Day 17, Saturday, 3/29/25, The Flight Home

We wake leisurely after 8 AM. The Resort cooks breakfast for us. We pack up for the final time. We have to check out by noon. Our flight isn’t until 6:30 PM but we will go to the airport and check our luggage in. Then look for something to while the time away.

We get to the airport at 12:30. Luggage checked in by 1:30. We walk what seems to be miles through the airport and find the VIP Lounge. $30 each later and we have 3 hours of comfort with food, drinks and electricity.

So I get all my photos into the computer and start to sort them. When our time is up, we walk to the gate, what seems like more miles. We get there just in time to be ushered down stairs to the gate seating. It’s now 6:00 PM and we should board soon.

We have a 2 hour flight to Hong Kong and a 16 hour flight to LAX. Can’t wait for this torture!

I have my sleeping pills at the ready and many various snacks. My noise canceling headphones are in the top of my backpack. I’m good to go!

So we board the first plane to Hong Kong. It’s only a 2 hour flight and everything goes smoothly. We land in Hong Kong and leave the plane. We walk through the airport and the signs all tell us we must go through Security and Customs. I vaguely recall this from the beginning of our trip. But we follow the signs and go through Security and Customs. We do see some signs for “Transit” but don’t understand them. We ask a security person and are told to go through Security and Customs.

Suddenly, after following instructions, we find ourselves outside the secure part of the airport and we hold back the desire to panic. Now we have to go back through Security and Customs again and our time is running short. But we steel ourselves and go through. I get to Passport Control and I look up as Elee goes through. But my Passport isn’t accepted. Elee looks back at me. I mouth the words, “I’m screwed, it won’t scan” and she looks worried. A guard tells me I have to go through the manual line. Luckily (or unluckily), there isn’t a line. The guard takes my Passport and starts to review it. He asks me where I am traveling to and I tell him Los Angeles. I explain what happened with our misunderstanding the signs and all we are doing is changing flights. I give him my boarding pass and explain I have no time left. He seems sympathetic and understanding and processes me through.

We have traveled fairly extensively and I think other, less traveled people, will make more mistakes than we do. We don’t run, but we walk fast and it’s another mile or so to our next Gate. We arrive at the Gate just as our loading time arrives. We have made it! We have missed flights before but this one we have paid for extra leg room for the 16 hours it will take to get home. We board and Elee gets the Aisle Seat and I get the Window Seat. The Middle Seat (we call it, ‘Monkey in the Middle’) is empty.

We watch as everybody boards and stows their Carry On Bags overhead. The plane is filling up. The middle seat remains empty. Then this lovely lady walks up and identifies the middle seat as hers. She is not only very nice and pleasant, she exudes niceness. The only problem is, she weighs somewhere between 350 and 400 pounds. Now, I’m not one to judge people, I love everyone. But when she sits down, she fills her seat and she flows into one third of my and Elee’s seats. We all know that airline seats are minimum sized to begin with. Now we only have two thirds of our seats to ourselves. Good thing we can stretch out our legs!

So here’s where I came prepared. The plane takes off and we are served a meal within the first hour. After finishing that, I take a sleeping pill. Then I inflate my neck pillow and pull the airline supplied blanket over my legs. I put on my headphones. I lean against the window and close my eyes. The sleeping pill does it’s job (Thank you Dr M!) and I do fall asleep. When I wake, I see something that normally would terrify other travelers, I see on the video screen (that I had set to the ‘Flight’ channel that tracks the plane), “Flight Time Remaining, 4 Hours”. I am thrilled!

Why am I thrilled? It’s because the flight is a 16 hour flight and there’s only 4 hours left! I have done quite a few 16 to 18 hour flights and, for the most part, have stayed awake for all of them. What I saw on the flight screen told me that I stayed awake for an hour and then I must have actually slept for 10 to 11 hours! The last 4 hours are absorbed by watching a couple movies and we are served another meal about an hour before landing. Remember we only have two thirds of our seats to ourselves! I fare better than Elee as she is pushed towards the aisle and I am laying against the window. Elee says she didn’t sleep but then she tells me that the flight was only 8 hours. That tells me she got 8 hours of sleep! Good for her!

Now here’s the real kicker! We have completed a Bucket List Item that we didn’t even know we had! We take off from Hong Kong at 1:00 AM on Sunday, 3/30/25. We land in Los Angeles at 9:30 PM on Saturday, 3/29/25. We Time Traveled!!!

We deplane and bid our ‘Monkey in the Middle” lovely lady adieu. (she really was a very lovely lady!). Back in LA, we are consistently amazed at technology as the screens and cameras we walk up to, look at us and without showing any passports or paperwork, greet us and say, “Welcome home, Mr Don (insert my real name here)”!

Our great friend, Tony, is on his way to get us. I text him (I put my home Sim Card in my phone a couple hours before landing) when we land and he tells me he is 20 minutes from the airport! Perfect! We clear Customs with our Trusted Traveler status and don’t have to deal with long lines. Our ride home with our good friend is full of exhausted travel stories and promises of sharing more!

Goodnight my Blog Friends!