I thought there needed to be some decent proportion between the time on planes and the time used to good effect at the destination.
But check out this guy, flying all the way from NYC to Tokyo and back with just a single day in Tokyo. No hotel, no packing, just dropping in, hitting a few sights and eateries, and getting the hell back out. He landed in Tokyo in the morning and flew back out that same night:
He's got 20 posts about day trips like that.@kevindroniak Yes, Tokyo, Japan is a day trip from NYC ✈️🇯🇵
♬ original sound - Kevin Droniak | Solo Travel
I would be too worried about catching the flight back home the same evening to be able to relax into the hours on the ground, but this guy seems awfully happy and relaxed. He claims to feel no jet lag. Must be good at sleeping on planes. I do see the value of not needing to pack or wrangle luggage or adapt to sleeping in a strange hotel. And it's his artistic project. I get that. It's energizing — I know from blogging and doing the sunrise — when you are inside your true belief that this is your artistic project. You may know very well that if this were your job, it would be a terrible job, but that paradox is present within so many of the very best things in life.
పోస్ట్లు
29 కామెంట్లు:
I think the concept of not packing because you will be there for a short time has benefits. The biggest downside would the hours spent in an arid plane environment. But security would be easier, no need to mess with a hotel, and I’m seeing concert and sporting events that could pay for a nice vacation. Why spend 3 hours at a stadium when you can spend 6 hours in a great location?
My friend's daughter is dating someone who works for the airlines. They do this. they are young. (early 20's) They get cheap or free flights - and go to far off lands - but the trips are really short. Japan in 3 days? No thank you.
I don't mind the idea of a quick trip - it's the long flight would do me in. A quick trip would be sandwiched with a flight that took 2-3 hours on each end. Otherwise - no thank you.
Can't imagine doing this in the cheap seats.
He didn't make it much past dark to check-in at Haneda or Narita for the ride home. Tokyo changes by the hour after dark - he missed parts of the city i miss the most.
If you are traveling for business purposes...go to a meeting and get home back to work...it still isn't a micro"vacation". It is a chore. A job. Not even fun.
What is the point of traveling if not to see new vistas, historical places, new things, meet different cultures, eat new and different food. Have an unscheduled experience. Wander around. Drive through the countryside and impulsively take the road less traveled. Immerse yourself in the experiences and savor the time away from the mundane at home.
Not packing? So what. Wear the same clothes multiple times. No one cares. Buy a new outfit if you want more variety. Take things you don't care about and can throw away if it becomes too much.
Peak Travel.
Some people run marathons or super marathons or complete triathalons. Some climb rocks or ice-covered mountains. Some sail alone across a huge ocean. Some dive deep in the ocean.
Others enjoy sitting on a plane, eating mediocre food, dealing with time zone changes and deep-vein thrombosis, and napping as they sit and sit and sit. It's not travel, rather, these trips are a new type of 'mountain' to climb.
A physical challenge for sedentary people.
I once flew to London for a three hour meeting, I did spend the night there, but to be honest, you are more dragged out after a trip if you spent enough time at the location to start to acclimate to the time zone.
Kind of like driving for 3 hours just to have dinner.
I regularly flew the 7AM from JFK to LAX. An afternoon of meetings, then a client dinner, then Uber to LAX for the red-eye back. That at least was reasonable.
Way back in the day (1990s) a friend had accumulated so many frequent flyer miles in a single year on United that he was not far short of a major milestone — I’m going to say a million miles in one calendar year, which is plausible since he’d made multiple round trips to Australia for business — so out of his own pocket he flew to London, never left the airport, and flew immediately back home to collect all the perks. That has to be the ultimate “mini-vacation.” Walk from your arrival gate to the gate for your return flight, and wait a couple hours there in Heathrow. Apparently the perks were worth it!
As to the guy in the TikTok, it seems do-able if he (1) has the money, and (2) he can sleep on airplanes. Even with the Business Class pods that they have these days it’s a challenge for most of us.
"...flying all the way from NYT to Tokyo and back with just a single day in Tokyo...."
Assuming you meant 'NYC'. So with this 'vacation' he spent more time on the plane then he did at his destination? Seems rather sad, but maybe it's a ploy to tart up modern air travel at Business Class and above - kind of like the glamour of a transatlantic cruise on a Royal Cunard liner, the whole attraction is the travel, not the destination. I predict it won't work, if so. Real men would raw-dog it the whole way.
My dad worked for the Santa Fe railroad in 1954. For their honeymoon my parents went to Chicago for the day didn't spend a night because no money. Marshal Fields, science and industry museum. Sox park and home
Back at the height of the disco era, when I had money to burn and cocaine to snort, I would take a dinner time flight from West Palm Beach to NYC, meet up with my cousins and go to discos until dawn, then take an early morning flight back home. It was fun and crazy and I don't regret doing it.
This sounds like a way to exhaust your immune system and get sick.
He's doing it for the views. These are effectively business trips for him.
"Assuming you meant 'NYC'..."
thanks. fixed
I also travel without packing, but I stay for a month or two because I keep clothes at my destination. 12 hours in transit for an overnight (or less) stay sounds awful to me.
YouTube would be more cost wise and he could see more.
I would have to be 30 years younger to do this. These days, any trip over 5 hours is booked first class, and we have to stay for 2 weeks.
If it became available that you could opt to go into suspended animation for hours via a pill or some small device, would you do it for long flights? You go out on take off and wake up at your destination. I would like that, but can you trust the people around you not to draw a penis on your forehead, or worse?
My wife and I have always done microvacations, almost always driving, and sometimes one day and sometimes overnight. We are fortunate enough to live only hours from some of the prettiest country in the world, which makes it pretty easy to do. And if we want something different, the gulf coast is only 8 hours, and I can be in Branson in about that, and Myrtle Beach is only 10 hours. Cruises are the best, but 2 days in the Smokies is pretty damn nice!
Back in the 80's, Northwest offered a plane pass with unlimited travel during the summer to overseas residents. Even though I was I US resident, I was able to get a pass cause I lived outside the US. I flew all around the US, sometimes just on a whim. Some hard core budget travellers would take the red eye from LA to New York to save on hotel and food expenses (they gave you free food then) spend the day in NY and the fly out somehwere else at night.
That's fun when you're young. Not so much when you're older.
Have you really been to a foreign country if you haven't been there for months or years?
Money Manager at 1053 - Were you flying around 9/11? If yes, how close were you to being on one of those flights?
@Political Junkie. No, but one of my reports was (I found out later) stuck on a plane on the tarmac with the total ground stop at JFK, and without a cell service. His wife called me my on my landline. I can still hear the uncontrolled sobbing hysteria.
Another of my reports was on the phone with his Broker at Cantor. Then the line went dead.
@Political Junkie, two of my colleagues were at the Pentagon on 9/11, on opposite sides of the building. One told me later about how it felt as though the whole building rang “like a bell.” The other … we mourned his loss at a special remembrance ceremony.
Cruises are like microvacations. You are at a place just long enough to say you have been there. Don't remember much about it, but you can tell your friends you have been there.
In the original NYT articlre, about the guys who took the 8 hours Athens trip, did the paper demand his execution for raping Gaia? Why not?
కామెంట్ను పోస్ట్ చేయండి
Please use the comments forum to respond to the post. Don't fight with each other. Be substantive... or interesting... or funny. Comments should go up immediately... unless you're commenting on a post older than 2 days. Then you have to wait for us to moderate you through. It's also possible to get shunted into spam by the machine. We try to keep an eye on that and release the miscaught good stuff. We do delete some comments, but not for viewpoint... for bad faith.