Our 9-day tour with Intrepid Travel began in Bangkok on Saturday, December 20th. We left Atlanta in the morning on December 18th, due to arrive in Bangkok at 11pm on Friday, December 19th. We’d cross the international date line and spring ahead by about 12 hours. However, we only managed to get from Atlanta to Chicago before our itinerary changed, setting our honeymoon off on a rocky start….
Our flight from Chicago to Tokyo needed up having to return to the gate shortly after we headed to the runway due to issues with the wrong lights being on in the control panel. When the issues couldn’t be resolved quickly, they had us de-board the plane. By this point, we would miss our connection in Tokyo to Bangkok – meaning we would miss our first night there and an unknown amount of time on our only day in the city. I was pretty upset – we’d paid a lot of money for our airline tickets and I didn’t think it was out of the question to expect the aircraft to work! (We were glad, of course, that all safety precautions were taken!)
The gate agents refused to help anyone there, directing everyone to simply wait until they got to Tokyo to deal with missed connections. We had a pretty strict timeline as we had to meet up with a group tour, so we called American Airlines and explained our situation. Mentioning that we were on our honeymoon also seemed to gain us some favor. 😉
They booked us on a flight at midnight to Hong Kong on their partner airline, Cathay Pacific, and they booked us business class! While that was certainly a nice touch, we would still be missing our morning tour of Bangkok that I’d booked with Urban Adventures. I knew I’d be filing a claim when I got back home.
Travel, particularly airline travel, is always unpredictable and so I’ve learned to just roll with it and do what I can when unexpected issues come up. In this case, we made the best of our 8 hour wait until the next flight by calling Sean’s aunt who lives near the Chicago airport. She was available and came to pick us up!
It was my first time meeting her and we had a nice visit. We walked around a nearby shopping mall, had dinner and then had a couple of beers at the Hofbrauhaus. We were in good spirits when she dropped us back off at the airport. 😉
Our business class booking turned out to be invalid, as the people at American Airlines who booked it didn’t have the authorization to do that. Sigh. Cathay Pacific did upgrade us to Economy Plus, though, and it was wonderful. All of the perks of business class without the lay-flat beds. We had a comfortable flight with roomy seats, champagne, eyemasks, nice meal, foot rests, etc. I took advantage of the comfort and slept for 9 hours!
The Hong Kong airport is large and beautiful, with large windows and lots of light. We watched the sun rise over the mountains, and then Sean had a ramen dish for breakfast and I had bubble tea.
We were upgraded to business class for our flight to Bangkok and the reclining seats, dim sum meal and views of Hong Kong were all lovely. We arrived in Thailand in a great mood despite being weary from the travel. 
More to come from our whirlwind day in Bangkok!