Tokyo to Abu Dhabi

We left our apartment early evening for our 9:00pm flight and made it Narita in no time. Everyone always says how far away Narita is from the city, but when there is no traffic, it really isn't that bad. Would much rather drive to Narita than LAX.

We found the Etihad First Class check in and got rid of our bags and made our way to the lounge. We made a special effort not to look homeless for our nice flight in First Class and did a pretty good job for the most part. The lounge at LAX is nice but unremarkable. We did eat a mini dinner because you never know what to expect on the plane.  Of course, the food turned out to be the best airline food we have ever had, so we regretted eating anything at all beforehand!

After an hour or so at the lounge, we made our way down to the gate. It felt very full for a New Year's Eve flight, but we were allowed to board first because we had the little ones with us. Every now and then they are good for something.  They were excited to get on the plane because we had told them during our trip to Da Nang in November that the next trip would be on the fancy plane.

Excited to take TsumTsum Sven on her trip

Posing in front of a Japanese New Year display at the airport

We were very warmly greeted by three or four of the cabin crew and were shown to the First Class cabin.  They informed us that we were the only ones in First Class tonight so we could pick any of the 12 suites.  Joe and Lizzy sat in the middle two seats in Row 3 while Annie and I sat in Row 2.  It is awesome getting to fly up front for a 14 hour flight, but hearing that we were going to be the only ones up there really removed all stress from the flight.  Joe was sort of disappointed that he could have looked homeless like usual since we were the only ones up there, but that was the only negative. We are always a bit sensitive when we have the girls in a premium cabin in case they would act up, so being the only ones up there allowed us to relax a bit more than we would have.  Let the fun begin!

The divider in the middle of the seats goes up if you want some privacy

Enjoying some pre-flight drinks - coffee for me and freshly squeeze orange juice for the girls

The flight attendants took the girls up to the cockpit before takeoff! 

Juice monsters

One of the flight attendants was the designated "nanny on board" - she brought special gifts for the girls

Annie's evening meal - fruit platter, rolls and a fruit smoothie

Champagne and snacks for mom

Hoping she doesn't think this is normal

The door next to the aisle also slid closed for total privacy!

Mini bar in every suite - was have been great if actually refridgerated

Etihad has a "chef" on board for the First Class cabin and she came out and introduced herself and explained how the food would work for the flight. There was an extensive menu and since we were the only ones in the cabin, she said to just tell her what we wanted to eat and she would try to make anything we could come up with. They came around with amenity kits and an awesome pair of black pajamas for Joe and me that we both put on before the flight took off. There was a fairly sizable bathroom at the front of the plane were we changed and they took our clothes and hung them up for us and brought them back for us to change into at the end of the flight. It was nice to spend the 14 hours in some comfy pajamas instead of regular clothes. We got the girls fed as quickly as we could and then got them in their jammies, set up their beds, and put on a movie for them in their seats. I then moved back to Joe's suite and sat on the ottoman across from him and had a great New Year's Eve dinner at 38,000 feet. It was pretty cool to finish off the best year of our life in this way.

Annie's friends all ready for sleepy time

Princess Ariel in her pull up

Only have date night once or twice a year but they are usually good ones

We ended up ordering a garden salad, some chicken briyani, a steak sandwich and a dessert sampler. We intended on sharing one of everything and when the chef sent two of each we realized it was WAY too much food and sent the extras up to the pilots.

Seriously good airline food

After we ate, I went to check on Annie and found out that she had ordered a couple of chocolate cookies on her own and was very much enjoying her New Year's eve without any parental supervision.  As usual, Lizzy was being a handful and was not interested in going to sleep. She was still up at midnight when the crew came around with champagne to celebrate the New Year.   Both Joe and I fell asleep shortly after and got a good six or seven hours of sleep. They make up the beds very nicely with a nice mini mattress and some pretty comfortable bedding. Certainly the best sleep I have gotten on a plane.

We woke up in advance of landing and had breakfast and some other snacks. The crew was fantastic and really nice to the girls. Annie and Lizzy had a lot of fun on the flight. Annie was basically perfect and Lizzy was Lizzy so all an all, no complaints. The flight attendants allowed us to get off the plane first so the people at the back of the plane were queued up waiting to deplane. Annie looked up to me and very innocently asked who all those people were. We told her those were the other passengers and she innocently said, "Oh, I didn't know there were other people on the plane." We realized that since we boarded first and were the only ones in our cabin, she never thought that there was anyone else with us. Idiot.

It was BY FAR the best flight of our lives. Instead of making the travel part miserable, it was actually fun and we didn't want it to end. However, it still blows our mind that anyone would actually pay retail for that. We used miles to make it very reasonable, but the cash price of our round trip tickets for the 4 of us was almost $50,000.  I suppose that was part of the reason there was no one else in the cabin.

