The 36 hour day

Or maybe it was a 12 hour day that took 36 hours?  Haven't quite figured out the time change math :)

So, on Tuesday,  around 3:00pm, I found myself joining Mat for a swig of Moscato before getting on the airport shuttle.  See, our 18 year old Nephew is house-sitting, and we felt like it was our duty to ensure that there was no alcohol in the house before we left, so we took one for the team and downed the 1/4 bottle that had been in our fridge for a couple weeks.

The drive to the airport was uneventful, except that the shuttle driver wasn't a crazy driver, which was rather different than I had expected!  We got on our flight, got a spot in the front (Southwest Airlines), which is rare, and headed west.  Our steward was cranky at first, but once we got in the air, he was a sweetheart.  We got a couple drinks each, since we had free drink coupons that would expire, and then gave our last coupon to an older gentlemen who was sitting next to River and whom had smiled through not only spilled peanuts, but also a spilled Sprite from River's table :)
Every time we asked if it was time to give him our drink coupons, the cranky steward said "No, no"
 and shooed us away, and so we still have a pocket-full of coupons.  River barely said a word the whole ride.  He read through the entire "Newcomers guide to the afterlife" book (one of 6, yes 6 Daniel Quinn books that we had filling up our backbacks).  He tried to get us to "discuss it" with him, and was annoyed by the fact that we couldn't remember every details from having read it probably a decade earlier.  Mat has since re-read most of it, just so he could hold a sensible conversation with River about the book.  It seems it paid off, as they spent an hour this evening discussing good spin-off stories for the novel...

Anyway, we arrived in LAX, got our luggage (a lot of luggage, for 4 people for 6 weeks), and found the shuttle to the hotel.  The shuttle took 50 minutes to arrive and then due to traffic, took 30 min to get to the shuttle.  We found it just past the 10 oclock closing time of most restaurants, and so ordered food.  An hour later, we got a call from Eatstreet (how we ordered), saying that they couldn't contact the restaurant.  We decided it was too late to re-order, and so Mat and I walked to a chicken place across the road to get food for everyone.  Lights were on, door was closed.  We had just missed it closing at 11!  We ended up with a meal from 7-11 that was way better than we had expected.

We had a close-call with one of our backpacks which included money, Mat's wallet, a computer, and a laptop.  Luckily, we just left it in the hotel lobby and the security guard had found it, so no harm done!

When we woke up on Wed. morning, I had a pretty sore throat and as the day progressed, I felt progressively worse until I was sure that I had caught, and was spreading, some nasty bug like strep or something.  We left the hotel around 12:00 PST on Wed afternoon and made our way to the airport.  We again had an hour wait for the shuttle but once we got there, we got everything checked and through security without incident.  Our flight left a little after 5:00 PST and arrived in Taiwan approximately 15 hours later.  The flight was much nicer than I had expected.  We had movies, music, and good food.  Yes, I said good, can you believe that?  We were served two meals and several snacks.  Unfortunately, Mat had to sit about 10 rows back from the rest of us,  and enjoyed the pungent aura of a very friendly man sitting next to him.  It wasn't bad, though.  We both watched several movies, took naps, and stuffed our bellies.

Upon arriving in Taiwan, we found our way to the in-airport hotel.  It was inside of customs, but you still had to pass through a security check.  They found some small scissors in mom's suitcase and insisted that she check them or throw them away.  Apparently, they don't allow scissors of any length in Taiwan.

We got to the room and found it quite large.  It only had a large and small bed, but we found that we could use the box-springs of the small twin bed for a forth bed, and so we all slept fairly comfortably.  Before going to bed, Mat realized that his phone was missing.  At one point, a Stewardess on the plane woke Mat up by pushing a food tray in his face.  This knocked over his bag and he now feels pretty sure that this is when he lost his phone.  We talked to the airline the next morning, and they looked, but found nothing.  Oh well, it was not a horrible loss.  It was not Mat's normal cell and although it was a good working Motorola Atrix, it had been my work phone at my previous job, and they had given it to me when I left.  Therefor, we hadn't invested any money into it, and so it was a recoverable loss.  Since there are always 2 or more of us together, it seemed unlikely that Mat would need to replace it, so we are leaving it as missing for now and not trying to replace it, unless we get a great deal on another phone while down here.

We got around 2-4 hours sleep at the Taiwan airport and then left for Bali.  We were finally getting excited, knowing it would be here soon!

We arrived in Bali at about 3:00pm Indonesian time, on Friday afternoon.  About 1am Central, and 11pm Thursday for you west-coasters.  However, it took us a couple hours to make it to our room and another couple hours to get settled, by which time it was a good time to sleep.

While settling in, we realized that we were missing the suitcase with all of Mat's clothes!  Sadly, the only thing he wanted to do when arriving, was to change into some shorts!  At least he had some trunks in my suitcase and so could use those for then.  The owner of our house called the airport for us and found that we hadn't even picked up the suitcase from the carrousel!  I guess all those hours of travel, and lack of sleep, mess with your ability to count suitcases (which I had, twice, after collecting them!)

After realizing Mat's suitcase was lost, I suddenly realized that I hadn't seen another piece of our luggage that we had brought since we had boarded the plane in Kansas City.  This was a duffel bag with a ton of little gifts that we had brought for people we met here.  It also had most of our over the counter meds, like benedryl and Ibuprofin, as well as our sunblock, bug-spray, and various other things we had stuck in as we packed.  I haven't been able to talk to anyone at SouthWest yet, but we will either have it sent home, or try to get it here if it doesn't cost too much.  I am guessing that it is sitting, lonely, in the lost baggage area of LAX!

Oh well, we could be much worse off!  It could have been a lot of more important things!

Well, I have fallen asleep about 3 times while writing this, so I am afraid that I will have to continue tomorrow.  Stay tuned for our enjoyable first day in Bali!