Crazy Days (Thursday, August 9th - Saturday, August 11th, 2018)

After a quick trip to Colorado to help our youngest daughter move,  we had a tight time frame in front of us before leaving on our next adventure.  



We got up on Thursday morning at Steve's parents house and once again started thinking about the trailer.  When we originally packed the trailer a year and a half ago, we had no idea where our daughter would be in life nor did we fully understand where we would be, so we packed everything that we thought might be needed.  It turned out that we had packed too much into the trailer for her current needs, so when we moved her into her new apartment, we left quite a few items behind in Steve's parents garage.  So Thursday morning we repacked the trailer for the final time with all of our remaining treasures that needed to return to Havasu with us.  It took us a couple of hours, and then we hit the road home. 

Our greatest fear with this entire trip was making it back home without any truck or trailer problems.  It seems that no matter how well you take care of your things, or how well you prepare for a trip, things can still go wrong!  And a breakdown on this trip home could have been devastating because we were under a very tight schedule. 

As we passed each milestone in Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Arizona, a small weight lifted for us as we realized that we were just a little closer to our destination in Havasu.

We arrived home a little after midnight on Friday morning, and jumped in bed for a few hours.  When we got up we started unpacking our suitcases, doing laundry and then repacking again.  We are once again using our packing cubes, which simplify our lives immensely, allowing us to cross pack our clothes between our suitcases, but still not get everything all mixed up.  We had 70 pounds of "stuff" between the two of us, and it is everything we will need for the next three weeks.  It kind of makes us wonder why we still have so much other stuff in our lives!

After getting repacked, we pushed the trailer up into the garage and just left it there until our return.  We knew we could unpack it later and save ourselves some time.   

The other obstacle we knew we had during these crazy days was that there was no food in the house since we had been gone for three weeks in Colorado.  So after a breakfast of toast, and a lunch of grilled peanut butter and jelly, we managed to get everything done before dinner time so that we could go out and enjoy a nice relaxing dinner, a quick RZR ride up in the desert, and a quick drink with friends before calling it a night.  

After a good nights sleep, we got up Saturday morning and headed for Los Angeles.  Luckily, our drive to LA also went very well.  We hit a lot of traffic once we were in the city, but it only slowed us down by about an hour.  We LOVE using the GPS, it has truly revolutionized driving in LA.  It is not an easy city to drive in even if you know the roads, so for someone that doesn't live here, the GPS is totally amazing!

We checked into our usual Holiday Inn Express hotel near LAX, eager to stretch out a little bit.  We decided to walk to our favorite nearby Thai restaurant (Ayara) and pick up some dinner.  It is only about 1/2 mile away and gave us a great chance to stretch out our legs a little bit.  After about 1,400 miles of driving over the last few days, we were definitely ready for a good walk.

The restaurant did a great job of packing up our dinner for our hotel takeout, providing us with plates, bowls, spoons, forks, chopsticks and condiments as well as our amazing dinner.  It was a meal packed for royalty.

It's been a couple of crazy days, but it will all be worth it in the end.  Stay tuned for the start of our next adventure as we make our was to Beijing, China!

Steve went to China in 1995 as part of his MBA program.  He loved the country, but was also shocked by some of what he experienced.  He has always said that it was a life changing experience for him and has always wanted to take me there to experience it for myself. The time is finally here!  So China, here we come!!!

Viva Los Angeles (Wednesday, November 2nd, 2016)

We have decided to fly into Los Angeles a day early.  We have learned from past travel that if we arrive a day early into our departure city, we get a good nights sleep before taking off on the long flight ahead of us.  It helps us immensely with our adjustment to the new timezone and the confusion that is likely to occur on the other end.

I entitled this post Viva Los Angeles, because while we were in Lake Havasu City a few weeks ago, they were experiencing a lot of seismic activity in the Salton Sea area of California.  This is the area where the San Andreas Fault meets with many other faults, and is an area of great concern when any of those faults become active. 

