Asian Adventures, Part 1: China

We are almost settled back into our apartment from vacation. But we are not ready to go back to work tomorrow. We are still reminiscing about our amazing adventures in Thailand!

After some mask fun, we are ready for our adventures!

First, we'd like to apologize for not making calls before we left. The phone that Nicole was going to get didn't work out due to a policy change that happened about a month ago. It makes zero sense, but we just chalk that up to: we're in Korea.

Playing dress-up at Incheon Airport

Making masks at the Incheon Airport
for free!

We had a rocky start to our vacation. Getting to Thailand was a real hassle. We had to take 3 flights to get there... due to late booking & cheapest fees. Unfortunately, between flight number 1 & 2, we had a 14 hours layover in China. We were preparing ourselves for some alcoholic sleep in the airport but as we were walking to transfers, we were screamed at to go through immigration. We tried to tell them we had a transfer flight but they weren't having it. So then we spent about 30 minutes in immigration explaining our situation. Language barrier was fantastic. Then we had another issue because John has a visa for China & they were wondering why he wasn't using it. In the end we were stamped & allowed 24 hours stay in China. 

America really needs to step up their
airline snacks. This is standard for all
Asian airlines. 

Next step... where do we go?! When we walked out of the airport, we had not a clue what to do. None of us had taken any time to do any kind of research about China because we were planning on hotel airport. We were greeted by a few people outside of the airport doors asking us where we were going. We said we didn't know where we were; they're response: "Qingdao, Qingdao Airport". That was repeated multiple times but we at least knew that much! Somehow we managed a ride to a bar about 20 minutes away. Of all places, we landed in the "Korea town" of Qingdao, China.

McDonald's in Chinese

Chinese Yuan

Just chillin' at the P-Mart!

We drank & ate & met a couple of foreigners. One guy had been living in China for the past 15 years & had his 5 year old son with him. That boy was a little cutie. At one point he was standing next to a skinny tree, lifted up his shirt, dropped his pants, & said, "I just need to go pee pee, daddy." We were sitting outside of a market, it was fantastic. We all were dying laughing. We found out that Qingdao is where they make the Tsingtao beer. We also learned that Kunming, China (our next stop) is called "Spring Forever" because the weather is always fantastic there.

Chinese Yuan

The other foreigner we ran into helped us with finding a hotel. We went to 2 hotels that were just flabbergasted that we didn't have a reservation & they had no rooms left. The 3rd hotel we went to had one room left. It had been almost a 2 hour search & we had seen a woman holding a 9-11month old baby upright on a motor scooter, so we took it. We get up there & the first thing we all see is the bathroom. Why? Because it only had a glass wall & a sheer curtain to cover it. How convenient! 3-4 hours of sleep later we were checking out & in a taxi to the airport.

Oh no... China adventures are still not finished. We make it to Kunming, China & have a 2 hour layover. That 2-hour layover turned into a 5-hour layover! This caused us to miss our flight in Bangkok to Chiang Mai. None of us were happy. Not a single notice that the flight was delayed came on over the intercom but just showed up on the screen. No apologies were ever made. No reason was ever told as to why the flight was delayed for 3 hours. None of us will ever again fly with China Eastern Airlines. They were beyond rude & unreliable & we are going to be sure that everyone we know, knows this. After our experience in China, none of us have any desire to ever return again!

Notice the current time is already after the expected departure time of our delayed flight.
We still weren't boarding at this point.

THAILAND... FINALLY!!! As soon as we got into Thailand, all of our moods were instantly lifted. We found a flight to Chiang Mai for cheap from a very helpful woman. At the check-in counter, the man who gave us our tickets told us about Bangkok Airways lounge open to all Bangkok Airways passenger. We went to see what this lounge was all about. It was AMAZING! Free food (popcorn, brownies, crossiants, sandwiches...) & free drinks (coffee, cappuccino, tea, lemonade...) & free WiFi! The smiles on our faces were ridiculous.

We had finally made it to Chiang Mai & we were greeted by our tour guide, Lek & his wife. They took us to eat dinner at a Thai restaurant & then took us to our hotel. We checked in around midnight & then we had to be up & ready to go by 8:30 the next morning!

Much more to come on our Thailand adventures!