After A Delay, We Arrive Back Home

As I said in the last blog post, bittersweet is the correct feeling for both of us today. We are happy to be headed home to see our family and friends again (especially our cat, Loki) but we are sad to leave these crazy countries and adventures we are having every day.

Our biggest obstacle/stress today was our flight from Chicago to Minneapolis. To save money, we booked that flight separately from the Bangkok part. We had it all set up nicely with a 2.5-hour layover until they moved the timing of this last flight up. Now, we only had about 50 minutes to make our connecting flight. We thought we might be able to do it but it was going to take some luck to happen. Anyway, this was on our minds all day.

Packing up was pretty easy considering there wasn’t space to unpack anything in the room. We took all our gear to the bakery and had croissants again. It was a math problem figuring out how much money we needed for trains, how much money for breakfast, and how much money for snacks. We got the BTS Sky Train to the same station where our adventure initially began and then took the Airport Rail Link to the airport. 

Once we got to the airport, we checked in at a kiosk which saved a bunch of time. Then we waited in a terribly long line for security. We chatted with a group of women who had also been traveling around Thailand. It was fun to share stories. After making it through the security line, we had anooooother super long time to go through Border Patrol for Thailand. The whole process from arriving at the airport to getting to our gate was about 2.5 hours. Good thing we arrived early! I was kind of crabby during parts of this situation haha.

Our flight from Bangkok to Taipei was uneventful and time flew by because I read a really good book. The Taipei airport is kind of cool but has pretty crappy food options. We got some bun type things from a cafe for “dinner”. We are really loading up on carbs recently hahaha. 

We spent our layover time just hanging out around the airport trying to find somewhere comfy. We debated a lot about how to proceed with our Chicago flight later in the day. We found a flight from Chi to Mpls on Monday at Noon for $128 each. As a backup plan, I bought the tickets. Again, we thought we might be able to make the flight that night but I didn't want to wait all day in Chicago. It felt good to have the insurance of another flight just in case. 

It's a good thing we bought those extra tickets because our flight to Chicago from Taipei was delayed 15 minutes. That's like no time at all for most people but those 15 minutes ended up being very important to us. The actual flight itself was okay. I watched 2 different movies and started to read a Star Wars book (it isn't that great). Lacey moved from across the aisle to sit next to me. That actually worked out better because she could sleep on me and I had some more space. The food wasn't very good.

We missed an incredible ending to the Vikings playoff game which sucks. I watched the highlights but it's not the same.

We got our backpacks all set up and ready to leave the plane and hurried down to customs. Because it was around 8pm on a Sunday night, the customs and border patrol area was not busy at all. We rushed through the kiosk and made it to the tram to Terminal 3. The tram arrived at Terminal 3 at the exact time the doors were closing for our plane. We didn't know what to do so we went up to the American Airlines desk. The guy basically said there's nothing they can do which SUUUUUUUCKED. 

We had resigned ourselves to not making the connecting flight all day but then we landed and our hope reignited. It hurt to have that hope crushed. 

Lacey got us a hotel (Country Inn and Suites) right by the airport. They had a shuttle come and pick us up. The hotel was exactly what you'd expect, not that nice but good enough. We got "dinner" of chips and cookies. The hot tub at the hotel was great and helped us relax. We slept very well on the non-hard bed. 

The breakfast was refreshing (American food like waffles!) and we took the shuttle back to the airport. I hate O'Hare Airport haha. We watched some more British Baking Show on Netflix. The plane was a little late because they had to de-ice the plane. We eventually, finally got back to the Twin Cities. Man, it's cold here. My mom and step-dad drove us to our cars in Blaine. 

We debated driving to Alexandria to get our cat or not and eventually decided to just do it. I'm glad we got him but we probably shouldn't have been driving. On the way back especially, we were just talking out loud to keep ourselves awake. 

It was a tumultuous end to an amazing trip. I'll post a true summary of the trip in the next couple days but this was an absolutely exhausting couple days of traveling and we still didn't feel totally good for a few days after.