14 hour plane ride

Over break I had the privilege of going to Thailand to visit my grandmother who lives there. I am going to be using this to write the blogs I have this week because I am too lazy to come up with any other ideas.

The adventure began on December 21st at 7 pm when the Puranananda family gathered around their Christmas Buddha. We didn’t bother getting a tree because we weren’t going to be home for Christmas and there weren’t going to be that many presents anyway. Instead, we put the few presents we did have in front of the Buddha that resides where we usually put the tree. It was decorated with red ribbons and dubbed Christmas Buddha as a joke.

That night we celebrated Christmas and opened presents from my moms family. The main gift was really the trip to Thailand.

The next morning, on December 22nd at 10am we left for the airport. We boarded our plane at 12:10pm and we took off at 12:35pm. This flight was destined to last fourteen hours, and at the end of it we would have arrived in South Korea. This plane ride was not as terrible as one may think. We flew economy on Korean Air, and I would have to recommend the experience. There was a lot of leg room, enough that my brother (who is 5’8″) could straighten his legs entirely, though not super comfortably.

Another super fun fact is that Korean Airlines safety video is kpop themed. Now I greatly love and respect the KDC here at GD.And I do believe they are one of the few things to look forward to at pep-rally’s. I also know that some of my classmates are members. But I’m sorry, I could not stop cackling any of the four times I watched that safety video. It was very ridiculous. And also so long. If you want to view it, it is available on youtube if you search “Korean Airlines Safety Video”. I don’t really understand what is happening during most of it. It did get me to watch the whole thing the first time though, so if that was the goal, mission accomplished.

Now the rest of the flight was mediocre. I tried to sleep, but was unsuccessful. Instead I watched the Lord Of The Rings trilogy, then the first two Hunger Games movies. Then I was done with my phone so I moved over to the in-flight entertainment system tv thingy in front of my seat. It had a glorious selection of movies, however the only one that interested me was the new Dora movie. I can seriously say that I still have no clue what age group it was geared for.

For some reason they still had Dora turn and talk to the camera occasionally, and also there were people shooting at her. I was very confused for most of it. I think the writers may have been confused also.

For the last three hours of the plane ride I was exceptionally bored. So of course I decided to listen to all of my terrible music while I watched the 3D world map that tracked our flight. Looking at the flight plan, I was quite confused. Because it seemed like we should only be in the air for another hour. So why did the screen say three? Over the next thirty minutes it soon became apparent. We had flown from Boston, over the North Pole, and back down over Russia and China, and on the flight plan, it seemed we would be going over North Korea. This would be a terrible decision because our dear friends the North Korea have a really nice tendency to shoot foreign planes out of the air. So we took a two hour detour to avoid being blown up. I guess that was considerate.

It was all worth it to get to the airport in Soul though, because that is the best airport to have a layover in. In the transfer lounge, they have the two greatest things ever. The first, is free, 24 hour showers so you can feel refreshed for the next torturous leg of your journey. The second, is a freaking nap room. Complete with little cubical beds and charging ports for up to four devices.

That didn’t change the fact that we had landed and had no idea what time it was. In actual fact, it was 2:40am at home on December 23, but 4pm in Soul.

We then boarded our next plane at 9pm and arrived in Bangkok Thailand at 2:30am on December 24th. We then suffered through customs for an hour, before arriving at my grandmothers apartment at 4:30am on December 24th. That’s 4:30 pm on December 23rd in Massachusetts.