Continued from Taipei Day 5 & 6.

UGH!!!! TRAVEL DAY!!! Excited to go home, but super not excited to have to sit on long cross pacific flight. We got up really early at around 5:30am to start packing. Couldn’t finish packing last night since PL went to bed and we had to turn all the lights off.

So much stuff. Without baby, we would probably walk to subway station, take subway to high speed train, then bus to airport. With baby, there’s just too much stuff, so we had called for a car to take us straight to the airport. Well worth the money.

Our car arrives, but the driver is no where to be found…Oh, he was just using the restroom.

On our way to airport, and PL is already fussy in her carseat. Yes…20 min into our 26 hour long travel day, the baby is already not having any of it…this is going to be a long long day.

At least the weather is nice today, less likely that our flight will get delayed.

No traffic, cool.

Another Evergreen hotel.

Taiwan is just not a beautiful country. Zoning is just all over the place.

We’ve arrived at the airport without traffic delay, so that’s nice.

The airport is crowded with large tour groups. Asians just LOVE being on tour groups. I always make fun of the tour groups where they give out bright colored matching shirts or hats, so that no one gets lost.

Hard to believe, but this is the only cup of Mr. Brown coffee that I had during the entire time in Taiwan. I guess I’ve graduated to having coffee at cafes instead. Gotta wait for my mom, who will be joining us for the flight back to Austin. She’s taking the train up to the airport from Taichung. My parents are usually super early, so we were surprised that we had arrived before her by a large margin.

Super long security line, at least it was moving swiftly.

While waiting in the security line, we noticed these decorations that look like bombs. Unsure if this is what you want as your art in airport.

The line passes through this point and then keeps on snaking around itself some more. Where’s my TSA Pre Check line Damnit!

Finally in the departure halls now.

Wildlife.

Cool, a large diaper changing room that’s unisex.

Gotta get some food before our first leg of flying.

They’ve got another one of these decorated water buffalos here at the airport.

OK, let’s do this!

Priority boarding bitches!! mumuhahaHAHA!!

Got a new toy on this flight. It’s a wooden airplane, and it’s immediately her favorite toy.

Let’s go let’s go! Our flight actually got delayed for almost an hour, but fortunately we’ve got a long layover in Japan, so ultimately we don’t lose any time.

It’s hard for us to time the feeding right at takeoff and landing. She has a knack for working herself into a raging hunger immediately before takeoff and landing, so by the time the air pressure starts to change in the cabin, we’ve run out of formula and are just feeding her water, which she hates.

Smoggy, most probably blown over from China.

Being 767 bassinet, not as good as the one we had on the 787. This one is much shallower and not as well padded.

Not too much use, but I guess we can at least use it as a bin to hold her toys.

So adorable.

Loves her new toy.

Design fail. With the bassinet up, I am unable to lift up my tv screen. I guess I’ll just have to do without.

RL is able to get her screen up, but unable to rotate the screen to face in all the way. This is annoying, good thing it’s just a 3 hour flight for this leg.

Food arrives, and alcohol is complimentary on JAL international flights, sweet. There’s even a little metal heated plate under the food to keep the main dish warm. Eating on airplane with baby is the most difficult task ever. Usually, RL and I will have one tray of food stacked on top of the other. Whoever is not eating will eat furiously while the other one holds the wriggly baby, then we switch. It’s very difficult to transfer the food/baby from one side to the other without spilling anything.

I came up to visit my mom in business class, and caught a photo of her sleeping. They are strict about the baby visiting my mom in business class. Because the baby is checked in with me in economy class, they will only allow the baby to sit with my mom for little periods of time. I guess they don’t want a crying fussy baby bothering all the other people who payed for Business class.

Loves airplane toy!

We’ve reached Japan for our first layover. Even though it’s only a shorter flight, we are already exhausted!!!

Rice patties here in Japan.

And golf courses, lots of golf courses out here by the airport.

At Narita airport, where the sexist restroom work sot my favor. No baby changing room in the men’s room means the diaper duties go exclusively to RL and my mom.

Walked by Toto Gallery again. Something I didn’t realize last time I was here a couple of weeks back. Those colorful screens are animated, and the animation is of a human silhouette dancing using a toilet as a prop. Hahaha.

Took us forever, and a visit to the information desk to find restaurants to eat. This is how the Japanese are skinny, there are only like 2 restaurants that serves an entire terminal. If this was in America, there would be no less than 10 restaurants!!

Last chance to eat curry tonkatsu in Japan. Gonna miss this when I head back to the States, guess I’ll just have to keep on making my own then.

