The Big Flight

We had dinner on Sunday night then headed over to our hotel around 6 pm to catch the 6:40 pm bus to LAX. The bus was on time and there were no major issues getting back to the airport. Checking in was a bit chaotic but we managed to get it done without losing our cool.

We then ended up with a 3 hour wait at a gate that was completely under construction. Fun, fun, fun. For some reason the kids were wired and did nothing but run in circles for the whole time. This time around we managed to pre-board and the flight attendants let us have our pick of seats. We needed 3 windows for the car seats so ended up with 2, 3, and 2 in three rows. The kids all fell asleep shortly after take off and slept for the first 6 or 7 hours of the flight. On the flight they give you dinner at around 1 AM and then turn off all the lights and try to make the night portion of the flight last for the next 12 or so hours. Then they feed you breakfast right before landing. I guess it's there way of helping you adjust to the time change. But trying to keep three kids happy on a plane in the dark for that long is not easy ! However, there were no meltdowns and they didn't really get fussy till right near the end of the flight.

Once off the plane we had to go through customs. It was very quick as the line was short and all our visa stuff was in order.

Next up we had to collect our luggage and go through quarantine. This was much longer...They were searching a lot of bags and our flight was one of about 3 or 4 that arrived at the same time. Luckily we were not forced to unpack any bags , i think they took pity on us, or more likely they didn't really want to have to search our mountain of bags.

When we made it out our van was waiting for us. It was an 11 passenger minibus with a trailer. We loaded up and the driver delivered us to our short term accommodation house in about 45 minutes.