Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Singapore Airlines = Derek Jeter = Overrated

Our friend Phuc, who toured Asia with his wife Ashley after college, warned us on Saturday night to expect things to go wrong during our trip. Little did we know how quickly his prophecy would be realized. Earlier this week, we discovered that Singapore Airlines has summarily discontinued service between Dubai and Cairo, leaving us with a fairly glaring hole in our travel plans. Vik watched ruefully as his delicate, 38,993-mile itinerary collapsed like a house of cards.

The United remedies -- being rerouted through Frankfurt, extending a 4-hour journey by 14 hours and screwing up our subsequent travel plans or skipping Dubai entirely and missing out on the chance to see Vik’s cousin Manisha and her family – were equally unpalatable so we called Singapore Air directly to get us from Dubai to Cairo more expeditiously. Given Singapore’s exemplary reputation and our business class ticket, we figured the odds were with us. Not so much. After spending 20 hours on hold and being blown off by customer service reps both in the U.S. and Singapore, we were back to square one.

So, to make a long story short, Singapore Airlines left us in the lurch and didn’t even try to make amends. So now, we’re forced to skip Dubai. We’re not going to get let this put a damper on our trip, but Vik has a long memory. Let’s hope he doesn’t get his hands on the contact info for the Singapore CEO (wasn’t he dating Jessica Biel before Timberlake?).

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Love That Dirty Water ... Boston Was Our Home

‘Twas a cold night in Beantown, but a warm one for the memory banks. Our farewell tour commenced at JP’s Milky Way pizza joint/salsa club/bowling alley where some of our friends met up with us for Pizza Menino’s (only slightly less sloppy than Boston’s eponymous mayor), a detailed accounting of the around-the-world itinerary and a little less-than-stellar candlepin bowling. More pictures from the night are below.

Looking back on our years in Boston, it’s a testament to Kaberi’s personal charisma and an honor for us both that we were able to find so many cool and kindhearted souls in this town. They do Boston proud. Hopefully, we’ll see some of them on the road in the months ahead.



Thursday, January 11, 2007

It's Official

Yesterday we bought our Star Alliance Around The World tickets (but only after successfully mediating a verbal fistfight between the surly United Airlines guy and the cautious account manager at our credit card company). Phew ... minor crisis averted. I'm pretty sure that's the most money we've ever spent in a day since buying Kaberi's engagement ring. It's hard to believe that was almost five years ago.

Our trip will take us from Los Angeles to Maui to Japan to South Korea to India to Thailand to Laos to Vietnam to Cambodia to China to Tibet to the Philippines to Bali to Egypt to Spain to Morocco to Italy to Bulgaria to Croatia to Greece to Turkey to Switzerland to Tanzania to South Africa to Senegal to Portugal to France to the United Kingdom to Portugal to home. We hope to see friends and family throughout. If you have access, the detailed itinerary can be seen at http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?id=o11445693213594640258.3109389311092544866.05534933584432438778.8331293236484187861
Today, we start our blog. Thanks in advance for accompanying us along the journey. By the way, if you have time, check out one of the coolest travel blogs we've ever seen: http://www.thirteenmonths.com/.