Ever Heard of Loading Arm 216 at LAX airport?

God I hope you haven't! I've seen it once and it was hell from beginning to end. To those lucky enough to not know what i'm talking about, there is an auxiliary loading section of LAX for the international flights. I've always wondered how they had 248 different airlines flight out of LAX yet only have 10 gates. I found out the hard way. As i mentioned in last blog, I went to go on an all expense paid trip to the Philippines with my parents. That old airline rule of thumb about checking in 3 hours early actually applies when you fly international out of LAX (as opposed to when mom flew out of San Fran and it took about 9 minutes to get from the check in line to the gate!) and it's hell the whole 3 hours. Our flight was at 1:30 am (yes 1:30 AM) and we got to the airport at 8pm to get checked in! When we got there, there was still a line! And it was a big one! Luckily we got to use the business class check in since my parents have enough miles to get upgraded. We also requested wheelchair service so that dad didn't have to walk so much. So it only took about 25 minutes to check in, but we had to wait over and hour to get the freaking wheelchair! So after that, we went through security and walked forever through a ton of construction (they're trying to drag the international terminal out of the 70s but it looks like it's fighting back!) to get to our gate. Since our area was under construction it didn't have any AC so that really sucked. We waited about 30 minutes and then this lady comes on and (in veeeeeery faint volume because the temporary speakers broadcast about 5 feet) and tells us that our gate got moved all the way across the international terminal (always my luck) but of course no one moved because no one could hear her! So i walked up to the lady and asked her to repeat what she said (she looked annoyed when I asked, and i asked nicely!) because i couldn't hear a thing she said. So she turns to a security person (so i guess i really annoyed her) to ask her if her voice could be heard well (she thought i was making this up?) and even that lady said that the broadcasts over the intercom suck. So finally word gets around that we have to leave and of course our wheelchair person left already so dad had to walk. Luckily someone sent the word to the porters that they needed to move everyone and we ran into our porter (who was a 19 year old pinoy guy who looked like he was 35! Usually it's the other way around!) So we get moved across the terminal and i notice that the gates are only about 10 feet from each other. Then i even saw a car outside of one of the gates! So i'm getting suspicious. We get to the gate and I see buses outside! So i'm like, "crap we have to ride to anther terminal!" So that's how they fit a million airlines into a 10 gate terminal. So naturally it takes forever to get everyone loaded (and my parents and i get separated because they only allow one person to accompany a wheelchair person) so we don't get loaded till about 1:45 or so (remember the flight was supposed to leave at 1:30!). So i'm sitting on the plane (it was a 747 jumbo jet) and was in awe because i got to sit upstairs this time! That was cool since i've never sat upstairs in a plane. I look at my watch, it's 2:30, then 2:50 and people are running by at a frantic pace (the cockpit is 7 rows in front of me). So finally they announce that the AC isn't working in the back of the plane (lack of AC seems to be a recurring theme) so they had to get that fixed. So we finally get it fixed at like 3:40 am. It sucked for everyone else on the plane too since they had to turn off the entire AC unit to fix the broken part. So we finally got off the ground and i swear that same 6 people are just taking turns using the bathroom. I'm glad i wasn't sitting in their rows and i'm glad i didn't eat whatever they ate! Aside from that the flight was mostly uneventful. Airplane technology has improved since I last flew international. Now each seat on the plane has a tv and has tons of stuff to watch. They had 15 movies (US and international, mostly asian obviously), tv shows, documentaries, games, and a GPS showing you exactly where the plane is at in the air. I came loaded for bear this trip though. I had my laptop, ipod, gameboy, and God forbid even a book! I only used the ipod as I was watching movies I hadn't seen before. I saw Vantage Point (not that bad), Shawshank Redemption, and part of a new Chinese movie called The Empress & the Warriors (starring Donnie Yen). I only got through part of the Empress movie since it was in Mandarin and I was falling asleep so it was hard to keep reading the subtitles. Dad watched part of Rambo but didn't finish it.

After an nice 14 plane ride (after waiting on the plane for 2 hours) we finally got to Taiwan. Customs there is a little different (and no one is over 5'8" tall either). Even though we just exited an airplane, we had to go through metal detectors AGAIN to get to our next gate. Due to the fact our flight was 2 hours late, we had to race to the gate as we only had 45 minutes to get to our next gate (normally not an issue, but dad couldn't move too quickly or too long). After going through all of the security hassles, we got to the gate about 10 minutes before they started boarding. And as with every flight that I go on when I go to asia, there is the lone white man going to Thailand. Going there to go fishing my ass! I hope they're at least molesting women instead of little boys. And the guys are always a little weird looking (that's to be expected though). So excluding waiting on the plane, we were in Taiwan for about 25 minutes or so. Luckily we didn't have any issues flying to the Philippines so we took off on time and got to the Philippines in about 2.5 hours or so (about 11:30 am local time).

And this is all just the trip to get TO the Philippines!

More soon. B!