With Adam, traveling is always about logistics and timing. We’ve had some flights at the wrong times which resulted in some tears, so we try to fly at times where Adam is not too tired (if of course we have the option). We had planned to fly to Hong Kong at 7pm on Thursday night. I was a little nervous because Adam is asleep by 7:30 every day. I figured we would get to Kate’s by 10 and hopefully Adam would fall asleep before that on the plane.
We packed our bags and headed over to the airport nice and early. We got to the Manila Airport at 5pm for check-in, only to be told that we had no tickets to Hong Kong. It’s still unclear what happened but apparently we did actually purchase tickets but for some reason the ticket was returned and our money refunded. Note for future flights- confirm, confirm, confirm.
So now it’s 6pm on Thursday. We’re sitting in the airport with all of our luggage, no tickets to anywhere and a toddler who is nearing dinner and bedtime. The earliest flight we can get on is at 9 pm. It was only hour one and we already had to break out Olivia to buy us some time.
My impulse was of course to head home and to try to leave the following morning when we were all refreshed. After a lot of back and forth we decided to just go for it. This is another one of those times where I’m glad I listened to Randy and just took a risk. Adam, thankfully, fell asleep while we were checking in and stayed asleep until we landed in Hong Kong.
Thank you Manila for not having air conditioning in your airport. It was much better for Adam and me to sweat off a couple of pounds before eating up a storm in Hong Kong.
We landed in Hong Kong at 11pm and Adam woke up. Luckily, he was in a great mood. There are two ways to get into Hong Kong, a cab or a train and a cab. We decided to just take the cab….which led to sitting for 30 minutes in standstill traffic..while we watched the train whiz by. I was starting to think that someone didn’t want us in Hong Kong. But Adam was amazing the whole time. He has a new word- Wow. When he says it it sounds like- wooooooow. He said this over and over on our cab ride in. There were tons of cranes and tunnels and lights- all worthy of a wooooooow. There were also tons of trucks in our traffic and truck drivers who all loved waving back at Adam, also worthy of a wooooooow.
I knew we weren’t in Manila anymore when Kate sent me an email with directions to her place and attached this picture to show to the cab driver.
Thank goodness she sent this. The cab driver spoke not a lick of English. We’re so spoiled in Manila where everyone speaks English. I forget it’s not the same in the rest of Asia.
We finally arrived around 1:30 in the morning and were so happy to see Kate and Gavin and their comfy apartment. We were also happy of course to see Otis the dog. In fact, Adam was so excited about seeing Otis that it took another hour to get him to go back to sleep. He kept crying every time Otis wasn’t in the same room. But don’t worry, he gave us all a break and slept in until 7:15. And really who could blame him- look at this face.
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