Monday night, with 6 backpacks, 6 carry-ons, and 1 suitcase, we headed to the airport in Salt Lake City. (Pro packing tip: pack whole outfits in gallon ziplock bags and sit on them to squeeze out all the air! Bonuses– you don’t have to think about what to wear with what while you’re on your trip AND you don’t have to worry about bugs hiding out in your clothes when you stay in tropical areas.)
First flight was a hop to Seattle… But our flight was delayed an hour and 10 minutes and we only had a 2 hour layover. You know you’re tight when you get a phone call from the airline as you’re in transit on the airport trains and when you arrive at the gate they are paging your name and rush to say “Are you xxx??” But, we made it on the next flight and so did our luggage! (Pro tip: Put an airtag or tile in your checked bag– we could track it and see that it made it on each flight!)
Second flight was 13 1/2 hours from Seattle to Taipei, Taiwan. Takeoff was at midnight (1am home time). Thankfully we have been transitioning timezones at home for the last 10 days (staying up half an hour to an hour later each night and sleeping longer in the mornings). It was strange though to be fed dinner at 3am and breakfast at what felt like 1pm. In between meals we tried to sleep… Some of us did better than others, but with neck pillows, eye masks, and ear plugs, at least we all got some rest.
In Taiwan we had another quick layover. Halfway from one gate to the next we stopped to refill water bottles… And that’s when NixiRay realized she must have left her glasses on the last plane. Uh oh. She and I did a mad dash back to the gate while Superman took the rest of the kids to our next flight to check in. Unfortunately the plane had already been moved… A helpful flight attendant radioed our flight staff who reported that nothing had been found. Bye bye glasses.
The Taipei airport is massive and looks like a giant mall — tons of stores and holiday displays. We didn’t really get to enjoy it because we were practically running through the halls to reach our next flight. Of course it was at the very end of the opposite terminal 😅 And we got to take a bus from the terminal out to the plane and board from the tarmac. The sun came up while we were boarding and it’s 5am Wednesday morning. We left Tuesday somewhere between Alaska and Japan and never saw the sun.
We laughed when at 6am local time the airline served dinner… Why? The last flight went pretty quickly and we made a smooth landing in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We touched down 27 hours after we left home. Not too bad considering we traveled halfway around the world!
US phones don’t work in Thailand, so before we left the airport we found a kiosk and bought local SIM cards (or E-SIMS depending on the phone). We had a little trouble figuring out how the 4 of us could communicate because the phone plans don’t come with texting, just unlimited data and only 100 minutes of local phone calls. After some troubleshooting and brainstorming we got everyone connected on WhatsApp and Superman and I made sure our Google Voice was working. (The only thing that doesn’t work is bank verification texts like when we’re booking a Grab or Bolt car… We have to manually switch eSIMs and do an emergency text. Still trying to figure out a better way.)
Finally we got phones working and booked a Grab to take us to our hotel only 15 minutes away. We had booked it with Agoda several months ago. The only trouble we encountered was that although we had booked the hotel for 6 people (2 adults, 4 kids and we included their ages), the rooms only had room for 4 (1 king bed, 2 twin beds). We had to show the staff the booking and talk to the manager and Agoda on the phone to get them to provide 2 rollaway beds without charging us more. This is something we’ve run into on multiple occasions traveling with a big family.
We are in this cute building – downstairs for the girls and Spud, upstairs for the parents and littlest.
Once we got settled in we knew we had to keep the kids moving until a reasonable bed time (1pm here is like 11pm at home, yesterday). We walked to a local market and got amazing fruit smoothies for 30 Baht each (less than $1 US). We bought jugs of water from a little grocery store too, and some mosquito repellent.
The littlest one started asking when it was bedtime but it was only 3:30pm… So we suggested a swim instead. The water was frigid, but the kids pretended they were swimming the English Channel and had fun anyway.
We walked back to the market and found a little roadside stand to get Pad Thai (too spicy for the kids) and Pork Stir Fry and some fried chicken.
At 7:20 we walked back to the hotel and got ready for bed (5:20am at home). In the morning, the littlest said “I fell asleep snap fast!” True! We all did and slept soundly.
