Why is it good to do an annual Round The World Trip? My latest experience

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Explaining my RTW 2023

I will be talking more about this Round The World Trip in my next posts, but I will start on this one from the very end. The last leg coming back to New York City from Johannesburg, South Africa. Before this flight, I went to Japan and did a quick stop in both Hong Kong and Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Who?

Only me. I usually travel solo for longer trips, and ones that require visas. Although I have done long legs of Round The World Trips with legs.

What?

A Round The World Trip, is a trip that I try to do at least once a year since 2015. The Covid Pandemic affected this annual tradition, but I am back on track since 2022.

When?

This time I did it during the 2023 Passover vacations at work, and only requested 1 day of PTO to accomplish this. This means this is one of the shortest RTW I have done, completing a trip around the Earth in only 13 days.

Where?

As I mentioned, I went to Japan first (Tokyo and Osaka), then I went for a day to Hong Kong, and finally I flew to South Africa stopping in Addis Ababa for a couple of hours. In South Africa I went to Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Why?

I do Round The World Trips every year (or at least try), and Passover was the perfect opportunity to get this trip out of the way at least for 2023. April seemed to be a good month to go to both Japan and South Africa, weather wise.

Why Japan? Well, I had been to Japan before, but now I am trying to go to all the Universal and Disney parks in the world, and Japan had 3 of those: Disneyland Tokyo, Tokyo DisneySea and Universal Japan in Osaka. Also, I love Japan, and I would come back just to explore the entire country.

In addition to these 3 parks, I had the advantage to add Disneyland Hong Kong, since it was easier to fly to South Africa from there.

And finally, why South Africa? First, my list of visited countries had gotten to 73, and Egypt was the only African country on this list. That’s embarrasing and I needed to start fixing this. I will focus on more African countries for future trips to balance my list a lot more, and feel myself more out of my comfort zone. Second, I picked South Africa because besides the Disney and Universal parks, I am on a quest to finalize visiting the New Wonders of Nature. I had only been to 3 of them, so was very behind, but now I am in track to complete 5 by the end of the year. Third, I just needed to go to South Africa since the 2010 FIFA World Cup, that whole thing felt like a fever dream seeing it on the TV. Mesmerizing.

Boarding my flight

I was minding my business exploring Johannesburg when I got an e-mail from United saying my flight had gotten delayed almost 2 hours. First I thought, well, at least they informed me on time. But then I was like, I will definitely be late for work tomorrow lol. The problem with doing an international 16 hour red-eye flight and then going to work like nothing happened is that things like these could happen: flight delays, customs delays, transportation nightmares, etc. But I was hopeful we would arrive to New Jersey more than an hour before the scheduled arrival, and then go to work. Well, this was not the case.

After I finished exploring the city, I took an Uber an got to the airport. So far, the whole 13 days had been successful. Not many big hiccups or complications. I was on the very end ready to go back to reality.

The airport looked dated, but it took me some minutes to figure out where the gates were. I do not remember an airport where you would literally had to go through the airline check in desks to find the gates, I had to ask since I had my boarding pass already since I did web check in the day before. I was on time but not very early, and to my surprise there was a security line and an emigration line. A few people cut in line like nothing happened during the emigration process. The whole thing could be more organized but it was what it was.

Finally I was on the way to the gates, and to be fair, the terminal inside looked way better and more updated. I got myself some food for that night and for the flight, besides of some drinks. When I got to the United Airlines gate, to my surprise (yeah, again!), they were not allowing any liquid of more than 100 ml. Everyone complained but those were the rules. I drank the entire bottle of orange juice I had gotten for the flight, and half one water bottle of 2 I had bought. I went inside the safe area, and they started boarding almost immediately.

The United flight to Newark was packed but there were a lot of empty seats, including the one next to me (Thank GOD!). Since I had no water, I requested a cup of it and the stewardess was super rude saying they were NOT giving water during the boarding process. My calling light was still one, and another, nicer, stewardess came to me and asked me what I needed and brought me a whole bottle of water after a few minutes.

On the way to New York

We took off and thankfully I had free WiFi because of my T-Mobile plan. I usually do not use the provided entertainment, and just use my cellphone if needed. My goal was to sleep the most I could to be rested for tomorrow, and use the internet in case I needed to message anyone from work or any friends.

Not too long after we took off dinner was served. I picked the chicken with what I think it is pap, a traditional South African dish. I ate everything.

15 hours to go, I decided to finally go to sleep, it was a long trip ahead.

I finally woke up and they were serving a snack, including a couple of chicken sandwiches.

One of the advantages of the dreamliner planes is that you can adjust the tinting on the windows. The sun was finally catching with us as we flew north and west. The day had just started.

Breakfast was served after I took a few other naps and played Two Dots and watched YouTube videos probably for too long lol.

Landing in Newark

After almost 16 hours we made to America, and started the descent right away.

A bump later we were in gloomy New Jersey. Thankfully the size of the plane prevented big turbulences, because it looked dreadful and windy outside.

Immigration process

It took longer than I wanted to finally deplane and then the race to Immigration started. As I was flying solo I did not have to depend on other on this, I could just speed walk to the end of that line. Fortunately it was not long at all. Luck was on my side.

I usually try to never fly into Newark, but this case was exceptional because was the only flight from Johannesburg, and United has a hub in EWR. Getting into the city from here is not fun if you are in a rush. What I always do is take and Uber of Lyft to the Newark Penn Station, and then take the PATH to the MTA Subway. I believe this is the fastest way, besides obviously ubering all the way to where you need to go.

I knew I finally made it to the US when I started seeing lawyers ads in the subway. I went home and then to work like nothing happened. I was jetlagged for some time but after the second day I was fine. The RTW trip had been successful.