In Transit

BEFORE LEAVING:

Here are some final photos from my time in Oahu:

The Waikiki beach that Kanoa and I snorkeled at:

My room at Kanoa’s!

Overlooking Waikiki at night:

AT HONOLULU AIRPORT:

So today is the big day. I wake up early for my 9:45 AM flight, Kanoa drives me to the airport, and I wait in line for about an hour to check in, only to discover that my plane takeoff has been changed to 1:20 PM!! Oh no!! That’ll teach me not to check the departure times before I go to the airport… silly Liz. I also found out that you can only take one carry-on, so my brilliant plan to bring all my really important luggage in a small duffel didn’t follow through either. Luckily they’re going to put all my luggage through to Singapore, so I won’t have to worry about checking it in again in Taiwan or Bangkok. I guess I’m going to be reading a lot of books since I have so much downtime in the airport and didn’t bring my DVDs. Again… silly Liz! Maybe I’ll just catch up on lots of lost sleep.

AT TAIPEI AIRPORT:

Stupid typhoons!! The plan was delayed for about 3.5 hours because of a typhoon in Japan, prompting me spend the entire flight worrying that I was going to miss my connection in Taipei and have some terrible travel story about shuffling airlines and desperately running through abandoned terminals to get to my plane on time. *deep breath* Luckily the delay ended up cutting into my 5+ hour layover, so I only have to hang out for 1.5 hours in Taipei before I get on the plane to Bangkok.

One of my three tasty meals on China Airlines (they definitely feed us well!):

Bidet at Japan’s airport! I’ve used the squat toilet before, but I figured I'd go a bit crazy and try the new-fangled technology:

Here’s my transit ticket from when we were delayed:

According to my computer, it’s 2:30 Tuesday morning in Hawaii, but it’s 8:30 PM on Tuesday in Taipei. I lost most of a day while traveling! How careless! But I still have my passport and plane ticket, and there’s free wifi in the Taipei airport so things are going well. I also bought a power adaptor, which apparently I don’t need for Taiwan. Sweet! Unless their voltage is different… in which case I’m going to regret plugging in pretty shortly. Hmm. Wikipedia says that I am good to go, and I don’t think I used a converter last time I was in Taiwan, so I think I’ll be ok. Singapore and Australia definitely need the converter though, so I stand by this investment.

I have a 7 hour layover in Bangkok, from 1:05 AM to 8 AM local time, so I plan on sleeping for most of that. Dang… I’ve been in transit for 17 hours now and I still have about 13 more hours to go!! I guess I should be happy that I’m more than halfway. Remind me not to get 4 connecting flights next time I fly to Singapore… I’m sure it will be worth it, but at the same time I’m not sure it’s worth it. Haha yes I might be getting delirious! But soon I shall be in Singapore and I’M SO EXCITED!!!