Our 18 Hours Above 30,000 ft.

We arrived in Bangkok at 12:15 am Friday morning. We truly skipped Saint Patrick's Day.

 Our flight to Beijing was long (13 hours), but not miserable. Air China fed us 2 meals and offered drinks many times throughout the flight. I love having the feature where you can track where the plane is on the world map. It is probably boring for most people, but I could (did) watch it for hours. I also watched the last two Hunger Games movies, read magazines that Valerie brought, and did my best to sleep. Val did a lot of reading and to my jealously, slept many more hours than I managed to.

Once we landed in Beijing, we had an hour and a half to catch our connection down to Bangkok. We ended up waiting in the longest and slowest security lines where they checked our passports at two different stops and then reexamined our carry-on luggage. I was chosen to have a full pat down after it was already 20 minutes past our boarding time. We RAN through the airport with our backpacks and ourselves completely disheveled hoping we wouldn't miss our flight. Of course our gate was the very last one down the walkway. We flagged down an employee driving a cart and asked him to drive us to our gate. I threw 20 yuan at him and we darted down the stairs only to find a huge line of people waiting to get on buses that then took us to our plane.

We felt like we were on the Amazing Race, but not in a good way. Once we realized we weren't going to miss our plane, we talked in Amazing Race lingo for the rest of the journey to our plane. We talked about who we would U turn and which teams would be our allies. After all that, we ended up getting upgraded for free! The flight was about 5 hours and we had big seats with slippers and extra drinks. All the stress ended up being worth it. 

Once we arrived in Bangkok we waiting through customs. No surprise there, but I was sort of anxious about our luggage. We had packed toiletries and a few changes of clothes in our carry-ons so we wouldn't be totally without if our luggage didn't show up. Thankfully it did. By the time we got to our hotel it was past 3 am. We had to be ready to go for the next day's activities at 8:15 the next morning. 

When we got in the room, our exhausted minds desperately searched for the light switches. Every one we found didn't work! What was going on? Trying to use my phone as a flashlight, I pressed the power button too many times and ended up triggering the SOS message function so Adam received an emergency message. Oops. At some point I realized the card shaped slot by the door. No signs around it offering directions, just a slot with the right size for a hotel key. 

 

It worked! The trick is that you have to leave it in the slot while you're in the room. It is a smart idea to save electricity, but I would have appreciated some directions. Anyway, I wish someone had told me about this light passport, so I'll do the same for you! 

After a quick shower to wash the plane off, we were in bed fast asleep. We woke up 2 1/2 hours later to start our first full day in Thailand. 

Our hotel is just gorgeous. The room, the pool, the view, the breakfast, and the staff are absolutely lovely at Centara Grand at Central Plaza Ladprao Hotel in Bangkok. 

Some photos from our hotel..

I want to take a second to talk about how prepared Valerie is. All the future Soccer Moms are gonna hate her or want to be her. This girl put individually wrapped pieces of bread in her suitcase, peanut butter, Capri Suns, M&Ms, crackers, trail mix, and fruit gummies along with some bottled water for good measure. Half of her checked luggage was food. 

You know what I did? I bought dried mango and ginger and forgot to even put it in my carry-on before we left the house.

This post was originally supposed to be a little about our plane travels and then all about our first day in Bangkok. I ended up writing so much about our 18 hours in the air that I decided to make it a separate entry. I will write all about Bangkok tomorrow!

All in all, we were very thankful for the smooth sailing our travel days ended up being. The only big upset was that Valerie misplaced her Kindle, but hopefully the airline will get back to her and it will all get sorted out. We made it, our luggage made it, most of my sanity made it, and the WiFi at the hotel works! 

It's bedtime! We have yet to have a full night of sleep so I'm quite looking forward to crawling into bed! Goodnight for us, good morning to you!

Security Clearance Approved

It's 2 hours until our flight to Beijing departs so I thought I'd take the time to scribble a quick entry on my phone in the terminal. I think I'll use this first entry to share some information.

The first thing I have to note is what a luxury it is to have a checked bag! The last time I left the North American continent I had a backpack and shoulder purse to carry everything for 5 weeks. I have that same backpack with me, but this time it's just my carry-on. Air China allows one free checked bag for economy passengers. Fingers crossed it doesn't get lost.

I'm feeling at ease now. The anxiety leading up to the trip was all worth this moment of peace with my Starbucks tea and sweet seat with an outlet. I was in charge of the reservations. Even though I checked and checked over my work, I was still worried I had made a typo somewhere. Getting through security was proof that I had put it all in correctly. Phew. Because I am a grad student and we are traveling over my spring break, I still had to do 2 weeks worth of assignments ahead of time on top of the work already scheduled. Sitting in this terminal is the first moment of down time I've had in a while.

As far as contacting us goes, I have an international plan for the month. I can receive unlimited texts but can only send out 250. I have 250 minutes of talk as well. I have a tiny bit of data that isn't even worth mentioning, but there will be WiFi at our hotels.
For those of you wanting a time line of our first travel day, we fly from LAX to PEK (Beijing) and after a layover we hop back on for 5 1/2 hours to get down to BKK (Bangkok). The total time including the layover is about 18 hours of travel. There might be WiFi on the plane, but we won't know until we're boarded. We come home March 26th.

We're traveling through a company called Affordable Asia based in the Los Angeles area. They arrange flights, hotels, ground transportation and activities. I've read good reviews about them so I hope our experience is positive! We found a Groupon deal that gave us a stellar deal. Let me put it this way: this whole trip (flights, hotels, tour guided trips, etc) is cheaper than my round trip flight from Los Angeles to London in 2010.

Yes, we did receive some health care for our travels. Along with the typical childhood vaccinations, I received a tetanus booster, typhoid shot (can be taken as pills), and was prescribed antimalarial pills. The CDC website has great information on how to stay healthy abroad.

A special thanks goes out to my boyfriend Adam who not only stayed up with me while I packed late, but also drove Val and I to the airport. I love you!

That's it for today! My next entry will be on the other side of the world!
-Michelle