Oh, the indignity! After flying 10,250 miles, over 2 days, 29 hours, 3 flights, one of which we had 2 aborted landings (because of wind shear and microbursts in Tokyo), turbulence to scare you enough that you really were re-thinking getting on the next plane (hey – we can learn Japanese), over-heated cabins that caused us to sweat through all our rapidly ripening clothing and a 4 hour delay because of missing flight crew – our flight to Savannah is scrubbed in Dulles! You’ve GOT TO BE KIDDING US! But, let me give you the details…..
Our LOOOONNNNGGG day(s) starts off at 5AM Friday 2/14 (Happy Valentines Day 
) in Chiang Mai– we couldn’t sleep – argh! Finished off our remaining eggs and salad for lunch. Tried to nap. That didn’t work. Decided to go out for a drink to waste some time – but oh yeah – it’s Makha Bucha today – the first Buddhist holiday of the year. No alcohol sales today (now we know why a bunch of restaurants moved their Valentine’s day special menus and celebrations to 2/13 or 2/14. Aha!
Double aha! Hotels have exceptions to the alcohol rule. Yes! So, we decided to go to the Terrace bar at the hotel we stayed our first night in Chiang Mai, but fortunately we called first (well, we had Yui call!) and they aren’t serving (we think because their bar is actually outside in a free standing area, not contained inside the building). Next we call the Shangri-La next door – they are serving! Ok –well heck, we’ve looked at the hotel from our balcony for weeks – let’s go explore.
Lovely place – most expensive drink round since we’ve arrived but hey – we’re wasting time and the environment is beautiful! Back at the condo, we grab our cab to the airport promptly at 6PM. It takes forever to check in, but we do, with luggage checked through to Savannah. Dinner is at the little Khao Soi House at the end of the terminal – Northern style! Oh, boy, our last spicy Thai meal. We sit in the corner, surreptitiously drinking our beer and wine that we snuck in (remember the holiday!), then go off through security to wait for the first flight to Bangkok.
All goes according to plan there – quick snack service – not the sandwich we had expected but a little chocolate heart cookie (for Valentine’s Day) and no alcohol – no choice actually, coffee, tea or water. Arrived Bangkok on time – holy cow that place is a ZOO! It is freaking midnight and it is teeming with people. Our flight is delayed an hour. Poop. We find a bar/restaurant and get chicken wings (those teeny little flats) and 2 pitchers of beer – yes beer – because this place is crazy expensive – we ain’t in Chiang Mai any more! Honestly – sorry – I am NOT paying over $10US for a teeny glass of crappy wine, it’s bad enough we are paying over $10US for a small pitcher of beer, but at least we are getting 3 glasses out of it. 2 for Ed, 1 for me. Volume-wise – way better deal! I also want a bottle of water – 140b for Evian? Get out. I walk next door to the Halal restaurant and by a Nestle bottle for 35b. Sigh. But – we manage to de-baht ourselves and end up with only 50b left. And we wasted the 2 hours we needed to before the flight!
Boarding goes smoothly after the delay. It is amazing how quickly these foreign flights can board – I mean it only takes 15 minutes for the whole thing – people get on, stow their stuff and we’re gone. Why doesn’t it work that way in the states? We don’t get it.
Once we’re up, the flight crew tells us that there will be a lot of turbulence as we approach Tokyo and they won’t be able to serve breakfast (oh crap – its going to be that bad?), so they are starting the service now. First comes the little snack bag with a cute little teeny square ham and cheese sandwich. It’s about the size of the little Square mobile credit card readers! Plus there are chips (french fries with ketchup it says on the package), a little kit kat bar and a bottle of water. Cute. And cool bags too. So we munch on the sandwich, before we realize that they are serving us the breakfast now! Oh, ok. Breakfast is continental, which is a little too sweet and starchy for us at this time of night. We eat some fruit, the salted pretzel roll and the ham and cheese off the salad, then I save the apple turnovers for tomorrow in the little sandwich bags from the snack bags. That works.
