JFK-YVR, CX889, A346, 6h15m, 12/20 9:20pm – 12/21 12:35am
YVR-HKG, CX889, A346, 13h20m, 12/21 1:45am – 12/22 7:05am
HKG-MNL, CX901, B773, 2h5m, 12/22 9:10am – 12/22 11:10am

MNL-HKG, CX918, A330, 01/03 5:45pm – 01/03 7:45pm
HKG-JFK, CX830, A346, 01/04 10:15am – 01/04 12:50pm

1. Flight is out of JFK, so Amy and I fly up to NJ the day before.
2. The next day turns out to be the day of the New York Transit Strike. The trip to JFK from NJ involves a transfer from NJTransit to LIRR at Penn Station. Gladly, aside from a few security cordons at Penn Station and a taped-off elevator at the Jamaica LIRR Station (still operational, so a bunch of us passengers just slip under the tape), the ride to JFK is uneventful.
3. A hug and a kiss goodbye to Amy, hop on to the plane, and I’m off to Manila, with a stopover at Vancouver and Hong Kong.
4. I arrive just around noon in Manila. My brothers pick me up. I spend Christmas in Manila with the family.
5. A lot of shopping is done at the tiangge. It occurs to me that we Filipinos sure do pump a lot of bad 1980s love music into our public spaces.
6. After Christmas, we fly to Cebu to go scuba diving at Malapascua.
7. We come back for New Year. There are many explosions.
8. I fly back to JFK, but first, a 14 hour layover in Hong Kong. For that, I get a sleeping cubicle at the Traveler’s Lounge.
9. Amy meets me at JFK. We head back to her home in NJ, where I deliver pasalubong to her family.
10. Next day, I fly back to DC on the very last Newark-Dulles flight of Independence Air before the company shuts down.
11. Home. Sleep.

So ends that trip. Click on the thumbs for more photos:

Sorry, my travel logs are pretty cursory when I’m not writing during the actual trip itself, but that’s fine, since I hear people generally hate reading travel logs anyway. Is that true?