The longest journey - US@US - Part 1

Dear Emma,

After enduring the LONGEST travel journey in my life... An EPIC 7 + 13 hours flight from Malaysia to Doha and then Doha to US... I finally set foot upon the great land of unlimited opportunity...

I was scheduled to fly at Saturday 3.30 am at KLIA. Due to this early morning flight time, we asked our HR for a early release from work, which I think is a reasonable... Sadly I got a "Hahaha, 5.30 pm not early?" from my HR.

05.30 pm, Bla from office
07.30 pm, Reach home
11.00 pm, Bla to KLIA
12.00 am, Arrive at KLIA
12.30 am, Queue to checking to flight
02.30 am, Board flight
03.30 am, ~I'm flying on a jet plane...
10.30 am, Arrive in Doha

So obviously, unless you can sleep in the plane (which I slightly manage to snuck in 2-3 hours of restless sleep), you'll feel like zombie-like by the you reach Doha. My F and M drove and drop me off to KLIA from home. I arrived at around midnight, and went to find my colleagues. Here I get abit of the "~Lonely, I'm so lonely, I'm on my own vibe" as both colleagues had their family and close one with them at the airport. My junior had his family (F, M and 2 Sis) and his GF. Another colleague had his wife, 2 daughters, his bro family and his close friends... I however had was alone as ask my parents to bla, since I decided they are no use wasting their time waiting with me and since the drive back home will be rather dangerous if they waited for me till boarding. At that moment, I feel the urge to get a "family" like my other 2 colleagues, and perhaps another set of best buddies...

The flight to Doha is an rather okay one for me. I feel asleep rather early in the flight and snuck in a restless 2-3 hour sleep. After awaking, I enjoyed myself watching "The Anchorman 2" staring Will Ferrell. Wasted ~2 hours watching that crack movie and then a rather nice breakfast/lunch/dinner (lost track of time already) followed... Had spicy chicken with rice... Not a bad meal I have to say. A bit battle shiping, and tada... We're arrive at Doha.

The 1st thing I noticed when I set foot on Doha is the sun. I would classify it as stinging type... We had to do a change flight here, so we had to go through the normal checking and hand held scan luggage again. Had a short delay when we checking as we could not proceed to the plane as the bus from what I gather was MIA. This resulted in a backed up long queue. After quite awhile delay, the bus appeared and business was back to normal.

~12.30 am, Board flight from Doha
3.15 am, Touchdown at American soil at Dulles Airport
3.45 am, Queue for immigration
5.30 am, Clear immigration
6.30 am, Arrive at hotel/inn

The 17 hours flight was without a doubt, the most travelling unpleasant experience I ever endured. I couldn't really get much sleep in this flight not because my mind don't want to, but because my body won't allow it. Here I felt like I lost connection to time. We're losing time to travel to US, but because US time zone is earlier than us, that time lost was contra back. Time felt like it spiral out of control for me. Going forward and backward... This is not helped much when flight meals was served at 3.00 pm and 1.00 am. Odd hours for my body to have lunch and dinner.

The flight itself was okay, but had lavatory problem. Had to wait quite abit for my turn when I was already urgent to make business in the loo. One thing I disliked is there's alot of Indians in this flight. Yea, call me racist but I'm just dislike Indians from India due to past experience working with some of them in my previous company (I'd also dislike Chinese from China despite being a Chinese myself). Food was okay in this flight as well, had lamb + rice and beef + mushrooms. I however noticed my throat and lips drying out oddly rather fast in this flight. I wasted the 1st 1/2 portion of the flight watching "Firestorm" and  "Dallas Buyer Club". Then came the 1/2 to 3/4 mark (~ 3 hours), which I deem as the most suffering part of the flight. My eyes were tired so I couldn't watch movie nor read book, my neck and back was in pain so I couldn't sleep. I frankly speaking can't recall what I did to pass these 3 hours. The final 3/4 was less suffering thanks to final meal and I managed to get some shut eyes for 1 hour. I finally step foot on American soil at 3.15am!

[To be continued...]