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Published: January 3rd 2013
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on the plane!And thus it begins!
Cassie and I have been anxiously awaiting the departure date and it has finally come! We packed and repacked our bags even the morning of just to make sure everything was in tip top shape. Our New Year's evening was supposed to be a quiet evening spent relaxing at the house. However, this is us we are talking about! Four bottles of wine later, amazing delivery American-Thai food, and we were waking up with headaches and bellyaches. Not exactly how we wanted to start our day. Although, Mom made amazing quiche and home-made cinnamon rolls for our last meal. Craig helped relieve my anxiety by taking me on a walk and driving me around. After several hours of biding our time, we couldnt take it anymore and headed to the airport.
Ironically when we got to the airport, our orange-bearded taxi driver dropped us off at the wrong terminal. We decided to simply walk to the International terminal and my father attempted to carry my backpack. It was more than humorous watching him struggle putting on the bag and walking like a crippled old man leaning forward all the way to the doors. When we
got to the right area, we found out that we were 3 hours too early. The ticket counter wouldnt even open to assign us our tickets or take our bags. More waiting! I think if we didnt have such a late flight the anxiety of the trip ahead would not have been so overwhelming. We decided to watch the end of the Rose Bowl at a bar in an upstairs lounge. Go Stanford! After the game ended we still had hours left but were tired of struggling to find things to say. Our hangovers added to our stress and ill-feeling. We stayed for maybe a quarter of the Orange Bowl (Go Seminoles!) before we closed out and tried to find seating near a window.
Talk about crowded! The airport was almost impossible to walk around because there were so many people! And as soon as we got up, trying to find another place to sit was ridiculous! Every place had been taken. Craig was racing to a table by the window with four chairs, and a single gentleman beat him to it! So one person was taking up a whole table, it was like that everywhere! On one side
of the lounge area, someone had left their bag unattended. There were six cops surrounded the area, each one on their walkie-talkie speaking code. We collectively decided we would walk to the other side of the restaurants just in case.
When it finally came time to get our tickets, I started to get nervous. We got our tickets, but were not assigned the seats we requested. We had asked for window seats because we were anxious to watch take-off and landing, but what can you do. Saying good-bye is never easy. And it wasn't really good-bye, just see you later. But it doens't matter if I leave for a day or three months my mother always manages to make me cry! Cassandra kept making fun because we were being sissy-la-la's! haha! My departure with my folks, and with Craig was difficult but it makes coming home that much more exciting!
Going through security is a trip now-a-days! The line was crazy long but only because they make you take off everything and remove things from your bag! I had to take out all medicine, all bottles of liquid, all jewelry, my jacket and shoes, and remove my laptop
and camera from their cases. The new scanning maching they have is great, however. You walk in, hold your hands up, it spins around you, and your done! I didnt have to be wanded or anything and it was actually kind of fun!
The terminal we waited in for our flight was cold and drafty and because it was now dark, it was very un-interesting. Our plane was not a double-decker as I had expected for such a long flight, but the interior was comfortable. Our seats were very close together, both in front and side to side. Cassie and I sat next to each other, she on the aisle and myself in the middle. A gentleman by the name of Mr. Wilson sat next to me. He was very friendly, from San Diego and flies to Hong Kong seven times a year for business. He fell asleep as soon as we took off! Unbeknownst to us, all beverages -including alcoholic ones- are free of charge and unlimited on Cathay Pacific. You better believe we took advantage! Because we had requested special meals, Cassie and I were fed almost immediately upon take off. In addition to the wonderful staff
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in case of fire, run this way! and service, we each had our own touch screen tv in front of us. It had a very up-to-date library of music, videos, live tv, and games! It was great! I was Looper, Taken 2, Pitch Perfect, Transyvania, Ice Age 2, and fell asleep to wonderful classical music. I admit I did have some anxiety when I started to swell up, and also when we hit turbulance, but after taking my advil as Craig recommended, I felt better in minutes.
The flight felt long, much longer than I had anticipated. But landing was smooth and since it was early this morning in Hong Kong it was very dark out. Flying into the airport you could see on the live camera we had on our touch screen tvs all the lights from the fishing boats. The airport is clean and beautiful and Mr. Wilson guided us as far as he could to our transfer gate! While in line waiting to move to another section of the airport we met more friendly people. In front of us were Marty and Larry, an interesting and quiet couple who live in Chiang Mai. They overheard us talking about the country and offered some
very helpful tips. The have only lived there for six months and moved from Idaho of all places. They said they had visited when Larry first retired, fell in love, and only went home to pack everything and sell of what they needed to so they could start their lives in Thailand. We were given a card of a bed and breakfast and plan to meet up when we arrive in the city.
The airport of Hong Kong is easily navigatable as most everything is in english and Chinese characters. Our first idea was to get coffee, but boy were we in for a surprise. Looking at the menu put us in complete shock. We just walked out of the restaurant because we couldnt believe how expensive everything was. However, we made the mistake of thinking the prices were in US because it had a dollar symbol next to it. $45 for one cup of coffee and $399 for picture book. Crazy! Well the exchange rate is actually one US dollar to $7.92 HK. So it turned out to be $14 for two cups of coffee, even though they are smaller than a tall at US starbucks!
So
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Mr. Wilson for the first part of the adventure we have definitely had some eye-opening experiences already. We are anxious to get to Thailand and write more memories!
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Joe Daddy
non-member comment
Wow! What a great start to the blog ...
I feel as though I'm taking the trip with you. Great images and stories. Keep it coming... I can't wait to visit that Bed and Breakfast that people from Idaho like !