Here is Phaedra’s Facebook (spyware) post on their trip home. Hopefully, mine will be smoother.
Annika and I make our way home – Siem Reap > Shanghai > Beijing > Chicago > Birmingham – Our layover times range from 2 hrs 50 minutes to as little as 1 hr 30 minutes. Traveling is not for the faint of heart ❤️😓
We are told at check in that we will have to get our luggage from baggage claim in Shanghai. She almost sent them to Beijing first! Glad she caught it. She had the stickers on the luggage about to send them away. Whew that was close. She said we would have lost them.😳
Y’all China Eastern is serious. Annika and I were across the aisle from each other and since I had two empty seats beside me she wanted to come over there. So we were at cruising level for awhile so Annika snuck over. But since the fasten seat belt signs were on the flight attendant yelled sit down! Annika was seated before she even got the words out. She yelled at another in Chinese. Did you know you have to have seat arms down and ear plugs out if you are beginning to descend at all! 🤷♀️💺
When we get to Shanghai and after we load our 4 big suitcases (each about 51 lbs / 24 kg) plus our two carry-ons onto carts (thankfully they are free), we look for the correct check in counter. It’s early in the morning so we just kinda guess and hope we are in the correct line. Finally a couple of checkin agents arrive. I didn’t have to know Mandarin to know that even the Chinese in line with us were anxious and angry. We finally have our turn and run to get into security line to find our terminal/gate when the out of breath checkin agent pulls us out of line saying something is wrong with our checked baggage. 😰
He takes us to a room where another guy has mine and Annika’s suitcases with the wheels (not the giant duffel bags). He searches mine for I don’t know what. Zips it up and goes to Annika’s where he pulls out a knife Rickey bought her in Cambodia. He asks what is the purpose of it. Huh? We said it was a gift. So they decide to put it back and open mine again . Still not sure what they were thinking was there. 👮♂️😱
The gate agent thankfully escorted us through the priority security line, then a long distance via moving sidewalks and monorail where finally they were holding the plane for us! He ran with us the whole way.🏃🏻♂️🚝
We get to do the same thing in Beijing except this time we had to load everything on a shuttle bus and go travel at least 20 min to a whole other airport terminal location. We got to see some snow! ❄️Again I’m trying to figure out the time because we are cutting it close again! At least the carts are free again.🚌
We get to do it in Chicago of course again and go through customs. So we are looking where to go check in for Birmingham. Two people told us we would have to take another shuttle bus to another terminal. Yes it is cold again. 💨We weren’t dressed for all the cold, windy, snowy weather. Nice people did help us load and unload this time. Annika said because they were people who celebrated Christmas. 🎄When we arrived the carts weren’t free there was however. They wanted $6 a cart. We were right by the door and I could see the counter so I just dragged two duffel bags (50+lbs/24kg each) and rolled a suitcase of similar weight while Annika navigated three rollered suitcases (1 big and 2 smaller) plus we have backpacks. We got our work outs this trip!
When we got in we couldn’t get any assistance. The checkin lady said to scan our boarding pass (we already had our BHAM pass). It tried to charge us $568! I finally got her attention for help. (Again we don’t have much time and I have no idea how close we were to the gate). She said oh they already have the checked tags and she took them. So we ran to our gate and it was time for boarding but United being United the pilot was an hour late.👨✈️
When we arrived in Birmingham, we rented one cart for $5 and went to get our rental car Rickey had prepaid for us. But they said we had to have the physical credit card which we did not have. Cancellation fee would be $50 so naturally I spoke to a manager on their phone (we only had our Cambodian phone service). The manager waived the fee and reimbursed the prepay. But then when I went to rent another they noticed my driver’s license had expired and wouldn’t rent to us. Sure am glad we didn’t fly into Nashville and plan to drive like we did last time!🛬🙄
I called my daughter Jessica from their phone to see if she could come get us. She and her fiance’ came about an hour later.🚙
We made it home through the rush hour traffic. Rickey was going to open the garage door remotely since I didn’t have my house key. He did that when we came home in the summer. He couldn’t for some reason so I found a way in. Thankfully he could disarm the alarm so the police wouldn’t come. When I came in I heard an alarm but it was our old system so I unplugged that. I tried to turn on an outside light and I heard a loud pop and then smoke from switch and no light. While they were getting in suitcases I turned on the heat and a few minutes later our smoke alarm went off! This is all in the first 15 minutes yall ! But hey we are home safe and I would say sound but we are going on 30 something stress filled (physical and mental) hours without sleep!😴😣
These are just first world inconveniences.
– So glad we didn’t miss any flights!
– We had nice people sit beside us on all our flights.
– We knew our luggage made it to each connection because hello! we retrieved it ourselves and checked it on each connection!😊
Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18
Cambodia Stuff 