YouTube travel vlog by Nate and Kara Buchanan documenting a long multi-leg journey from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan to Austin, Texas via Istanbul and Houston. The video covers flight experiences (economy class on Turkish Airlines, lounges like HSBC and Centurion), travel logistics and seating strategy, excitement about speaking at a YouTube conference, and meeting their new niece; the vlog emphasizes long travel fatigue and practical on-trip details.
Chapters
Good morning. It's 4am, we're in a taxi and this begins our 30 hour travel day.
We're doing the thing again where we take like the earliest flight in history to save a little bit of money. And as you might imagine, there just weren't a ton of flight options from Kyrgyzstan to Texas.
So today we're flying from Bishkek to Istanbul, Istanbul to Houston and then Houston to Austin where we will arrive tomorrow night. And please don't mistake our lack of enthusiasm because it's early for not being excited about this travel day because we love long travel days. And this one starts the five hour flight to Istanbul.
49 to Istanbul, Turkey Airport. My name is.
So stop.
It's going to get stuck in my head.
No one wants to hear a song about safety.
The plan didn't work like it normally does, but this plane is really nice and it is the best TV screens we've ever had. Still going to be a good flight.
Sam.
We would like to say goodbye and hope to meet you again. Thank you for flying with Turkey Airlines.
A member of Star Alliance.
Five hours hours later, we are in Istanbul. This is one of our favorite airports in the world. We've flown through here five or six times. But the reason that we love it so much is because we usually have access to the Turkish Airlines business class lounge.
And unfortunately this time we do not have access to this lounge because we didn't fly business class and we don't have Starlines gold status anymore. But thankfully we can still go to another lounge because we have priority pass. It just won't be the lounge.
We made the best of it.
Hsbc lounge.
Thank you.
Thank you.
We are so excited about this milestone. Look how excited.
Seriously, if you're subscribed to our YouTube channel, thank you so much. And if you're not, I'm just kidding.
It's not the Turkish business class lounge, but it'll do for a couple of hours. And we thought we would take this time to explain why we're going to Texas for the week. We have two really exciting things coming up.
The first one is that we are speaking at our first conference ever and we're speaking on YouTube and it just feels so crazy. Like on the one hand we've been doing this for almost three years, but on the other hand, like to us it kind of feels like we just started. So for us to be speaking to a bunch of other people who are just starting their YouTube journey is super exciting, super nerve wracking. I think it's gonna go Great. But we've just never done this before.
And the second reason that we're extra excited about this week is we get to go meet our very first niece. So after the conference, we're going to Kayla Bear's house and we got her some little Kirkus.
We are those aunt and unc that are buying our niece things that she'll wear for two seconds. But we're super excited to get to see her and hold her while she's still a tiny little baby. This is one of the hardest parts of traveling is not like getting to be there for all the big moments in your family's life. Okay, we have a 13 hour flight to Houston and then one more short flight to Austin. I was going to say we're almost there, but we're just starting.
Feel like I'm in a greenhouse. 13 hours is a long time. I can't remember the last time we had a 13 hours. Walking past business class on Turkish is just like a dagger to the heart.
I just saw a Little Chef.
I wish there was.
Okay, so far, so good. We've explained our strategy about booking the aisle seat and the window seat a bunch of times, but we've never mentioned that the real key for it working completed.
She just said boarding completed.
It's official.
Like I was saying, to give yourself a better chance of the strategy working, book a row in the back of the plane, because somebody's gonna have to sit in the middle seat. They're gonna try to book a middle seat in the front. We're in row 48 of.
Like, 50.
I love you, but I'm so happy there's.
I love Turkish Airlines because even though we're in economy, we got a menu and an affinity kit. Let's see what's in here.
Huh? Slippers, lip balm, eye mask, toothbrush. Yes. Socks, earplugs, and seriously, the best movie selection I've had on a flight in a long time. This isn't an ad. We paid for these flights. I'm just really excited. And I'm so excited that we have the middle cub. Sam.
My watch says that it is 6:00am in Bishkek, which means our flight left 24 hours ago, which means we've been awake for like 25 hours. 26 hours. Oh, my gosh. I'm just getting really tired.
Okay, we have a quick hour and a half layover here in Houston, and we're both really excited about it because they have our favorite domestic lounge, the Centurion Lounge, but we've never been to this location before.
Maybe it's just good timing, but this is the least crowded Centurion lounge we have ever been in. This is just my first plate of salads, all the different vegetables. I'm going back to my hot plate of everything else it looks. Wish we had more time here.
We are so close. Just one more 45 minute flight to Austin.
The Boeing 737900 is equipped with four exit doors. Two on each side of the aircraft. If the doors are open in an emergency, flight will automatically inflate. Time is 10:02pm we will be taxiing for the next few moments, so please remain seated with your seatbelt passenger and I'll carry a luggage to those until the passenger's off the passenger seatbelt time. At that time, please make sure you select all personal belongings. Be careful.
Yes, we were staying in a Motel 6, but just for one night.
We're literally just going to sleep here. Waking up in the morning and moving hotels to where we'll be for the conference.
Our alarms officially went off 30 and a half hours ago in Bishkek, so we're going to sleep right now.
Unfortunately, the airplane didn't work like it normally does.
Takes a long time when you're just watching it. Who's gonna do it?
Okay, so far so good. We've explained our strategy about booking the aisle and the.
