PROTIP: iPhone Data Roaming... have you tried resetting your phone?

I do have an unlocked iPhone that I will use with a dedicated foreign SIM if I'm going to be somewhere for a while, and maybe getting a SIM and bringing the unlocked phone would have made sense for Thailand since I am actually here for a few days, but since the rest of the trip I'm mostly just country hopping, I didn't think it would be worth it. Instead I bit the bullet and signed up for a 200mb international data plan from AT&T. That ended up costing me $1 dollar per megabyte. Still my bill will be much less than the time I got back from Iceland only to find out that IS was specifically excluded from the AT&T data roaming plans.

So what? I'm paying extortion prices for mobile data, it should just work, right? Nope. I discovered today that country hopping isn't always seamless with the iPhone... and that sometimes support telling you to reboot your device is actually good advice.

Boston, San Francisco, Frankfurt, Mumbai, Dubai... I was checking my mail and plugging back into my online life as soon as the wheels were down. Then I get to Bangkok... My phone has voice signal, but no data. I try to change carriers, nothing happens. WTF!? I'm barely down the jetway and freaking out, I can't believe how much I rely on this thing and the internet lifeline it provides. Thankfully my travel was pre-arranged, and I managed to find my car. I'll figure this out on the way to the hotel.

It's a 45 minute drive, and I'm going nuts trying to select a carrier with working data, it just isn't happening. Now I'm not worried about making it to my hotel, I'm worried about what happens after I get there. Sure I've got a room, but how will I figure out where I am once I leave the hotel without Google Maps? I'm screwed.

Finally I arrived, and the first thing I do is start searching fruitlessly for reports of the same problem. I'm assuming it's just a matter of my SIM is out of date or some such bs and I need to text some magic code to some magic number and get a SIM update. No love on the google. I join AT&T support forums and dig myself deeper into nowhere. Finally I give up and call AT&T support. Supposedly if you call the magic international phone number, which I wont repost here for fear this isn't true, you don't get billed for the international roaming airtime spent on the call with support.

They check my account, my sim, my blood type, and then evaluate my general disposition. Prognosis? Maybe you need to reset your phone, not just turn it off, but do the reset procedure where you hold the buttons down past turning off until the Apple logo reassures you that even though this device was made in china, it was designed in california. Now, I've worked in tech support, I know this trick. resetting my phone will obviously get me off the phone and when I call back it will be somebody elses problem. But I also know I'm not going to get any further unless I give it a try.

So I reset the phone. My data works now.

Trip Report: Emirates A380 First Class DXB-BKK - PART 1

I'm way behind in writing my trip reports, with the changing timezones, grueling itineraries, and minor food poisoning, I just haven't had the time or energy to keep up. You'll be happy to note that I'm entering the relaxing point in my trip and will soon be spending my evenings catching up on the blogging wirelessly  from my own little stretch of beach on the Andaman sea. Rather than save the best for last, I'm going to go ahead and write up one of the major highlights of my trip, the Emirates A380 First Class Experience.

Emirates offers free airport transfers for first and business class passengers, and their driver was at my hotel exactly when they said he would be, ready to whisk me away to DXB in a classy Volvo station wagon. I couldn't help but feel like a kid on his way to soccer practice riding in the backseat of a Volvo, but whatever, 20 minutes and I was at the First/Business checkin area. The dedicated check-in had my boarding card printed less than 5 minutes after stepping onto the curb, and it was off to the Duty free to spend my last dirhams and then time to explore the First Class lounge (DXB FCL Post will be coming).

Unfortunately, Emirates doesn't offer the seamless ground experience that Lufthansa has with their lounge-to-gate porsche and mercedes transfer, so I had to wait for a few minutes in a boarding lounge with the other 488 passengers.

This actually is actually at the gate next to the BKK flight, but they all look the same

Boarding was called pretty quickly after I was called, and it was down the jetbridge and up the stairs to my seat. 

Seat 2K on the EK A380

I dropped my things off and then headed down the stairs to see if I could talk my way into a cockpit visit. Unfortunately the door to the cockpit was behind one of the flight attendants who was greeting oncoming passengers, and he informed me, as well as another obvious aviation nerd that the flight crew were way too busy to entertain a customer visit, and we should maybe try at the end of the flight. Yeah right.. I know better than to get in the way of a crew and their scheduled rest time. While I was downstairs, I did manage to snap a photo of the long hallway passageway of economy class.