We gathered our luggage around 5:30am on New Year's Day and it took a while since the stroller seemed to have been misplaced. After finally collecting all our stuff, we stopped by the Etihad arrivals lounge to get the girls a bit more food.  Joe got a complimentary shave and then we headed over to the Etihad chauffeur service that is complimentary for all premium class passengers. We took the car to the Holiday Inn Abu Dhabi and wondered how often that service takes passengers to such an "ordinary" drop off point.  My guess is never.  By this time it was around 7am and we checked in without a problem. We had reserved a room for the prior night to ensure we had a room ready for the arrival because it would be really tough with the girls to not have a place to recover for a bit after such a long flight.

Joe picked this hotel because at his core he is a cheapskate and it was really cheap at only 5,000 IHG points (~$35/night) for the first three nights of the trip.  It was completely fine and clean, but it was in an isolated area, so we had to take a taxi everywhere we wanted to go.  If we were to do it again, we would just spend a bit more and try to go to a place a more in the thick of things.

Despite getting to fly in the lap of luxury, we were all still a little tired so we all had some snacks and took a nap until around noon. After a bath, the girls were ready to go, so we ventured out into Abu Dhabi.

Hoi An, Vietnam (Thanksgiving 2014)

During our one week stay at the Hyatt Regency in Danang we took advantage of the free shuttle for Diamond members to the nearby town of Hoi An. Hoi An is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and was once a large South East Asian trading port. The ride from the Hyatt only took about 15 minutes and while it's always a risk to leave the comfort of our resort with the girls, they were troopers while we explored the chaotic streets and were rewarded with ice cream at the end. We only stayed about an hour which was enough with young kids - sans children I could have walked around for a few more hours, I think! 

Just dropped off by the shuttle, random cow hanging out in the grass

Lizzy photobomb!

The girls got some $2 manicures, the ladies couldn't stop fussing over Annie and Lizzy's blonde hair.

Showing off our nails!

Lots of fat, friendly unleashed dogs were wandering in and out of the shops.

Time for ice cream and these girls were more than ready to head back to the resort! 

The Marble Mountains

While staying at the Hyatt Regency in Da Nang we took an outing to the Marble Mountains which were just down the road from the resort. We walked from the resort along the sidewalk and quickly crossed the busy road leading to the site.  There were many people in cars and on motorbikes that stopped to try to get us to come with them for a tour or give us a ride to our destination.  Everyone was so friendly! We kindly declined putting our kids on a stranger's motorbike. 

We purchased a ticket at the base of the mountain to take the elevator up - you can also hike up, but for obvious reasons we passed on this option. There was quite a bit of difficult climbing even after getting off of the elevator and Joe and I had to take turns carrying the girls up some of the crazy staircases carved into the stone. 

There were numerous caverns you could enter that contained Buddhist sanctuaries. While not an ideal outing for young children, I really loved this place and wished we could have explored a bit more.  

A very persistent saleswoman that had befriended us on our way through the village earlier was waiting for us when we departed the elevator on our way back down.  The village was filled with stone and sculpture shops and she was very hopeful/insistent that we purchase something at her family's shop. Unfortunately for her, the Becherers are not big souvenir people, especially of the rock variety. 

We arrived around 10am and it was a HOT day!

Lizzy making a donation/trying to pull money out of the box

It was hard to get a good photo of the largest cavern because of the lighting, but it was breathtaking!

Huge holes in the ceiling that filtered in light

Inside the main cavern

Annnd they've had enough. Time to go back to the pool!

Tokyo to Da Nang

After taking a few trips where we packed in multiple destinations, we thought we would try out a single one city itinerary over Thanksgiving week.  We also know from recent experience that the girls like a pool/beach-based vacation much more than a city-based one, so we looked for a beach destination.  To keep it simple, we wanted a non-stop flight from Tokyo and preferred it to be to somewhere we hadn't been.

Joe was also looking to use up some of the difficult-to-use Delta miles we have accumulated, so Vietnam moved to the top of the list since Delta partners with Vietnam Airlines and we had never been to Vietnam.  We then checked what hotels Starwood and Hyatt had in Vietnam, since those are our preferred chains.  Nothing great at Starwood but Hyatt had a nice resort in Da Nang, and Vietnam Airlines happened to have 3x weekly non-stop service.

We first checked for availability at the Hyatt Regency Da Nang for seven nights, and there was Points and Cash availability.  6,000 points plus $75 per night was a decent redemption.  We were then excited to find out there was suite upgrade availability so we used a confirmed Diamond Suite upgrade certificate to reserve a suite.  We had heard the property had a nice Regency Club so we were looking forward to the breakfast and snacks there.