From October 1st to October 4th, the City of Los Angeles, and all of the surrounding cities were on earthquake alert. According to the news in Havasu, an earthquake has not occurred in that area for around 300 years, and do to this increase in in seismic activity, they raised the chances of an earthquake from 1 in 6000 to 1 in 100.   But after a few days, the seismic activity slowed down, and we haven't heard any more about it since we returned home, so I guess the countdown continues.  And as far as we know LA is still in tact!

Steve's parents drove us to the airport and we went in to the counter to check our bags.  They have a new process, where you have to log into machines and print out your own luggage tags. It's really easy, and saves a lot of time at the counter.  It was just confusing today because no one knew about it, so everyone went to the counter and got turned away to go get their luggage tags before they could return to the counter.

When we got off the DIA train between the main terminal and concourse C, we noticed a man who looked very lost, so we approached him and asked if we could help. He showed us his ticket which said he was on flight 1404 to Houston, so we took him over to the departures sign to help him find his gate and to our surprise his flight didn't show up on the board.  So we looked more closely at his ticket to make sure he didn't have the wrong day.  He had the right day, and his ticket said gate C25, so we walked him over to that gate to see what we could find out.  

As we were walking, we asked him where he was from as he said Chihuahua, Mexico.  He was on his way home.  When we got to gate C25, they affirmed that we had him at the right gate, so we left him there to wait for his flight.  He was so appreciative of our help, and we are just hoping that if we get that lost on our journey someone will have mercy on us and help us out as well. 

As we headed to find our own gate, we noticed that there was a new restaurant on the C concourse.  It was called Tamales by La Casita. 



We ordered a tamale plate and a steak burrito bowl.  They were both good, but the tamale plate was amazing, and it was only $6.75. They had even smothered the tamales with green chili for us at no extra charge.  We loved it!  We'll have to remember this place for our next trip through DIA.

What's left of the tamale plate.  It was great!

We got our order to go and and filled our water bottle in the airport after we got through security, it's a good thing we did.  The flight was so rough that they were never able to do the in-flight service, so we never got any snacks or drinks for the whole flight.  

I'm sure everyone around us hated us as we ate our Mexican food and drank our water on the plane, but we were very happy to have it.

We left Denver at noon and landed in LA at about 1:30 pm and caught the shuttle to our hotel.  We took a short walk and then enjoyed a Tecate by the pool as we tried to make this day in LA count as the start of our vacation.



When dinner time rolled around we decided we just wanted something easy, so we walked around the corner to the Sizzler Steak House.  

As we were walking over, we noticed a truck parked on the street and Steve said "That truck was there last November when we were here."  We thought that was kind of strange, so we took a picture. We'll see if it's still here next year.

It's a pretty memorable looking truck

When we got to the restaurant, we each ordered the salad bar.  We didn't set our expectations very high, but were pleasantly surprised. They had a really nice salad bar with a large variety of items as well as a lot of pre-made salads.

Salads we made from the salad bar

Pre-made Sweet potato pomegranate salad, Yum!

They brought us garlic toast to go with our salads, and kept clean plates and soup bowls coming.  They also had a soft serve ice cream bar for dessert.  

We're not usually big buffet people, but the salad bar really hit the spot tonight.  

When we got back to the hotel, we took a quick dip in the hot tub and then went back to our room to watch the Country Music Awards and the final game of the world series on TV.  We had to keep flipping back and forth so we wouldn't miss anything.  Right now the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians are tied at 6-6 in the 9th inning.  Yikes!

Although this was just a quick stop on our way to Cambodia we really tried to get our vacation started right. Now we'll call it a night and start out early tomorrow morning on the next leg of our journey.

Thailand - Flight from Los Angeles to Denver (Tuesday, November 17th, 2015)

We had a great time talking to our youngest daughter last night. We have communicated with both of our girls and our parents throughout the trip via wifi texting and face time, but it was great to finally have time to really talk to her on the normal telephone.

