FLIGHT DETAILS
Number of Legs: Three (New York to Alaska, Alaska to Taiwan, Taiwan to Singapore)
Approximate Time of Each Leg: six hours; nine hours; four hours
Total Flying Time: 19 hours
Total Transit Time (with layovers): 24.5 hours
Total Calendar Time Elapsed: 36 hours*
Relative Amount of Daylight during Transit: 7 hours**
*Explanation of How Time Works: When flying to Singapore from New York, presuming you fly via Asia rather than Europe, you will cross the International Date Line. And like * that *, you are in tomorrow. When you make the reverse trip, you suddenly find yourself in yesterday. This works in such a way that when you fly from Tokyo to Los Angeles, you make it to California some eight hours before you leave Japan. And when you fly for 24 hours to Singapore from New York, it’s actually taken 36 hours to make the trip.
** Explanation of Daylight Hours: I had really hoped that I was wrong when I did the math on this before my flight. I wasn’t. This is how it goes: You leave New York (well, Newark) at 11:30 pm. It’s dark. You land in Anchorage at 2:30 in the morning, Alaska time. It’s dark, even in August. You take off at 3:30 or 4:00, about an hour later. It’s starting to get light. It’s not sunrise, more the intimation of sun. You fly north for the first hour, such that those with an east-facing window continue to have a sliver of milky orange light visible just out of reach. And then you turn west, and the sun is behind you, and you travel into tomorrow night, and you don’t see the sun again until you reach Taipei at six the following morning. Which means that, if you leave Saturday evening and arrive Monday morning, you basically spend all of Sunday in darkness, except for a brief hour of almost sunrise. This makes the flight worse, but the upside is it confuses your body so much it makes the jetlag better.
TRANSIT SHOUT OUTS
To EVA Air, for giving me an aisle seat in the row with extra leg room and no seats leaning back. And for the ridiculous number of meals.
To the film “Wolverine”, which I watched on the plane, which has amazing action scenes, and which makes absolutely no sense. Whatsoever.
To the airport in Anchorage, Alaska for being as weird as I had hoped. (Though, alas, I could not see Russia.)
To the Taipei Airport, for the free massage chair in the “nature oasis”. There will be photos soon.
To Changi Airport in Singapore, which looks like an Asian idea of a European idea of America.
And an extra shout out, also to Taipei, for this:
The Hello Kitty Nursery and Changing Room. I was invited to step inside by a couple with a baby, who said in reasonable English that it was empty. I managed to snap a few photos before a silent, frowning guard came in, looked around, and waited for me to leave.
Well of course you couldn’t see Russia. You were at the airport. You can only see Russia from Sarah Palin’s house.