Sunday, June 22, 2014

Double Wedding Holiday: Tokyo to Los Angeles (JAL First Class)

____________________________________________________________________________________

My brother and my "new" sister in law was kind enough to pick us up from Haneda airport and arranged for a cozy hotel room for our short stay in Tokyo nearby his place in Yokohama. Even though we were still full from the whole day of eating, my brother insisted we made a stop at a ramen shop before calling it a night. It was one of the best decisions of the trip. We split two bowls of ramen between us and they were one of the best ramen I've had! We had a bowl of pork based soup ramen that was just packed of flavor and a clear, salt based soup that had an addition of orange peel to the broth that added such unique taste to the broth.




We killed the next couple of hours the next morning at a nearby mall just doing window shopping and trying as much food as possible before my brother dropped us off for the an hour and half bus ride to Narita airport. As usual, first class check-in was quick and efficient with the agent profusely apologizing that there were no more "couple seats" left which was not a big deal for us anyway. Since we had a ton of time to kill, we made a quick round through the landside shops and a stop for some duty free cosmetics before heading to the JAL first class lounge.


First stop in the lounge was the buffet for some lunch. The food itself was pretty ordinary for a first class lounge but I definitely enjoyed the Japanese curry. The drinks selection however was definitely first class with several decent wine and Japanese whiskeys.


After lunch, there was just the right amount of time for the complimentary fifteen minute massage and a shower to freshen up before the 12 hour flight to LAX. The massage itself was rather mediocre and I would not make an effort to have one in the future.

The 77W taking us to LAX


Monday, June 2, 2014

Austin Ong

Sorry for the lack of updates. It's been a whirlwind couple of months. The biggest update is that we're now proud parents of the cutest baby boy. Austin decided that he didn't want to share a birthday with his uncle and came a few days earlier than the planned C-section on April 25th 2014. He was nice enough to let both his grandmas (who are in Austin to help out) and us a nice dinner out in town before coming out a couple of hours later after getting home.

Austin a couple of minutes old

Our plans to stay in Austin long term didn't pan out so we're heading back to Malaysia and hopefully just for a couple of weeks before taking an offer to move to California.  Due to the unexpected move back to Malaysia, it was a mad rush to get his travel documents in place. We had to drive to Houston to get his US passport rushed in time and fly to DC to get his Malaysian papers in order. Let's just state the obvious that traveling with a 5 week old baby is different than what we're used to and we'll be sure to blog more about it future post.

Dad and Austin in DC

We look forward to finishing up our last trip report (JAL first class) hopefully soon enough and start sharing our travel experience with Austin to DC and back to Penang. *Fingers crossed* that our SWU upgrade on AA clears!