"Without a hitch" is the furthest thing from the truth when thinking of ways to describe the way the start of our 2 month Asian adventure went off. It made us wonder if we were even meant to go or if we just needed to perservere long enough to prove ourselves worthy of the adventure!
After thoroughly enjoying our Christmas at mom and Harv's on Boxing Day, spirits high and all smiles as we were about to say our goodbyes and sleep before leaving bright and early in the morning Harv suggested we check the status of our flights. Chris agreed and having sorted this out ahead of course, he flipped open his blackberry as all notices were automatically going to him. So one second later with a ghost-white face (which immediately starts to piss me off that he would joke about this) says, "our flight is cancelled." "the one from here to vancouver. (We should have expected this as flights have been cancelled all week but we arrogantly believed this could not affect us, so, with the same sort of helplessness you feel when someone dies or something burns, things that you can't understand or control, we felt panic and searched the internet for reasons and other flights and waited on hold for hours for answers that did not come. All were full so we knew we would miss the rest of our connections. We told our families not to come to the airport in the am and went home to sleep less than 3 hours before heading to the airport to figure things out. Arriving early and beating lines was our saving grace but just the beginning of the mishaps. No flights to Van for 3-4 days, i wanted to puke thinking of the precious days that would be wasted, but we eventually were re-routed to Toronto-Hongkong-Bankok instead of Van-Tokyo-Bangkok, and would only be a full day behind schudule. We also were able to try for an earlier standby flight to TO which we did get, so we thought we'd get a day to spend in TO and had to get a hotel either way since we wouldn't leave till the following morning. So as things go the plane was "ground stopped" due to fog. An hour later we headed out and right before arriving the pilot announces "you may have noticed the plane has been circling TO for a while" ( i only noticed clouds). There is only a 1/4to 1/2 mile visibility and a shortage of airspace. We have to be directed in so we will circle until we run out of gas and if we can't land we will go to Buffalo. After remembering this is not a war, we started thinking that we would instead be able to spend the day at Niagra Falls! Even better. But NO. .... We instead were held hostage in the plane with broken air conditioning, and were unable to even walk on the tarmac because we were "in our own little piece of Canada" on American soil without proper paper work. The sickest thing was that a few people had final destinations of Buffalo and had to wait, go back to TO, only to turn back around! I imagined them looking at their houses ( we could see houses from the runway) and making a run for it with gunfire on their heels! It was stuffy and suffocating, people were sweating and starving as we sat there for 5 hours! We luckily were at the very back where they cracked a door and sucked in all the fresh air we could with the occasional breezes. Another retarded rule was that the flight attendants had to man the doors so noone could even go there and cool off. There were little babies with bright red cheeks and everyone had greasy hair. Bottled water ran out. We also were lucky enough to be beside the only bathroom on this excessively narrow plane, and we saw the entire aircraft line up to pee at least 2-3 times hovering over our personal space. The engines and some electrical problems were being worked on which meant the water in the bathrooms was down so the smell became lovely as well. Anyhow about 11 hours after leaving we made it to a great hotel, exhausted we ate and crashed.
The flight to Hongkong was great as far as 15 hour flights go. We made it on an early flight to Bangkok but our luggage didn't come with us in time!..... I couldn't sleep until it was delivered to our hotel a few 6 hours later!!! but its a new day, we are well rested, and ready to go..... we are going to try to make a train for Laos.
We are excited for what will come next.. but we are here and ready to get going! Love to everyone back home....
Chris taking an awful pic of me first thing in the morning, in my bunk after a looong nite on the train
Finding out what's what
New Year's Eve
