Today I have a surprise for everyone. Drew's cousin Kelli McKay, who accompanied Grandma Pat to Hong Kong, has been writing her own blog about our adventures during their visit. Seeing as I am an efficiency nut, it seemed a waste for me to write about their time here when Kelli was already doing it so eloquently! So, the next few days of posts will be guest authored by none other than the lovely Kelli McKay!
Grandma and Kelli's Hong Kong Adventure: Travel
Let me just start by saying that I'm not the best writer, but I want to get all of our days down because I'm even worse at remembering things.
So we left for Hong Kong early on the morning of Thursday, January 9th. We got through security with relative ease and boarded our flight to Seattle. After an uneventful flight we landed and had to get to a different section of the airport, which required a tram. Of course things got interesting. Going down the narrow escalator to the tram I went first so grandma could follow. Her suitcase got stuck on the side and caused both her and the bag to swing around. She looked like she just sat down on the stair and was standing again before I even got up to her. We laughed about it, continued onto our gate and then got some lunch. As we were sitting there she noticed that she had blood on the back of her leg, and said she figured she must have just scraped her leg. An employee offered to bring her a bandaid so I pulled down her sock and was met with an inch and half wide hole in her leg.
I started crying and the employee went to flag someone down to call the fire department. EMS came and told us that they would have to take her to the hospital for stitches. One helped to walk me around to Delta to reschedule our flight. The Delta employee said the earliest we would be able to fly out was Saturday. When we went back to my grandma she was being put on a stretcher and a friendly man was promising that he would try to arrange our flights for us. We get to the hospital and 9 stitches later, we missed our flight by almost an hour. Fortunately that same man called us and said that he could get us a flight out to Tokyo, Japan (our original layover) that night, but we would have to switch airports and wouldn't be able to fly to Hong Kong until the night after. But, it would get us to Hong Kong a day earlier than staying in Seattle.
So we got back to the airport, and I insisted on grandma getting taken in a wheel chair. She was not pleased. Hey, better than a second hospital trip. Delta was a great help through it all and made sure we were taken care of. They assured that we would be assisted finding a hotel in Japan once we landed. They even gave us our economy comfort seats with an extra empty seat in the middle. Our 11 flight to Japan was pretty smooth.
After we landed in Haneda we collected our suitcases and made our way to the desk that said 'hotel reservations'. He spoke almost no English and handed us a sheet of paper with about 150 hotel names on it. Okay. We went to the help desk. She also spoke almost no English, but did circle a few hotels for us and pointed us to a pay phone. No Yen. I brought out my computer and guessed at how to join the wifi network on the all Japanese page so I could look up some of the hotels. I found one near the Narita airport that had 'international' in its name. So I called them with my phone (sorry for the international charge, mom and dad!) and by speaking slowly I got us a reservation.
Next was finding a cab. We followed the signs down and actually got one fairly easily. However once we got inside it was another story. I said the name of the hotel but the driver couldn't understand me at all. Fortunately I still had the webpage on my computer so I pulled it out and showed him. He said 'Oh, Narita airport!' and took off. Well, okay. Close.
So we're in the cab for what seems like forever and I ask him if he's taking us to the hotel. He seemed confused but kept going. Eventually he pulled over to the side and pointed at my computer bag. We had another stroke of luck with the google page being up where I found the hotel address on the side. Thankfully we make it to the hotel. Good thing it only cost us ¥30,000. Oh wait, that's $280.
We check in and get our room, which was another ¥12,000. So about $112. The room was small and the bed was low, but at least we got sweet pajamas and the bathroom had a bidet! We got a good nights sleep and left in the airport shuttle at 12:10pm.
We boarded our flight to Hong Kong and got there after a short 5 hour flight. Drew and Mo picked us up at the airport and drove us back to their apartment. It was a long 48 hours, but we made it!
So we left for Hong Kong early on the morning of Thursday, January 9th. We got through security with relative ease and boarded our flight to Seattle. After an uneventful flight we landed and had to get to a different section of the airport, which required a tram. Of course things got interesting. Going down the narrow escalator to the tram I went first so grandma could follow. Her suitcase got stuck on the side and caused both her and the bag to swing around. She looked like she just sat down on the stair and was standing again before I even got up to her. We laughed about it, continued onto our gate and then got some lunch. As we were sitting there she noticed that she had blood on the back of her leg, and said she figured she must have just scraped her leg. An employee offered to bring her a bandaid so I pulled down her sock and was met with an inch and half wide hole in her leg.
I started crying and the employee went to flag someone down to call the fire department. EMS came and told us that they would have to take her to the hospital for stitches. One helped to walk me around to Delta to reschedule our flight. The Delta employee said the earliest we would be able to fly out was Saturday. When we went back to my grandma she was being put on a stretcher and a friendly man was promising that he would try to arrange our flights for us. We get to the hospital and 9 stitches later, we missed our flight by almost an hour. Fortunately that same man called us and said that he could get us a flight out to Tokyo, Japan (our original layover) that night, but we would have to switch airports and wouldn't be able to fly to Hong Kong until the night after. But, it would get us to Hong Kong a day earlier than staying in Seattle.
So we got back to the airport, and I insisted on grandma getting taken in a wheel chair. She was not pleased. Hey, better than a second hospital trip. Delta was a great help through it all and made sure we were taken care of. They assured that we would be assisted finding a hotel in Japan once we landed. They even gave us our economy comfort seats with an extra empty seat in the middle. Our 11 flight to Japan was pretty smooth.
After we landed in Haneda we collected our suitcases and made our way to the desk that said 'hotel reservations'. He spoke almost no English and handed us a sheet of paper with about 150 hotel names on it. Okay. We went to the help desk. She also spoke almost no English, but did circle a few hotels for us and pointed us to a pay phone. No Yen. I brought out my computer and guessed at how to join the wifi network on the all Japanese page so I could look up some of the hotels. I found one near the Narita airport that had 'international' in its name. So I called them with my phone (sorry for the international charge, mom and dad!) and by speaking slowly I got us a reservation.
Next was finding a cab. We followed the signs down and actually got one fairly easily. However once we got inside it was another story. I said the name of the hotel but the driver couldn't understand me at all. Fortunately I still had the webpage on my computer so I pulled it out and showed him. He said 'Oh, Narita airport!' and took off. Well, okay. Close.
So we're in the cab for what seems like forever and I ask him if he's taking us to the hotel. He seemed confused but kept going. Eventually he pulled over to the side and pointed at my computer bag. We had another stroke of luck with the google page being up where I found the hotel address on the side. Thankfully we make it to the hotel. Good thing it only cost us ¥30,000. Oh wait, that's $280.
We check in and get our room, which was another ¥12,000. So about $112. The room was small and the bed was low, but at least we got sweet pajamas and the bathroom had a bidet! We got a good nights sleep and left in the airport shuttle at 12:10pm.
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