Saturday, July 19 - Who knew airline travel could be so fun!

This has been another day to remember! The day was 39 hours long, and the last few of those hours were not very fun.

Erdene arrived at the hotel early this morning! He had never been on time throughout the entire trip, but we expected and accepted that. He had promised us last night he wouldn’t be late, because he knew getting to the airport on time was very important. He didn’t disappoint!
We got to the airport at about 9:30 a.m., after doing a little bit of wandering so Daryl could get some final pictures of the city.

A billboard, in both alphabets, advertising Valley irrigation

We said a very sad goodbye. I was surprised at how close to the surface the tears were, but I didn’t let them fall. This family has been our constant companion for the past two weeks, and we could not have asked for more gracious, wonderful hosts. We had made some very good friends, and we don’t know when we’ll see them again. We offered an invitation to come and see us, and we will show them Colorado like they shared Mongolia with us.

Erdene, holding Khuslee, Annette, Bolor, and Daryl at the airport

We got checked into our flight (all the bags were the right weight this time!), and headed to the gate for a short wait before our flight to Beijing, which left at 11:25 a.m.

This was a short flight, just two hours, and I had a very pleasant visit with the gentleman next to me for much of the flight. He was from New Zealand, and had been in Mongolia since May setting up a tour company. I found it reassuring that he hadn’t picked up any of the language, either, and he had spent two full months there!

We had to go through immigration and security in Beijing, but our checked luggage had been sent all the way through to Los Angeles from UlaanBaator, so we didn’t have to worry about that. This airport is very nice, with everything built new in preparation for next month’s Olympics. We didn’t have any trouble finding things to do to fill our eight-hour wait.

We ate lunch at a very nice little café, and we were able to get wireless internet there, so went back for a couple of hours after some wandering and exploration.

We got on our flight at 8:30 p.m., and we were glad to see we didn’t have a seatmate so we could spread out a little for the long night ahead.

The flight to Los Angeles was 12 hours long and was pretty uneventful. We were offered a choice of Chinese or Western breakfast a couple of hours before landing. We wondered why Air China thought a pea omelet and a hot dog were a typical Western breakfast!

When we got to LA, we knew we had a very short window to get our bags, go through immigration, get through security, and catch our next flight. After booking this trip, Delta moved the return flight up 45 minutes, and that may not be enough time.

Things started out poorly. Our plane sat on the ramp, within view of a gate, for over 30 minutes before finally being allowed to disembark. We’d lost 30 minutes of our 1:45. We got through immigration with a little glitch, although it didn’t affect our schedule. They didn’t show that Daryl had left Beijing on this flight! Our official had a sense of humor about all of this, and got us through without any hassle, and it hadn’t cost us any time because bags were still not coming off the carousel. Ours did come fairly quickly, but another 20 minutes had passed. We went through our final immigration checkpoint, and a very helpful young man from TSA explained a shortcut across the airport to the Delta terminal, which was clear across the airport in a different terminal.

We hurried through with our cart piled high with bags, but got there five minutes too late. The flight had closed, and we couldn’t check in. That began a long saga of trying to get on any other flight on Saturday night, but every airline’s last flight was at 8:30, and that didn’t leave us much time again. A young lady from Delta explained our best bet was Frontier, but of course Frontier was in a different terminal building. We rushed over there, bags piled as high as a small Volkswagen, only to find that the Frontier staff had already left for the day, 45 minutes before their last flight was leaving!

We trudged back across the airport to Delta, and another very helpful lady there did a bunch of checking for us, and finally found a flight with two seats left that was leaving at 10:40 the next morning. The catch was, we needed to go to Frontier first for authorization (very long story!!) and then come back to Delta to check in. Boy, do we know LAX by now.

She guided us to a bank of lodging phones downstairs, and we began the process of trying to find a room for the night. We struck out our first three calls, but the young man at the third hotel gave me a number to the Radisson LAX, which he thought still had rooms. They did! We paid a fortune, but at this point didn’t care. We went out to catch the shuttle, but of course forgot which of the four hotels we had talked to actually gave us a room. We caught the wrong shuttle. That was fixed quickly, after a quick phone call and the offer of a nice tip. This shuttle driver dropped us off at someone else’s hotel, and we at least knew what the next few hours would hold.

We checked in, went up to the top floor restaurant for a very nice dinner, and then came back to the room. A call to Expedia, who we had used to book this flight, got things straightened out for us. If we had just called Expedia immediately when we reached the closed Delta flight, we might have been able to catch that Frontier flight Saturday night and get home on time. Oh well. We’ll get home late Sunday afternoon, and be able to laugh about all this later.