Once we had the hotel portion locked down (it was cancellable up until 24 hours before arrival) we tried to find airline tickets on Vietnam Airlines using Delta miles.  We lucked out and there were three coach seats and one business class ticket on the Saturday flights Tokyo-Nartia (NRT) to Da Nang (DAD) on 11/22 returning 11/29, so we grabbed those.  The coach seats were 45,000 miles each plus $40 in taxes and fees and the business class might have been 60,000 miles with the same fees.  Not good redemption values but we were trying to economize on the cash outlay for the trip and were happy to use the Delta miles since they are very hard to use when you need 4 tickets.

With all the planning out of the way, we were ready to go!

We left our apartment at 12:30pm on Saturday, November 22 and made the drive to Narita in less than an hour. We were met by DAD parking at our gate to drop off the car.  After checking in for our flight we made our way through security and headed to the Delta Sky Lounge to enjoy some snacks and drinks while waiting for our flight.

Carrot apple soup, gyoza and veggies in the lounge

Joe also ran and got the girls some chicken nuggets from McDonalds to have for the flight just in case, since he and the girls would be sitting in coach and we weren’t sure if a meal would be served.

I got to enjoy a kid free six-hour flight in Business Class and while Joe warned me it wouldn’t be anything nice, I thought it was great! Nice big seats that reclined about halfway back and had a little footrest.  The food wasn’t anything great but I had a decent meal of a salad, some fresh fruit and a beef fillet with a spicy sauce and steamed rice. The entertainment selection was pretty awful with only a handful of English movies so I ended up just reading the book I had brought with me, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me by Mindy Kaling which had me LOLing most of the way through.

Had a few minutes before takeoff to give Joe a hard time about the awful conditions in coach

Back in coach things weren’t going so smoothly as the brand new pair of children’s headphones we bought were useless since they had a volume limiter on them.  Joe was kicking himself for not picking up an extra pair of Bose noise canceling headphones that we had been looking at the night before at the mall in Tokyo.  Lots of crying and whining went on as the girls had to take turns watching the iPad with the one pair of Bose headphones Joe brought. Poor spoiled darlings. We also forgot to bring water onto the plane (amateur mistake) and because of turbulence couldn’t get any for the first few hours. Since we were delayed on the ground for over an hour it was well past the girls’ bedtimes by the time we arrived in Vietnam - Lizzy ended up falling asleep for the last 90 minutes of the flight and Annie was a tired mess getting off the flight.

It wasn't one of our best flights but the time of the flight made it tough for the girls and the lack of water and headphones made it a lot more difficult than it needed to be.  We have many discussions on whether the premium for sitting in a nicer cabin is worth it.  This one reminded Joe that even with the little legs on the girls, the extra space in a nicer cabin is definitely worth something when having to be on a plane for seven hours with these two little girls.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was a main pick of the trip

After a bit of confusion and standing in line for immigration with everyone else we noticed a small window labeled “Visa on Arrival” so went there to pick up our Visas that we had arranged through a third party online agency two weeks prior.  We were required to bring two passport photos for each traveller and decided to try using our leftover photos we had from when we renewed our passports in the US over 18 months ago. Shockingly, they accepted the photos even though Lizzy looked VERY different from her dated photograph. Visas in passports we went through immigration and collected our luggage.

We had checked our MacLaren stroller and even though this ended up being the ONLY time we used it during the entire trip, I’m glad we had it! Annie was SO tired and immediately climbed in and almost fell asleep.  We headed through customs and out of the airport to find a nice Mercedes R300 from the Hyatt waiting for us. The round-trip Hyatt-provided airport transfer was about $90, probably 4x the price of taking a cab.  It definitely felt worth in on the way to the hotel since everyone was tired and it decreased the stress in figuring out what to do. On the return trip, we felt a cab would have been fine, so we may only book a one-way next time and see how it goes.

It was dark when we arrived to hard to get any real first impressions of Vietnam but because of the abundance of motorcycles it had a bit of a similar feel to Bali, though much more developed. Da Nang was a much bigger city than I expected (not surprising since I knew nothing about it) with some modern architecture, a few large suspension bridges and some pretty big skyscrapers. Even though motorcycles greatly outnumbered cars everyone drove slowly and carefully and it didn’t have the chaotic feel of being on the roads in Indonesia. The Hyatt was a 20 minute easy ride from the airport and Annie quickly fell asleep on me in the car. 

Upon arrival at the Hyatt we were taken to the Regency Club Lounge to check in and then escorted to our room which had an anniversary cake, bottle of wine, sweets and fruit platter set up on the table. It was a great suite and I’ll write more about it in my next post all about the resort. The girls were, as always, super excited to be in a hotel but eventually fell asleep around 10:30pm Vietnam time, well past midnight in Tokyo! It was probably the latest they had ever stayed up.  Despite the busy day of travel and the late bedtime, they were up and ready to go at 6am the next morning.

Woke up to this gorgeous view