The 36-Hour Monday

by Marc on July 13, 2009

You’ve heard of the 4-Hour Workweek, right?

Well, on Monday, June 22, we flew over 9,000 miles on 3 different planes to get from Hanoi to Dallas, crossing 11 time zones in the process.

Here’s the story of our 36-hour Monday:

After waking up early in Hanoi, we checked out of our hotel and “enjoyed” one last drive in crazy asian traffic to the airport, arriving there much earlier than necessary, as is our custom.

There isn’t much to do at the Hanoi airport, but at least they had free wifi. As in most of asia’s airports, there were charity boxes for tourists to deposit their leftover currency. This one was by far my favorite:

HanoiCharityBox

After our 2-hour flight to Hong Kong on DragonAir, we found ourselves with a couple hours to kill in the enormous mall that is the Hong Kong International Airport. We grabbed a bite to eat at Burger King, then boarded our 12-hour flight to San Francisco aboard a packed Cathay Pacific 747.




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It was the longest flight we’ve ever taken, and not too bad, considering – we caught up on a few movies and had some edible food. It actually got dark outside the plane for about 4 hours as we crossed the Pacific, but we didn’t sleep a wink.

We arrived in San Francisco just before 2pm, or 2 1/2 hours before we left Hong Kong (this International Date Line thing is a riot, I tell you!). After we collected our suitcases, we handed our passports to a customs officer for the last time.

“Wow, you guys have been all over”, said the officer as he flipped through our passports, “How long did that take?”

“Almost 6 months.”

“Wow. Welcome back.”

That was it. As with all the other border crossings, getting back into America was no big deal. Lucky for us, since we only had an hour to make our connecting flight to Dallas.

When our 3 1/2 hour American Airlines flight touched down at DFW Airport, it was 9pm there, but we had been up for nearly 30 hours. By the time we collected our luggage we were utterly exhausted, and had just one thing on our minds:

tacobuenotemp

Our first meal back in Texas was everything we dreamed it would be!

When we had finally arrived at Danielle’s parents’ house (once again our temporary home), it was after midnight. We were ready for a long, well-deserved night’s sleep.

{ 5 comments }

July 13, 2009 Mary Beth Haley

Taco Bueno?????????????

July 14, 2009 herbert

welcome home

July 17, 2009 Amy @ The Q Family

I just read your whole blog this afternoon start from the cruise trip. :) Wow! Welcome back and I hope to hear more about your next adventure.

I could relate on the long flight. Whenever, we went back to Thailand as soon as we landed my mom would take me to the our family favorite Chinese restaurant. The best part was we can always find food in Bangkok 24/7. :)

August 7, 2009 Jeremy and Eva Rees

Ha ha! We totally have a plan for our favorite greasy treat the day we fly in!

July 31, 2011 Dominique

I would have chosen Taco Cabana! :)

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