We took time to use the hot tub at the Holiday Inn Express in Los Angeles, and try to get ourselves very relaxed, and then we poured our tired bodies into bed.  We couldn't figure out how we could be so tired after sleeping so much on the plane, but we were able to sleep through the night, and didn't wake up until 5:00 this morning.

We enjoyed a nice complimentary breakfast the next morning, and still had some spare time before we needed to be at the airport, so we took a really nice walk through one of the neighborhoods by our hotel.  So many beautiful plants grow in California that don't grow in Colorado.  It makes we a little envious since I love to garden!  

We finally caught our shuttle and headed to the airport with hope in our hearts that our flight wouldn't be delayed or cancelled once we got there.  Our prayers were answered, and we took off on time. The flight went very smoothly and as we got over Colorado, we could see the beautiful snow that mother nature had dropped the night before.

Snow on the ground in Denver as we approached for landing!

More snow!

When we landed we picked up our luggage and headed out to catch our shuttle.  It was a little cold since I really had not brought any Colorado appropriate shoes, but we did just fine.  

Our car in the parking lot near the airport! 

I wasn't very prepared for the snow!

A front view of our car in the lot....no fun!  A little clearing and scraping required!

It took us a few minutes to clear the snow from the car and get on our way to our home.  We had to laugh about the welcome home present God had given us!

What a Great, Wonderful, Fantastic adventure we have had for the last three-weeks!  Now back to shoveling!

Thailand - Flight from Bangkok to Los Angeles (Saturday, November 16th, 2015)

We had a chance to sleep in this morning for the first time in almost three weeks.  Oh my did that feel good!  

We finally got up and enjoyed our breakfast in Bangkok at the Century Park Hotel where this whole adventure began. Many of the people from our tour were in the dining room so we had one final chance to say goodbye before returning to our room for showers and packing.  

As we looked out our hotel window, we noticed some construction on the roof of the temple below us.  They were re-roofing it, using the same bamboo scaffolding we have seen so many times before, only this time, it was set up on a slanting roof.

Nothing scary about this right?!!

Crazy!

All of the hotels we have stayed in for the last three weeks have had the blowdryers hidden away in drawers, so we would go on an adventure each morning to find the blow dryer.  So this morning when I got out of the shower, I started going through drawers looking for the blowdryer.  Steve started the search as well but was also unsuccessful.  So Steve went on the search for our housekeeper.  He found her in the hall not far from our room, and started doing sign language for the blowdryer.  She immediately pulled out a toilet plunger (that must be the most common issue she runs into), but thankfully that wasn't our issue, so next she pulled out a spare bottle of water, but that didn't help either.  Steve finally got her to understand that it was the blow dryer, so she followed him back to the room, thinking that ours was broke.  She walked into the bathroom, pulled the blow dryer off the wall in the bathroom, where it had been conspicuously stored the entire time, and turned it on.  It worked like a charm.  

At this point, we realized how tired we must really be, and were so embarrassed that we didn't see it there, so we quickly gave her a nice tip and sent her on her way.  We both laughed so hard after she left that we didn't see it right there on the wall!  

While I finished getting ready Steve ran out and picked up our final iced mocha of the trip from 7-11 just down the street from our hotel.  We bought coffee in every city we visited, and some of them were quite expensive, but none of them even came close to being as good as the double shot mochas we got in Bangkok at the 7-11.  Amazingly enough, they have a true espresso machine that they use to make them.  And the only 7-11 where we could find coffee was in Bangkok.  None of the 7-11's in the other towns we visited had the machines.....darn!  And the best part was that they cost us 30 baht each, less than $1.00.  Oh are we going to miss these!!

Once we were packed up, we made our way down to the lobby, checked out of our room, and waited for our airport transport.

