The Long Journey Home

On Monday, October 27th, it was time to head home. We would be in for a long day. We left Cambodia at 8:30am and flew back to Kuala Lumpur on Air Asia, our new favorite low-cost carrier, and of course Stu had his usual halal dog.

After arriving back at the Low Cost Carrier Terminal, we had to get ourselves back to the main terminal, which was not close. We could have taken a bus for 25 cents, but we were a little pressed for time and with all our luggage, we splurged and took a cab. It was still a 10 minute cab ride.

We made our way to the Cathay Pacific check in counter and passed a group of Chinese travelers surrounding a member of their traveling party who was having a meltdown that put all of our meltdowns to shame. She was upset about something! We were using our Staff tickets, which are for standby travel, but the flight had enough open seats that we were issued boarding passes on the spot.

Our flight to Hong Kong was about three and a half hours long. Stu and I watched the Will Smith movie "Hancock", which was pretty funny. We had a nice lunch including what was the best dessert I have ever had on an airplane. It was a vanilla ice cream bar, covered in a chocolate magic shell.

We landed in Hong Kong with about 5 hours to kill. We must have waited for what felt like an eternity for our luggage while Marty and I got a little punchy.

Since Hong Kong is the hub for Cathay Pacific, we proceeded to a special staff counter they have for airline employees to check-in and standby for their flights. Things went from great to not so great rather fast when the rather surly agent informed us the flight to Los Angeles was now oversold by 25 to 30 people, and our chances of getting on were terrible. When we checked the status the day before, everything was fine, but now, things were not so fine. The airport in Hong Kong is like a mall, with lots of things to do, but we all had the wind taken out of our sails at this point and I got a case of nervous stomach (aka non-rev tummy) and made frequent trips to the bathroom.

What was even more distressing was the fact that we had no back up tickets out of Hong Kong. When you are outside of your airline's network, you have to have all of your tickets issued in advance. Earlier that day, we had commented on how the trip came in under what we had all budgeted, but now we were looking at a $500 hotel room for the night in HKG and then a $621 one way full fare ticket to Tokyo the next day to connect to our airline back to the states. So much for the savings.

We were either at the point of insanity or acceptance because we resigned ourselves to our fate and figured we'd get home one way or another. Stu was the only one with a positive attitude and he said all along that we would get on the plane. At 11pm, we were all called up to the standby counter, and as luck would have it, the flight ended up closing with 5 open seats, so the three of us would get on, albeit in middle seats and not together.

The 14 hour flight back across the dateline really rocks your world. We left Hong Kong at 11:45pm on the 27th, and 14 hours later, we landed in Los Angeles at 10:00pm on the 27th, so we arrived before we left. I made it thru my uncomfortable circumstances with the help of Ambien and probably slept for about 8 hours.

Our arrival in LAX was not a crazy as we thought it would be. Of course our bags were the last ones loaded on the plane, but apparently the last ones to come down the conveyor belt in LA. Given my previous experience in flying thru LA, it has always been insane. We were pleasantly surprised to see our airline's terminal was nice and quiet, so we checked our bags and zipped thru security in time for our red eye flight home. We were wide awake of course and Marty and I enjoyed some cocktails and played cards most of the way.

Given that no one wanted to pick us up at 5am, we took a cab back to Stu and Marty's house, where I left my car. I managed to stay awake enough to go do early voting, and then grab my dog Gretchen and head home before falling into a coma.

This was an incredible trip. In the course of 10 days, we covered about 24,000 miles and managed to circumnavigate the globe. The Cambodian people were so gracious and friendly. The area was safe and while not very developed, it still offered incredible sights and unique experiences that made for a memorable vacation.