Rajeev's World: Scoot - Get Outta Here!

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Scoot - Get Outta Here!

Its been over two weeks for us here in Korea when we realised we were getting a 4-day break, a long Chuseok weekend.

And we had to make the most of it. We initially thought of heading to Jeju, and then thought of Busan and since we could not get a suitable hotel reservation, almost in a fit of desperation, we had almost given up and we settling down to head to Seoul.

And then I had my Eureka moment. I realised our Schengen visas (from our Europe Trip) were still valid which could give us a preauthorised visa free access to Taiwan, a country I had been dying to visit for long.

Yes this was it.

Then began the search for air tickets. China Airlines, EVA Air, Korean Air and Asiana were all flying full. Then quite by chance I figured out on Google that there is Scoot flight, a 5th Freedom flight that operates between Incheon, Taipei and Singapore, that too on a Boeing 787-9 Dream)liner. It would our first journey on the stretched version of the Dream)liner, though we had traveled on Air-India's Boeing 787-8 an year back between Mumbai and Delhi. (Scoot is the low-cost subsidiary of Singapore Airlines, operating on long haul routes).

The fare was quite reasonable but we couldn't get a return flight from Taipei. We had to opt to fly out of Kaoshiung on EVA Air, which isn't a bad idea afterall as Taipei and Kaoshiung are very well connected by high speed rail, that takes barely 2 hours.

And so finally after such a long time, our wish to visit Taiwan was finallly coming true. But we had to resolve one last hitch - this was the holiday weekend and no hotel rooms were available in Taipei. And that meant we resorted to AirBnB, our first time on it.

And we were set to head to the Renegade Province!

Waiting to check in. Here we had an issue - the queue was far too long, the checkin staff was quite slow, atrociously slow. It actually made me wonder how Scoot could throw the highly regarded Singaporean standards of efficiency to the wind. Apparently the staff had an issue figuring out how our visa preauthorisation for Taiwan worked. They spent 20+ minutes figuring that out. And when we got upset, guess what, we got upgraded to premium seats with free onboard WiFi! How cool is that?

WiFi access onboard is pretty expensive but we weren't complaining...

Going online and sending emails onboard was quite an experience, though the connection was slow and patchy in parts...

Most people on board were Korean holidaymakers heading to Taiwan like this lady across the aisle who funnily covered her head, slouched out and went into a deep slumber...