Hotel checkout was at 12:00 and so we waited in the lobby for our our shuttle to arrive at the hotel at 12:30.  In true Gate-1 fashion our driver showed up about 15 minutes early and came into the lobby looking for us.  Once he found us, he pulled up the van and we got in, so it was such an easy morning.  We were on our way to Suvarnabhumi International Airport.

The Bangkok International Departure terminal is very big but very easy to navigate.  We walked in and looked for the departure screen.  It lists departure time, followed by flight number and then check-in counter.  We proceeded to our check-in counter for our boarding pass and to check our luggage.  They were also able to check our seat assignments  and luggage all the way through to Los Angeles.  As we worked our way through the airport, we had to show our boarding passes and passports four different times, so we learned to just keep them handy.

The Bangkok International Departures Terminal is very big

As we entered the international departure terminal, we were greeted by signs to help us find our way.

The departure screen

Our flight is the third one down, flight CZ3082.  We were directed to isle "U" for our check-in counter

The bright yellow signs mark the check-in rows

Once we found our check-in row, we just looked for the China Southern Check-in windows

The international departure terminal is beautiful!

Looking for our gate.  Not a bad view!

Our China Southern plane left Bangkok at 3:35 pm and landed in Guangzhou, China at 7:20 pm (on-time). We had a two-hour layover in Guangzhou, and were supposed to take off again at 9:30 pm, but we had a medical issue on our flight after one of the passengers got hit in the head by a bag.  

We spent about an hour at the gate as the doctors examined the passenger and finally gave her clearance to fly.  The flight crew took good care of us as we sat waiting for our takeoff.  The plane was air conditioned the entire time, and the flight crew provided drinks if we wanted them.  Our pilot made up much of the lost time in flight, still allowing us to arrive on time in Los Angeles, California at about 6:30 pm on November 16th (the same day we left Bangkok).

Our flight home was interesting, in that we remained on Asia time for most of the flight.  When we boarded the flight, it was about 9:20pm.  After we got in the air, they fed us a nice meal, and then at about midnight, we settled ourselves for sleep.  So we ended up sleeping for most of the flight, then when we awoke, they fed us a nice breakfast, we flew awhile longer, and then landed in Los Angeles at about 6:30 pm. 

We collected our luggage without issue at the carousel: 

One of our bags that held all our worldly possessions for the last three weeks!

We called the hotel shuttle as we made our way through the airport, so he was waiting for us when we exited the airport.  Again, we will stay a night at the Holiday Inn Express in Los Angeles before heading home on Southwest Airlines tomorrow morning. 

We received a text from our oldest daughter (she is trying to fly out of Denver International Airport today to go see her husband for Thanksgiving), and she said that they aren't allowing many flights into the airport due to the weather.  They are trying to get as many flights out as possible, so she is hoping to get out okay.

Our daughter will drive out and leave the car at The Parking Spot (an offsite parking lot for airport travelers).  We will then fly in tomorrow and pick it up.  We all get nice trips, and only have to pay for a day of parking.  Not bad!  She just sends us a picture of where the car is parked, and we let the shuttle driver know.

Although we slept through most of the flight, when we got to the hotel, it was time to sleep again.  And believe it or not, we were ready for more sleep.  But even more importantly at this point, we were both really hungry.  

Unfortunately there are no restaurants very close to our hotel, except for McDonald's, which is right across the street, so for the first time in probably 15+ years, I was treated to a McDonald's cheeseburger and fries.  Since I am kind of a health food nut, I struggled with this concept a little bit, but hunger won out.  It was such a big day in our lives that we even sent a picture to our girls, who thought the world must be coming to an end with mom eating McDonald's!!!!

This sure isn't Thai fast food!

We got a good laugh out of our dinner and headed back to the hotel.  We're very tired, but mostly just mixed up on our time.  I'm sure it will take a little time to get back to normal, but for now we'll try and get a good night's sleep.

