Where Did Tuesday Go?
it is that time again to get myself out of the country and into a mission trip and to eventually use the India visa that i applied for back in october. the journey of 30+ hours of flight time (not including lay-overs) started from San Francisco (SFO) to Los Angeles (LAX). the only downside of traveling to places as far as India is the amount of time spent sitting strapped into your seat.
here i am waiting in line at LAX. “they” told us that this is where we needed to line up but its about 9:50p and our flight to Taipei (TPE) leaves at 11:53p so my dad went to investigate the matter because this line didn’t seem to move at all.
its a good thing that he did because obviously “they” didn’t know that we had already checked our bags to India and had only carry-on bags with us. so we we quickly made our way to the counter to get our boarding passes. as you can see, as soon as we got to the ticketing area we were next in line.
after we got our boarding passes we thought that we were able to quickly get to the gates since we had by-passed all the other people who were still waiting in the line to check in their luggage. but we found ourselves waiting in yet another line. it is 10:24p and though the line is slowly moving, its at least moving and we were able to make our flight out of LAX.
about 14:35 hours later we arrived at TPE… on wednesday! i didn’t have time to take pictures at TPE because its transit procedures are the most impractical and inane of procedures. how so? okay… so we arrive at TPE to transit to Kuala Lumpur (KUL). we leave the airplane and the gate and are directed by airport personel where to go… and then there’s a line. at first we couldn’t see why there was a hold up. but then eventually we had the view of what made the delay… security. okay… i would understand having to go through security of our final destination was TPE… to have transit passengers take off their shoes and place their carry-on bags through the x-ray machine only to return to the same gate that we had just left was utterly ridiculous! wasn’t the security check at LAX good enough for TPE? apparently not.
about 4:35 hours later we arrive in KUL. of all the airports that i’ve had the privilege of going through, KUL is my favorite. it is modern, clean, convenient, and has free wireless internet too! they just don’t print the “World’s Best Airport” for nothing. i think that title is from a third-party assessment. but even if it is self-proclaimed, i would have to agree.