Now it is time to try to get some shut eye. It’s actually not too noisy (no screaming kids, phew!), but OMG, it is HOT. I don’t know if they turn off the air or turn on the heat, but I wake up drenched – and Ed (who isn’t really sleeping) just stays drenched. Thank God I decided to wear my sleeveless top. Otherwise, I’d be a disaster.
After the sauna, as we approach Narita, it gets a little cooler, and we prepare to get rocked around. It’s bumpy. The clouds close in the closer we get to the airport. We start our final descent. Bump, Bump, gear goes down, full flaps down, oh crud, there goes our stomachs! At about 1500 feet, back up we go. Fast! Nope – not going in on this one. We’re sort of tossed about a bit, and the captain comes on to tell us we are trying another approach because there is wind shear and microbursts on the ground. You can feel it up here – buffeting and popping up and down. We meander around over the water for about 15 minutes, then here we go again. Bump, bump, gear down, full flap, damn! Up we go again at about 2,000 feet. Oh, please get us on the ground and off this plane! Once more over the ocean (if you could have seen the flight tracking details, it’s pretty funny – well in hindsight it’s funny - all these circles and trajectories out over the water while we wait out the weather).
Third time (it better be a charm), here we go. White knuckle all the way, it’s still pretty darn bad, but the Captain manages to land this sucker! Thank God! Everyone is so scared, that it is dead quiet on that plane when we get to the runway. No one even claps. Pretty bad.
Our wobbly little legs get us off that plane in a hurry – and up to the waiting area for the flight to Dulles. This is the loooonnnngggg one – almost 12 hours – we’re dreading it. But, it is what it is. There are a ton of press in the waiting area, videoing the passengers. We can’t figure it out – but if anyone is watching Japanese TV – look for us! We should be on a very long segment as we surf the web on our phones waiting for the plane.
This flight is delayed too. But only for about 15 or 20 minutes. We board – and darn – there’s freaking lap child in the row next to us. No – don’t even go there. We need to sleep and the screaming 1 year old may just be an international casualty. Take off is a heck of a lot smoother than our landing – fortunately. We get our lunch right away, which is hashed beef in wine sauce (actually you get choices – one Japanese, one western – for every meal, and they’ve got these cool little menu choice cards they hand out…
…so you always know what you are getting exactly!). Anyhow, the beef is really tasty – and of course the wine and beer keeps flowing! After lunch we read a bit, then settle in to try to sleep. Fortunately screaming baby has zonked out (good sigh) and we think we have a good chance of catching a few hours of zzz’s. Well, I do anyway, Ed of course gets maybe an hour. But, OMG, the heat again! What is with this? These people are all dressed in winter gear too – sweaters and boots – and they’re fine – I’m in yoga pants and sleeveless top and I’m dying! Yuk!
We make it the rough the 12 hours with movies (Ed watches Gravity and then Man on a Wire on his Kindle; I watch Captain Phillips), reading, general napping sort of and food: A snack of tomato/cheese bread which I was really looking forward to, and turns out to be too doughy for me, and finally breakfast which is an excellent eggs benedict thing. That works! We land on time, with no incidents. Then comes customs. Wow – it’s a breeze – there is no one there and we get through passport control in 5 minutes, the bags come in about 10, customs is nothing, we re-check the bags to Savannah and then breeze through security back into the airport in 5 minutes. That was amazing! All this means we’re in the United Club by 10AM. Which is nice because our 1:16 flight is now 2:50. Here we go….
Coffee, newspapers, snacks, bananas, visit with a colleague from my SunTrust days who is waiting to fly to St. Thomas (it is a small world!), then on to the beer and wine, more snacks, and finally head to the gate around 1:30. Everybody’s just hanging – we have the pilot crew, just not the flight attendant. Bad sigh! We walk the concourse just to get some circulation back in our bodies, then see the flight time has been changed to 2:12. Cool. We hustle back. Only to find the same situation. No FA.