Leaving for Thailand (Sunday, November 1st, 2015)

We both got a great nights sleep!!!!  So our first big hurdle is tackled and we feel great!  We had coffee by the swimming pool this morning at the hotel. 

A very nice man from Jordan was kind enough to take this picture for us

And then ate our complimentary breakfast and went for a walk (in the opposite direction from last night). We ended up in a neighborhood park where the local kids were playing soccer.  

Then we took a soak in the hot tub to prepare our poor bodies for the 20+ hours of travel ahead of us.  

On our walk last night we discovered a tiny little Ethopean restaurant, so we went back there for lunch.

They offered Ethopian and Mediterranean Food

There was a large outdoor patio, surrounded by this beautiful vine.  Indoors was very hot, so we opted for patio seating, but it was the smoking area, so we sat way off by ourselves.

It was a fabulous lunch, although the atmosphere left a little to be desired.

We left Los Angeles, California (LAX) on November 1st at 10:30 pm on China Southern Airlines, and will arrive at 5:40 am on November 3rd in Guangzhou, China (CAN), where we will have a 3-hour layover.

Our ride (Airbus 380) to Guangzhou, China.  Quite comfortable and very professional staff.

Los Angeles - Getting to Thailand (Saturday, October 31st, 2015)

We have found that we struggle with sleep the night before we leave, every time we travel internationally, partly because we’re excited for the trip, and partly because we can’t turn our minds off. We spend the entire night trying to think of something we might have forgotten. Then you are awake for an extended number of hours as you travel.  Upon arriving you are exhausted and trying to make decisions and navigate in your new surroundings.  Not a good way to start your trip.....we know from past experiences!

So we’ve decided that we are going to do it a little different this time. We are traveling into Los Angeles the day before our flight leaves for Thailand, in hopes that it will help us turn our brains off so we can sleep.  

In general the basic flights offered by Gate-1 to Thailand leave from Los Angeles, and Gate-1 will either book your flights from Los Angeles, or they will book your flights from your place of origin.  For us, the flights that Gate-1 was going to put us on from Denver to Los Angeles were very expensive, so we decided to find our own flights from Denver to Los Angeles.  By flying into Los Angeles a day early and staying at the Holiday Inn Express overnight, we were able to travel much cheaper than if we had needed to fly into Los Angeles on Sunday.  Again, these are the perks of being retired.  Flexibility in travel will save you a lot of money and may even add a fun extra day of vacation to your trip.

A picture out the airplane window as we flew over.  Winter is definitely making an appearance in the Colorado mountains

The top of the picture is the Flagstaff, AZ Mountain bottom is the start of the Grand Canyon

Bad picture, but we flew over Lake Havasu City.  You can see the river, lake and island.

We left Denver at 2:25 p.m. and landed in Los Angeles at about 3:30 (one-hour time change), in time for a nice evening.  We caught the hotel shuttle at LAX, and were at the hotel in no time.  Since we have been part of the hotel perks program for some time, we are always offered the best available room at our time of check-in.  This time we were give a top floor suit.  It definitely met our expectations and will make our stay very comfortable.  

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We were also offered a late checkout, which we really appreciated since our flight doesn't leave until 10:30 tomorrow night.  

After getting settled into our room, we decided to take a walk and check out the sights around our hotel.  The weather was beautiful, so we really enjoyed our stroll and were able to find a few places that looked good to eat.  

We came back to the room and got cleaned up a bit and then went back out to a Persian restaurant we found during our stroll.  It was interesting in that it was two restaurants in one.  The first was called Jino's and served Italian, the second was Pars and served Persian food.  They handed us both menus as we walked in, so we could choose which type of food we wanted.  We both chose Persian Kabobs.  They brought them family style, which was nice. We really enjoyed it, but would have preferred a few more vegetables.  

Soup and Salad for starters

Beef and Lamb kabobs with grilled vegetables and rice

 And the view from our room was beautiful, making for a great end to a great day!

Beautiful view from our room, back toward the airport