Asia Trip Day 21: Fly Home (1/8/18)

- January 23, 2018

On our last morning, we work up early to finish packing and to help clean up the house. We had to borrow one of their suitcases because we got so much more to bring back. In addition to the souvenirs and gifts, we also got a lot of medicine and antibiotics, which were often less expensive than in the US. And as mothers do, Xuezhu's mother packed her as many supplies as she could. It ended up being 3 suitcases as checked baggage, and then 1 suitcase, 1 laptop bag, and 2 backpacks as carry-on.

Unfortunately, Xuezhu's mother needed to return to work, so only her father was there to drive us to the airport. I don't think there would have been space anyways, since all of our luggage filled up his Jeep. He waited with us for the baggage check, until we had to go into the airport security. We had to do the standard bag checks, body search, and Visa inspections. I think this airport had several more luggage scanners than in other ones; we had to do it once when we first walked into the airport, and then 2 more times in security. There were even luggage scanners for the Chengdu metro, and someone there to do a body search, if a passenger looks suspicious.

We arrived at our flight gate 30 minutes before boarding. We were a little hungry for lunch, and conveniently there was a Sichuan style restaurant right in front of our gate. Although the prices were a little higher, I was able to have one last bowl of beef noodle soup. I tried my best to remember the flavors so that I could attempt to recreate it back at home. We then boarded our flight to HK.

We shed all our layers from overheating

Our arrival to HK was a little delayed, which made us nervous because the scheduled layover between flights was only an hour. This would barely be enough time to wait in line and go through security again. Because they were the same airlines (Cathay), we spoke to the stewardess to voice our concern. Thankfully, when we arrived to the HK airport, there was someone from Cathay that escorted us directly our flight gate. On our initial flight to Chengdu, we had to sprint across the entire terminal to make our flight after it was switched. This time we were able to cut through lines, and took a special railway that brought us across the airport. We were relieved once we were seated on the flight to Boston, and just kicked back for the 15 hour ride.

When we arrived to Logan Airport around 9 pm, and I was prepared for more baggage checks and security like when we arrived in China. However, there was none of that. We just had to get our Visas checked and we got "interviewed" briefly. The guy just asked where I stayed and for how long, and then if I had anything to declare. There was a sheet on the plane that we filled out for that asked similar things, as well as what foreign goods or money is being carried.

After we got our luggage, we didn't want to take the public transportation back home because it would've been another hour. Instead, we called for an Uber to take us directly back to Malden in only 15 minutes. We unpacked most of the stuff and went to sleep at a semi-regular time of 12 am. Since we boarded the flight at 7 pm (HK time) and flew back to a timezone 12 hours behind, we arrived at 9 pm. I didn't sleep too much on the plane, so I thought it would be easy to adjust to the jet lag.