This is fairly pedestrian stuff, so if you’re looking for info on Angeles itself you might want to skip over this section. However, this does give some insight on what it takes for those of us who don’t live in an airport hub city to get to a destination.

I locked in my EvaAir flight to leave LA in the early morning of March 16. The next step of my trip-planning became how to get to LA from my home in eastern Mexico. On my last three Asia trips, I flew from my town to LA. But that usually meant that I would arrive in LA about 1:00 PM and would have an 11+ hour layover in LAX while waiting for my flight. That kind of layover just SUCKS – particularly at a crappy airport like LAX. And to top it off, a round-trip ticket from my town to LA cost almost as much as my ticket to and from Manila. So I began to scout around for a better deal. That led to the following odyssey.

I found a round-trip air ticket from Monterrey to Tijuana for around 230 dollars on VivaAerobus - Mexico's version of Southwest Airlines. That's a bargain in anybody's book so I jumped on it. As I thought about this, I came up with a plan. I would bus to Monterrey (about a 7-hour journey from my town), catch my flight to TJ, cross the border and take the train to LA. And, you know what? It actually worked!

I left work a little early on Friday the 14th, and headed over to the bus station. I got there just in time to take the 2:00 bus to Monterrey. Before deciding to take the bus, I almost went ahead and bought a ticket on Aviasca to Monterrey. It would cost a little over 100 dollars, but would save me a TON of time. In the end, I was afraid that our local airport might be fogged in, which has happened several times over the last month, and I might risk missing my flight to Tijuana. By taking the bus, I KNEW I’d make it there and on time.

On arriving at the Central Camionera in Monterrey, I walked a couple of blocks to and got a room at the Plaza del Arco. A lot of the guys who love Monterrey seem to stay at the PDA. Location-wise, it doesn’t get much better for being able to walk to a number of clubs in central Monterrey. However the hotel itself is pretty basic. Imagine a run-down Motel 6 that costs about $10 more a night.

After freshening up a little, I went over to El Infinito. I was not impressed with the selection. After spending about an hour there, I could not find any girl who interested me. So I bailed to go to Matehuala. On entering the club, I was again very under-whelmed at the selection. You might be saying that I am way too picky. But as you’ll see in some of my pictures from AC, I am not a particularly picky monger. Finally, I spotted a cutie who was immediately snatched up by a local. I ordered another beer to wait for this girl to re-appear.

As I waited, I began to do some SERIOUS thinking. The girl was cute – maybe a 6 or 7 – but like all the girls who work at clubs like Matehuala, she was probably very high mileage. “What would I be getting for my money?” I asked myself. Well, we would head downstairs to the booths, where I’d have to cough up between 300 – 400 pesos for “servicios.” Additionally, I’d have to pay another 50 pesos per song to have sex on a hard chair in an open booth. Overall, this would cost between 500-600 pesos. While there is a visceral thrill in engaging in these types of activities in an open area, it wasn’t at the top of my to-do list tonight. Alternatively, I could try to talk the cutie into going to my hotel for a romp in a real bed. A much better plan, but that would set me back about 1500 pesos for a couple of hours of “disinterested Mexican hooker sex” that would probably include only one shot on goal. This is not a bargain.

In the end, my big head got the better of the little one. I figured that in about 24 hours, I would be spending WAY less than that to nail a Filipina, in a bed, several times. Why should I spend 140 dollars to nail an average looking Mexicana when I could drop 1/3 of that for a better looking girl who would be much more service-oriented? It was a no-brainer. I headed back to the hotel to get a good night’s rest before continuing the rest of my journey.

{Start Editorial Rant} I am still amazed that those narrow-minded souls who believe that Monterrey and Tijuana are the end-all of the mongering world. Only a few sycophants continued to lionize the “beauties” of Mexico. (For the record, I do find Mexican women to be very attractive.) However, when you compare looks, service and price, Mexico has to be near the bottom of any experienced world-mongerer’s list. Again, this is coming from a guy who lives in and LIKES Mexico a lot. On the other side of the coin, mongering in Mexico is head-and-shoulders above anything the U.S. has to offer. (End Editorial Rant}

The next morning, I took an over-priced taxi (goddamn all Mexican taxi drivers and taxi syndicates) to the airport, checked in for my VivaAerobus flight to begin the meat of my trip. VivaAerobus, as I stated earlier, is the Southwest Airlines of Mexico. They pack people into their 737’s like cattle on the way to slaughter – 158 passengers on a plane according to their brochure. Seating is first-come, first-served. You have to pay for food and beverages which are a bit over-priced but not horribly so. And this should become GCL’s favorite airlines as none of the seats are allowed to recline. However, for the price you can’t beat what you get.

The flight to Tijuana took about 2 ½ hours and we arrived with no problems.

Another over-priced taxi to the border was the next mode of transportation. However, as we approached the immigration station at San Ysidro, I could see that the pedestrian line to get into the U.S. was HUGE. So I had the driver take me over to the Mexicoach station on Revolucion where I got a ticket on the bus to cross the border. Although it cost an extra 5 bucks, it was money well spent. I could sit in relative comfort while waiting to cross. (As a side-note, Mexicoach has bought as least one new bus since I last used them about five years ago.) Even going through the bus line into immigration, it still took us about 2 ½ hours to cross over – so much for the new border regulations cutting down on crossing times.