399 Seats of Economy, take one down...

Back to my seat, and I'm handed a menu. some dates, and some Arabic coffee. I put on my headphones and decide to check out some music on what Emirates calls ICE (Information, Communication, Entertainment). Holy crap. Seeing the music library EK offers with ICE is pretty much the same feeling I got when somebody showed me Napster in 1999. You like pop hits? ICE has every UK #1 hit from 1950something through today, all sorted into playlists by year. How about the Beatles? Every album they ever produced. U2? They've got every track Bono's ever layed down too. An anonymous reader of mine happens to be a fan of Bob Dylan, he'd be happy to know his entire catalog is onboard as well. I give up and just put something on, and start looking at the menu and wine list.

Arabic Coffee

As you can see we're taxiing.. and listening to Calvin Harris

My goto in flight beverage

I'll have to find something to pair with the Margaux

The port and myself share a common vintage

Iranian caviar, sounds illegally delicious!

Way too many menu options

The menu is a bit overwhelming. I usually like to try a bit of everything on offer, but there is no way I can do that here. Emirates does First Class dining a bit different than the standard airline meal services go, in that you can have anything at any time you want it. I work with a flight attendant to schedule what dishes I would like at what segment of flight, paired with which beverages, and do all this to work around my appointment for the onboard Spa. I know, travel can be a real headache sometimes. I just have to remind myself I'm doing this all for science. 

My hands are starting to get a bit too cramped from typing on my tiny netbook, so I'm going to have to cut this short for now, and will promise to follow up with "PART 2 - After the wheels have actually left the runway" very soon(ish).

The first of several glasses...

I caught the travel bug...

Well that was fun. After being extremely paranoid about catching any sort of food or waterborne illness in India, I let my guard down a bit in Dubai, and I lost. Yesterday, rather than spending the day sightseeing and carving up the indoor slopes of Ski Dubai, I spent the day shivering on my couch, and drinking all the bottled water I could find to replenish my fluids.

One thing I had done to prepare for this inevitability, is pack along a few packets of powdered gatorade drink mix. At the time it seemed like a ridiculous act of of  over preparedness, but now looking back it it turned out to be a great idea.

The good news is after plenty of fluids, sleep, and a small bowl of pasta with no sauce, I'm feeling almost 100% again. It's now about 6.20 AM in Dubai, and my ride to the airport will be here in another 20 minutes, then it's off to Bangkok in First Class on the Emirates Airbus A380. I can't wait.

Laundry Day

I knew there was something I was forgetting before going to bed. Today is laundry day. I may be flying first class and staying in 5 star hotels, but I'm still really cheap when it comes to travel, and laundry can be really expensive in some cities, especially if you resort to paying the extortion prices that hotels charge for it. The good news is the solution is right in your hotel bathroom... Yes, I am washing my clothes in the sink. Lucky for me the suite I am in has two bathrooms so I have a dedicated sink just for my laundry!

I was planning on washing on the move from the first day I started working out the trip logistics, so all of the clothes I've brought with me are made out of synthetic fibers that are lightweight and dry very quickly on their own. This also helps cut the weight down in my bag and allows me to carry a bit more. Plus, once you are committed to doing laundry on the road you can cut down your packing list even more by de-duplicating your wardrobe. It might mean you are wearing the same thing in multiple photos in different locations, but that doesn't really matter, after all you were there and it's only everybody else that has to see it through a photo.

Recipe for hotel sink laundry:

1. Synthetic materials
2. Travel packets of Laundry Soap
3. Throw it all in the sink with some hot water
4. Let it soak for a bit
5. Agitate it... scrub things that are dirty like my socks together against each other. 
6. Rinse a few times
7. Squeeze as much water out as you can
8. Lay everything out on top of a towel, or two if you have a lot of clothes or a surplus of towels
9. Roll the towel up like a wet clothes burrito. 
10. Now stomp on that burrito
11. Unroll your laundry burrito and hang everything up in the closet... Maybe with a towel on the floor to catch any drips. 

Finally getting some rest

It seems like every other blog post or status update I've made recently has mentioned sleep, or more specifically my lack of.

