Ugh, the last day of our honeymoon was, without a doubt, my longest travel experience, ever. We arrived at BKK around midnight of the 21st, and then spent the next few hours relaxing outside the ANA baggage check area while we waited for the check-in counter to open. We had Burger King for dinner, because it was the only open choice in the airport and we figured it would be a while before we could eat anything else substantial. I spent the next few hours reading ‘A Game of Thrones’ while Todd napped. At around 4:15 AM the check-in line opened up, so we checked our bags, got our tickets and went through customs and security.
ANA didn’t have a lounge at BKK, but we were able to get into the Royal Thai lounge after it opened at 5:15 AM. We had some snacks and some water to drink - they had a stock of the tasty egg custard buns I am such a fan of, so I had one as a treat. We then got onto our plane, and had an uneventful flight to NRT (Narita). I slept the entire way, having stayed up all night. I figured this was the best way to start getting back onto EST.
After arriving at NRT and going through security again (!) we spent about 20 minutes in the United lounge, waiting for our flight. We had some chicken nuggets and edamame, I was starving by this point since I hadn’t eaten anything on the ANA flight. We walked up to the gate for our flight to IAD (Washington Dulles) to learn that the entertainment system of the aircraft wasn’t working! This was pretty frustrating to learn; the only reason we were flying through IAD instead of ORD was that I had asked we be changed so we’d be able to fly on a plane with an entertainment system (the United 747 on the NRT-ORD route hadn’t been updated to have personal entertainment systems)! Things only got worse from there; Todd and I were not seated together, which wasn’t a huge deal when we thought we had an entertainment system. However, lacking entertainment systems, we had hours with nothing to do and we weren’t able to talk to each other. As we were each seated in a middle seat, we were unsuccessful at getting anyone to switch with us. Todd was luckier than I, as he was sitting between two smaller Asian gentlemen. I was, unfortunately, seated beside a huge man who crowded me in my seat. To add salt to the wound, the power outlets at my seat were also not working.
The plane took off, and I spent a while finishing ‘A Game of Thrones’. It was incredibly similar to the first season of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’, so much so I was actually pretty impressed with the adaptation team. Once I finished reading I spent a few hours napping, then I went back and finished writing journal entries for each day of the trip. This killed the battery of my little Acer laptop, so I then retrieved my magazines and proceeded to read through all of them, too. I was pretty bored by the time we arrived at IAD.
Upon our arrival my seatmate learned his connecting flight had been cancelled, which made me nervous about the chances of our flight getting out. There was a ton of snow on the runways, and it didn’t show any signs of letting up. After clearing US customs and retrieving our bags we arrived at the United lounge to discover that, luckily, our flight was still on time. After sitting down to charge our phones for a few minutes I looked back at the schedule screen to learn that our flight had been cancelled. I went up to the assistance desk in the lounge, hoping to get on the later flight to Toronto, but while I waited for assistance the status of that flight changed to Cancelled as well. I was getting ready for the worst.
After about a 45 minute wait I finally got to speak with an agent. I considered this to be a pretty reasonable wait, and I was thankful I still had access to the lounge - if I had to talk with a normal agent I probably would have had to wait hours before getting assistance. After some investigation the agent was able to get us booked out on a flight tonight to DEN (Denver), leaving IAD at 10 PM, then connecting onto a flight from DEN to YYZ that was scheduled to depart tomorrow morning at 8 AM. This would get us home by about 1:30 PM tomorrow; every other option involved a transfer through ORD and the earliest we would be able to get to ORD would be 6 PM tomorrow. We took the Denver option, as well as some food vouchers, and then on the suggestion of the agent we hiked over to Terminal B to get some food. Terminal B is newer than C (which we were in), and had much better food choices. We settled on Five Guys, and had a delicious burger and fries. This trip home wasn’t proving itself to be the healthiest of options, but we’ve had so much Thai food in the last couple of weeks that I figured a burger would be fine.
Our flight to DEN ended up leaving IAD about an hour late - first they had trouble loading the baggage onto the plane, then they decided to wait for some connecting passengers from Frankfurt. After delays at customs, however, they decided not to wait any longer for the Frankfurt connections and pushed back. We still had to wait to get deiced, so in the end the flight took off at 11 PM, about an hour late. We arrived without incident in Denver; I slept for the entire flight, but Todd found it less restful.
We went to the baggage section of Denver, hoping to be able to grab our bags so we could change our clothes and put on some fresh deodorant, however the baggage agent informed us our bags were checked through and weren’t available. I guess the agent at Dulles forgot to mark that down, even though we’d talked about it. Luckily the baggage agent provided us with little overnight kits which United has for passengers in situations like ours. After clearing security we went to a washroom and used the provided body wash to clean our faces and the provided deodorant to reduce our smell. We then walked to the gate, and have been sitting here for the last few hours killing time until we board. We watched ‘Mean Girls’ and an episode of ‘Archer’, and are planning on starting ‘Goldeneye’ in about 5 minutes. Our flight to YYZ is still showing as on time, so hopefully nothing stops us now! On the bright side, this detour to Denver should provide some more status miles! Maybe I’ll hit E50K this year!
After an uneventful flight from DEN to YYZ we cleared Canadian customs and went to retrieve our bags. After waiting for about an hour we discovered that our bags had not, in fact, left Dulles. Due to the weather they didn’t make it on to the plane with us, and it seems that the baggage agent at DEN chose not to break the news to us there. We were too exhausted to care, and left YYZ with the promise that the bags would be delivered to our apartment in the next few days. All in all, from the time we left Chiang Mai to the time we arrived in Toronto, we had been travelling for over 50 hours. It was a long and exhausting trip home, but we were so glad it happened on the return flight, and not the start of the trip. We now know that if we can survive the return flight experience, we can travel anywhere together.