Let the waiting commence! Departure at 2:30, 2:45, 3:00, 3:30, 3:55, 4:15….You get the drift. Finally I go back to the Club and get one of the agent’s to put us on stand by on the flight out Sunday at 12:20. I want to go on the 5:00 flight today, but it at the far other end of the airport, and the agent is afraid that our flight might go, but if we are all the way over at the other flight, we’ll miss them both. So, we go with Sunday standby.
Finally – the FA shows. He’s been here all along, was actually on the plane at 2:00 but was supposed to be on another plane to Chicago. Don’t ask – we don’t know where that CF happened. But nonetheless, we’re all relieved to finally be on the plane and ready to go. 5:00 pm, taxi out, watch all the emergency and police vehicles at the South African airlines plane (FYI - body found in wheel well), first in line for take off, ready, set start rolling, speed up, and rotate….or not! Just as we are about to get off the ground, wham, slam on the brakes. Abort! I’ll repeat – YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING US!
Seems there is an indicator light that the luggage door is open. So now we have to go back to the gate and get the luggage door checked out. Only, oops, there are no gates. We sit for a bit, then taxi over to the A terminal, where we finally pull up to a gate and the maintenance checks it out. Meanwhile, the United app keeps sending us all emails – your flight has had a gate change, you will now depart from A1C – uh, yeah, duh, we know, we’re on the plane! Your flight will now depart at 5:35. Ya think? We don’t!
After about 20 minutes, here comes the luggage racks. Crap – we’re done. The pilot comes on and tells us he’s working with the company, that they are thinking about scrubbing the flight but they are trying to find another plane for all of us. Ok. 5 minutes later, he comes back again and says the company has found another plane for us, we are to go to A1B gate and get on that plane – take our carry on’s from the rack, but they’ll transfer all our checked luggage. Well great! Let’s go.
All 47 of us troop off the plane and over to the other gate – and try to board that plane. Well, this is hysterical. The gate agent says, yes, this is the plane to Savannah, just show us your boarding passes. Great. We all start to scan our passes but they aren’t working. What? He says you have to get rebooked. We say what? No, the pilot told us they company found another plane for us at this gate and we were all to come here. Another 5 minutes of funny, but frustrating, conversation ensued and it turns out that the plane we are trying to board is the 5:13 scheduled flight, that has been delayed. I already know the thing is over sold and has at least 6 wait listed, so it’s a no go. This is not looking good!
Off we all troop to the customer service line – which is horrendous. Ed stays at the gate on the very slim chance the pilot and FA will show up with another plane! No surprise that doesn’t happen! So, now, we are all in line, we get an email telling us we are booked on flights on Monday – oh and btw – through Chicago! What? No way! After about 45 minutes, we get to an agent who tells us that actually Ed is booked on the Sunday 12:20 flight, I’m on standby, and we are both confirmed on the Monday flights if Sunday doesn’t work!
Jeez! Ed regales them with our exploits of the day, the gate agents love him! We ask for vouchers – and of course get them – hey – it was mechanical! Hotel for the night, vouchers for food (only $28, that’s not going to cut it for 2 meals, but it’s something) and they reassure us if we don’t make it out on Sunday, they’ll give us hotel and more food vouchers. Ok – well – what are you going to do!
So – out into the freezing freaking cold we go – to find the hotel shuttle. Thankfully we had the presence of mind to change out of our sneakers – but we don’t have our coats (calculated risk – too big for the carry one and we figured if something like this did happen – we’d only need to be outside briefly). We do have warm weather clothes with us though – because – yeah – we are always prepared and we saw the weather and actually thought we might get stuck in Tokyo!
The hotel is actually quite nice – the beds look fantastic – and if we weren’t so hungry we’d just jump in them right away. But we hit the restaurant instead and have a nice snack of chicken wings and fried green tomatoes (with a mustard sauce that makes us think we are still in Thailand – spicy!). But we ain’t in Chiang Mai anymore –this meal costs more than a week of food there – and it wasn’t anything to speak of. The vouchers cover the food and 1/2 a beer! Oh well – welcome home! Showers (heaven), bed (even heavenlier) and we will see what tomorrow will bring.
There you have it!
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