Our return journey

8th May Friday

We rested up for our return flight home so stayed indoors all day (for the first time in 4 weeks!).  We said our goodbyes in the late afternoon.  The drive to the airport was much better than anticipated, you can never predict LA commute traffic, so it was better to be early.  We returned the car to Inglewood and took a shuttle back to the airport.  LA airport was very basic and old.  We were surprised by this as it’s one of the busiest airports in the world, so we expected more.

We boarded QF12, the new A380, at 10pm.  We strapped Hannah’s car seat on and before long, we were ready to take off.  The seats on A380 felt tighter than the 747 that we came on.  Andrew and Hannah were quite tired and since it was a late evening flight, they were able to sleep a bit more this time around.  The return journey was reasonably smooth.  But with the swine flu, we had to fill in an extra form about our health and where we’d been.  Once we landed at 6.30am, we were told that the plane had to be quarantined as some passengers on board were showing signs of the swine flu.  We were a bit concerned about this.  Fortunately, the quarantine process was quick.

After we got off the plane on our way to the customs, we were stopped by an airport/airlines worker who was pushing an elderly Chinese woman in a wheelchair.  They could not communicate with each other, but the airport staff needed to find out if the Chinese passenger had completed the necessary customs forms.  Once I interpreted for them, the elderly woman told me to tell the airport staff that she had to go to buy duty free cigarettes!  Talk about priorities!

We were greeted outside.  Funnily enough, Andrew asked for Belinda first!  We went home and took a nap.  We had a wonderful trip, but there’s nothing like home.  We were happy to be sleeping in our own bed.  Johnny and I will never forget the great times we had from this trip and treasure it fondly.

~ by chungs on June 11, 2009.