PL also gets to eat some solids now that we are off the plane. We were feeding her orange colored carrot based food. At one point, she tried to eat the orange ballon on her bib, because she thought that it was food, lol!!!

OK…this is going to be painful. 10 hours for flying…10 long long long hours!!!

Well, at least I have this to ease the pain a little. Found this ice cream vending machine with green tea ice cream.

Last chance to eat flavorful green tea ice cream in Japan before I go back to the US where the formula has less flavor, more cream, and more sugar. Wish they sold the Japanese market version in the US.

That’s right, we get to board before everyone else again!!! Gotta milk my baby traveling perks!

Boeing 777, giant engine.

We get on the plane, and PL is once again offered a toy for her flight. Since this is our third JAL flight on this trip, PL has already had one of each of the age appropriate toys. So, this time daddy gets to pick a toy for himself!! Yay for model plane!!

Again, we get a small bassinet on the 777. Daddy drinks to deal with the stress of flying with baby.

To show how shallow the bassinet is. Unless we hold PL, she’ll just fall right out. There’s a net that we can clip in to hold her in while she sleep…unfortunately, because PL is so tall for her age, she has actually outgrown the bassinet in height. This marks the end of us booking bassinet row for this baby. She’s growing up so fast!!

We were so exhausted during this flight that no more photos were taken. PL pooped right before take off, and right before landing. Typical, always poops at the most inappropriate times when we can’t change her. Well…we were able to quickly change her after the descend poop, right before the seatbelt light came on. It did add more difficultly because now not only are we changing her on a small restroom with a small changing table, everything is also leaning forward due to the plane being nose down. We also took advantage of changing her in the larger handicapped restroom so that both RL and I can be in there to change the poopy diapers. I wonder if other people thought that we were using our baby as a cover for joining the mile high club…

Didn’t take photo of our meals during this long flight. Baby would only sleep in our arms, so one of us is constantly holding her. No one got any sleep except for the baby. They did server us a hearty soup from Soup Stock Tokyo, which is a chain of soup restaurants in Japan. It was after having the soup, did it trigger the memory that we may have had Soup Stock Tokyo a couple of years ago in Kyoto. A search on this blog’s archives confirmed our suspicions. We weren’t that impressed with the soup last time though…I guess it was a little better on the airplane.

Finally arrived in LAX!!! Greeted by The Economist newstand store!!! Too bad it’s in the international departures terminal not accessible to us, or else I’d go visit it.

Got our luggage and now we wait for my mom. Even though my mom flew business class and she disembarked from the plane way before us, she got stuck in the long immigration line. RL and I both recently acquired our Global Entry, so we just blazed through immigration. PL has her global entry interview lined up back in Austin, but hopefully we can just do a walk in here at LAX and get that done here as well.

Long line to recheck bag for transfer to Austin flight. There’s a separate line to the left Global Entry and it has no wait. Winning again.

Unfortunately, we went to the Global Entry office to try to get walk in interview for PL, which is supposed to be super easy since she’s a baby. They refused us because they were supposed to break for lunch in like 20min. WTF…this will literally take 3min to run a security check for a baby. I love Global Entry, but hate dealing with the people who work at their offices. We had a guy refuse us very rudely in Austin for a walk in even though there was no one there, fucking asshole on power trip. And now, we had them refuse us walk in for a baby, even though the guy down at immigration said that it wouldn’t be a problem. Fuckers!

Super long security line. RL and I have TSA Pre Check, so we went in a separate line that had exactly one person ahead of us. It took us longer to find the line than to go through it since there are so many people at the regular line.

Just got through security check. Took photo of watch to see how much faster we are than my mom, who went through the regular security line.

Waiting for mom.

Mom finally gets through security line, almost 40 minutes later. TSA Pre Check for the win!!! Ahhhh.

Super tired and jetlagged, some Dunkin Donuts to lift my spirits.

Finally asleep. All of our arms are dead from holding this little high energy thing. Unless she’s napping, she never stops jumping and climbing. Crazy amounts of energy!

Hate how they leave lights on so bright on flights, it’s so difficult to put a baby to sleep!

Finally, please keep sleeping!!! My arm is totally asleep, feels like pins and needles. Though I would rather have a dead arm than an awake and high energy baby at this moment.

PL finally gets as tired as her parents. She slept the entire flight all the way back to Austin…of course, with either RL or I holding her the entire time.

Oh Austin, their family baby changing restroom is now also All Gender restroom.

Picked up by in-laws, thanks! So exhausted, so happy to be back home. Traveling for extended periods of time with young baby…never again!! I imagine we will be taking a lot more domestic and shorter trips for the next few years. I am going to miss international travel, but seems like those trips will have a be put on hold for a while.

The End.