on my way to Thailand i arrived at Denver International early enough to catch breakfast at Root Down. honestly, i'm going to miss that place. the eggs, potatoes and croissant were done perfectly and the garnish of arugula is the perfect green to plate. it's amazing to me that so few restaurants can deliver fantastic food so consistently. i took a salad to go so i'd have something on my 12 hour flight if i got hungry. i'm loving the Denver to Tokyo non stop service on United. they use the dreamliner which is pretty comfortable for a long flight - at least it was in EPlus where I was sitting - also it wasn't a full flight so when there's an empty seat next to you it feels really roomy. the entertainment on demand is ridiculous with something like 50 movies available. i rarely make it to the theatre so I caught up on a bunch of films... i watched Million Dollar Arm then got distracted when a woman five rows behind me started vomiting. the crew responded accordingly which in this day and age means they put on a hazmat like suit to clean up - depositing everything into a red hazmat container. the woman was black which of course everyone was associating with the very deadly virus circulating in west Africa. later i asked the crew if she'd been in Africa and they said she had not. then i watched the Grand Budapest Hotel and Wolf of Wall Street - yeah i think i'm all caught up on movies for a while.
in Tokyo even though i was just in transit i had to go through an additional security clearance and they did not like that one of my bottles was 4 oz instead of 3 oz. i tried to keep the contents of the larger bottle by dumping out hairspray in a different bottle but i was weary from the 12 hour flight and i accidentally ended up dumping out both containers. it made a mess but the Japanese security team didn't seem fazed and were quite polite the whole time. we'll see how my hair does without any products.
the flight from Tokyo to Bangkok was in an Airbus 380 which is humongous and has over 500 seats.... talk about a people mover! it was late my time so i grabbed a whole row that was empty, stretched out and fell asleep. the moment i stepped onto that plane and was greeted by the Thai Airlines flight crew all the wonderful experience i've had with Thailand came rushing through my mind. they stop and connect with every passenger on the plane - it's just not like the US carriers where the crew will barely look you in the eye and serving a coke is just an extra chore for them.
immigration was super easy - no line and just one question - where would i be visiting. they did have a 'medical scan' set up to detect anyone with an elevated temperature and a request for anyone who had been in West Africa to make themselves known. i was glad to see they were at least making an effort even though the whole setup was a camera like device pointing at people as they walked by. i grabbed a taxi to where i was staying and crawled into bed around midnight.