Once in the immigration station, we passed through very quickly. I exited the building and stopped at McDonalds for a bite to eat. After downing a quick burger, I hopped on the San Diego Trolley to head to Union Station to catch the Amtrak to LA. I got there just in time to buy a ticket and sprint onto the train.

This was the first time I’ve ridden the train and will definitely do it again. The cost of the ticket was 29 dollars and I had a nice window seat for the 3 hour ride to LA. The route was quite scenic for much of the trip – paralleling the ocean – and I think the clientele was a step up from riding the bus.

On arrival at Union Station in LA, I walked up to catch the Flyaway Bus to LAX. A four-dollar ticket, got me to LAX in about 30 minutes. Overall, this was not the quickest way to get to LA, and I did end up sitting a lot. But it was better than wasting away 10 – 11 hours at LAX.

In the end, the costs for my journey to LA were something like this: 33 dollars for bus to Monterrey, 18 dollars for taxi to airport in Monterrey, 115 dollars for ticket to Tijuana, 18 dollars for taxi to Mexicoach, 5 dollars for bus to border, 2.50 for ticket on Trolley, 29 dollars for ticket on train, 4 dollars for bus to airport. I ended up spending about 225 dollars and about 17 hours to get to LAX. Of course, this doesn’t include the time and money I spent in Monterrey. Did I save anything? Probably not, but at least I had an interesting trip.

Check-in with EVA was smooth and finally it was time for the plane to depart. We pushed away from the gate and sat, and sat, and sat some more. Something was amiss. Eventually, the pilot came on and informed us that a warning light was on. They thought it was only a computer malfunction, but we had to go back to the gate so the ground-crew could check everything out. Some people might be upset by this, but my philosophy is it’s better to have this happen on the ground than have the engine fall off mid-flight.

After pushing back up to the gate, we sat, and sat, and sat some more. All-in-all it took three hours to fix the problem. They even had to cut all power to the plane for about 5 minutes so that they could re-boot the computers – at least that’s the reason we were given by the flight deck. Amazingly, during the whole time no one complained! Finally, we pushed back again, they tested everything out, the pilot informed us that all was ok and we left. As I had about a 3 hour layover in Taipei, I knew we would be pushing making my connection, but at least we were on our way.

We arrived in Taipei with no problems. During the flight I watched two really good movies and listened to a lot of music. I walked quickly from our arrival gate to the departure gate. I had just enough time to take a power shit when I heard my name being called. Yippee, I was being upgraded to Evergreen Deluxe for the journey to Manila.

Arrival in Manila was smooth. I cleared immigration in about 5 minutes, my bag was among the first on the belt, and I was off to breeze through customs. I went upstairs, got a departing taxi and headed to the 5-Star bus station. After about a 40 minute wait at 5-Star, we were on our way to Dau. Unfortunately, the bus was FULL and I had to hold my bag on my lap the whole way as I didn’t have the foresight to put it underneath. While it sucked, I didn’t mind much as we were getting closer by the minute to LBFM-central.

There was nothing unusual about the arrival at the Dau bus station. I got a trike for 70 pesos and headed to the Swiss Chalet. My odyssey was over. I left my home in Mexico at 2:00 PM (CST) on Friday and arrived at the Swiss Chalet at 4:00 PM Monday. It took 36 hours in actual travel time; 47 hours total. But at last, I was there!

Subtract the trip TO MTY (and 6 hours from the ordeal), and I spent about 30 bucks less than you busing it to the border and then on to San Antonio, where I flew to LAX (getting 1879 CO elite miles in the process). I normally spend 2 1/2 hours crossing on the bus at Laredo myself, but this time it only took 1/2 hour.

Of course MY REWARD was that lovely 12 hour layover at LAX. At least I got to meet up with Epi for our annual Taco Bell fest pre-trans-pac flight. Never thought I'd see the day where that boy was jealous of ME re: time spent in Asia, but hey, maybe my life's not so bad after all!

Looking forward to reading the rest of your epic. Thanks for taking the time and effort to post this.

BTW, 5 bucks for Mexicoach? Granted it's been YEARS since I've taken it, but didn't it used to be A DOLLAR?

LOL. Power Shit!

Epic.

I think more trip reports should feature bowel movements. it makes it more real.

On the Tijuana airport to Los Angeles issue, Aeromexico has fairly nice and inexpensive buses to LA directly from Tijuana airport. They are free to most Aeromexico passengers but tickets are cheap for anyone else. Exiting security at Tijuana airport turn right and go out of the east end of the terminal. The ticket booth is just outside the door. Buses leave frequently for LA throughout the day. Although they drop off in downtown Los Angeles so you still have to get to LAX from there.

Volaris also has a bus service from the Tijuana airport to the Santa Fe train station in downtown San Diego if you wan to take that route.

The buses bypass the normal border lines that you will get held up in with a taxi. You go to the front of the line.

RG.