I created a schedule that has really pushed myself the first few days of this trip, and while it's been exhausting, it has also certainly been rewarding, and I'm not sure if given the chance I would have changed much. Thankfully, I've finally got some time to rest. No over night flights, 4 am flights, 7am wake up calls tomorrow, I'm sleeping in.

Tomorrow, I'll wake up at some point, hopefully refreshed and will hopefully spend some time out in the Dubai desert and then have some time at the slopes of Ski Dubai. After that, I plan on heading back to my amazing suite at the Fairmont Dubai and taking advantage of the free wifi to upload all of the photos I've taken so far and get caught up on the blog.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Sheikh Zayed Rd,Dubai,United Arab Emirates

First thoughts on Mumbai

I fell asleep shortly after taking my seat on my FRA-BOM flight, and didn't wake up until somebody was asking me what I would like for my appetizer. I was confused, but quickly realized I was on a plane, and I'd like the salmon. After suffering through the disappointing meals United passes off on their premium passengers, it was nice to be eating real food. I followed the salmon up with the Indian Veg meal, started watching "500 Days of Summer" and was sound asleep by day 60 or so. I woke up in India at 4am. Thankfully I did not have amnesia, still had my passport, and was able to quickly clear customs and find the car the JW Marriott had waiting to take me from the airport to my hotel room.

We pulled into the fortress that is the JW Marriott around 4.30am. The driver nodded at a man holding a machine gun and somebody else opened the iron gate, we pulled in far enough to close the gate and let the bomb sniffing dogs hop in the car and have a whif of my luggage. I dropped my bag on the lobby x-ray machine and walked through the metal detector and it was time to check in. Surreal.

It was daytime back in the states, so rather than catch a few precious hours of sleep I decided to catch up with friends online, and soon enough it was time to head out the door to see what Mumbai was all about. I had booked a private tour with a company called Mumbai Magic, and my guide met me in the lobby around 8.45AM. Twenty minutes later and I was standing in a side alley of the largest slum in Asia, Dharavi.

To clarify, I wasn't on a "slum tour" - I just wanted to see all of Mumbai, and Dharavi happened to be geographically closest to where we started. The experience was eye opening to say the least. Sure, there was the sort of poverty seen in "slumdog millionare," which was filmed in the area, but that's not the part of Dharavi that resonates the most. The thing that captivated me here was how safe I felt... There are no beggars in Dharavi, everybody has a job, and manages to make a living, modest as it may be. Nobody hassled me to buy cheap jewelry or a map of the city, and for the most part I felt unnoticed by those around me. Looking back after seeing the rest of the city, I felt safer there than anywhere, even with the lack of armed guards and walk through metal detectors.

I've got lots more to say about Mumbai, but I'm tired and really need a nap. Stay tuned.

Potters in Dharavi

The blur of travel

I'm sitting in a Lufthansa 747 at seat 14E. It's a middle seat in the business class cabin, and really nothing to write home about. I'm delighted my standby upgrade cleared and I'm not sitting in coach, but even so, I don't feel settled.

I found the large group of Americans in the LH business lounge talking about how much purell they brought both amusing and offensive at the same time. In general I feel it's rude to brag outloud about that kind of stuff as not everybody can afford to maintain the levels of sterility that westerners demand. But whatever, I chuckled to myself at their naivity and then left.

Upgraded ticket in hand I had no reason to hang around the gate area, so I sought out one of the few smoking cubicles in FRA terminal B. I'm quitting smoking at the end of this trip, but the experience I just had was a reminder of how sometimes smoking can be a social benefit.

Inside the cramped cubicle an American recognized my American cigarettes and we struck up a casual conversation. I'm heading to India and he's heading to afghanistan. They both seem equally exotic to our American minds and as it turns out we share much of the same anxiety of reaching our new destination. We chatted through two cigarettes, and I talked about my civilian career and he talked about life in the marines. Iraq was pretty nice, they had burger king, kfc and starbucks. Afghanistan won't have those luxuries at first but he hopes they will come soon.

We both joked about how much of a blur this temporary stop in Frankfurt seems after having both stepped of overnight flights from the US. Our cigarettes reached the end and it was
time to part ways.

I raced back to b25 and couldn't help but feel guilty. I'm sitting in 14e having a pre flight glass of champaign, while my short time smoking friend is heading off to war, for the second time.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Location:Ankunftbogen,Frankfurt,Germany