the desk without putting the laptop back in the bag and just grabbed the bag itself! I hurried back down the stairs, out through security, and back over to the desk. Thankfully the airport was pretty much empty, and no one was even in the area to see the laptop sitting there. I packed it into my bag, made sure I had everything, and went back through security for the third time to get to my gate.
The security checkpoints at the Taipei airport aren't quite as crazy as the US ones. The US ones make you remove your laptop from the bag and take off your shoes. In Taipei I just put the bag on the conveyor, put my cell phone and camera in a little tray, and went on through. It's a good thing given the number of times I had to go through it. :-)
The flight from Taipei to Medan was actually two flights, with Panang, Malaysia, in between. On both I managed to get an exit row seat after the doors were closed -- an entire exit row was free both times! Being able to stretch out and relax made those two flights much, much better than the flight from LAX to Taipei, even though the planes didn't have the whole entertainment system going. I had to get out at the Panang airport for about half an hour as they refreshed the plane or whatever. It looked like a pretty standard airport terminal, complete with coffee bars and shops selling travel supplies. One somewhat amusing thing in the airport was seeing the "Prayer Rooms" right next to the "Cigar & Wine" and "Duty Free Liquor & Tobacco" shops.
I arrived in Medan on time. A shuttle took me from the plane to the international "terminal". Here the airport was much different. There was basically a big, rather dark room divided into the pre-stamping and post-stamping areas. I paid my $25 and got my 30-day visa without a problem. As I stood in line to get my passport stamped, Karen Chase showed up and helped me fill out some of the customs forms. Then we went to pick up my bag.
When claiming baggage at the Medan airport, you have to be very quick to see when your bag appears and grab it immediately. Otherwise some guys in green shirts will take your bag, stick it on a cart, and want money for doing so. That's one thing I really appreciate about the US: you don't have this whole "I just did you a service and now you must pay me, whether you asked me to do it or not" thing. We're not usually surrounded by old ladies demanding money for "guarding" your car or random guys taking your baggage before you can grab it yourself.
When you leave the airport in Medan, you have to go through security. It's the only airport I've ever been in where you have to go through a metal detector to leave.
