Our last day in Bali (Friday June 9, 2023)! We woke up around 7am and headed to breakfast at 8. Our last breakfast, but delicious as ever! Hunter is especially going to miss the egg nouvelles.
eggs benedict
another foie gras and egg nouvelle
After breakfast, we returned to our room and were going to go swimming, but Hunter was looking up flights on his phone and noticed a problem - one of the Australia flights was canceled and it did not look good for our original plan of going through Australia back to the US. Since our plans became uncertain, I started getting everything packed up, so we could leave ASAP if needed. Meanwhile, between Staff Traveller, Flight Connections, Delta, and United, Hunter was busy getting to work on a fallback plan for us. When you're on the far side of the world from home and stuff goes sideways getting back can get a little interesting, but he always enjoys the problem-solving and thinking on his feet. Hunter shortly gathered a plan together and we headed to the airport at 1:30 for a 4pm flight on China Airlines to Taipei, Taiwan. We used up the rest of our cash at the airport buying a box of chocolates for our crew in hopes of an upgrade, and it worked! We got moved to our own row in their version of Comfort Plus and the crew was very attentive to us, ensuring we had plenty of refreshments, including a delicious red drink special!
Airport
Love all the plans and greenery!
Safety video before depature
Delicious drinks/snacks when they moved us to their version of Comfort Plus!
Dinner!
The flight was about 5.5 hours. We had a good time on China Airlines' A330, and look forward to ZEDing with them again. The crews were super friendly and even referred to Delta as their "Sky Family" which Hunter thought was especially adorable since the name of Delta and China Airlines' alliance is SkyTeam. I slept for a fair portion of it, but Hunter stayed up. When we arrived at 9:05pm in Taiwan, we cleared customs including an adorable bio-security beagle, and then immigration and took a taxi to our hotel. The taxi driver was not very happy with such a short drive but did it anyway. Our hotel, a Sheraton, was very cute, although we were only there for about 6 or 7 hours as we were taking a 7:30 am departure on EVA Air to Seoul.
New stamp in Taiwan
Our hotel room for a few hours
5:00 am came way too quick! We took the airport shuttle back to the hotel with some other airline crews, quickly checked in with EVA to get seats, and then passed through security. Thankfully there was a nice lounge for us to go have some snacks in. There was a great selection while we waited for our departure. The flight was a quick two hours on a massive 777-300ER, the largest plane of our journey, and before we knew it, we were in Seoul! Its always funny coming out of Asia, where due to massive loads, they often use bigger planes on short routes than we are used to in the US. At most in the US you would usually only see a 757 on a 2 hr flight, meanwhile here they have Dreamliners and 777s working routes that are the same distance as SkyWest regional jet flights in the US!
Away we go again!
Yummy lounge food!
Yellow watermelon!
Our plane!
Lunch!
We got to Seoul at 11am local and began our wait for the flights back to the US around 6pm. We found a 7-11 and got some drinks and then headed to a nice waiting area/observation deck. They also had a whole room with their airport master planning documents and a giant model of the airport. It was pretty cool! Hunter really enjoyed it as he loves airport planning, despite it being closer to my job than his.
When it was time to check in for our flight, we headed to the ticket counters. Our goal was to make the direct ATL flight, but we soon found out they were payload optimizing it, and the available seats went to 0. It was also frustrating that they don't allow you through security until they clear you, so eventually they just told us they wouldn't be recalculating it because there was not time to clear security anyway. It was quite the ordeal, but we were thankfully able to list and check-in for the flight to MSP. We were cleared on this flight in premium select in seats 25 D and E. The flight to MSP was about 12.5 hours long, on Delta's flagship A359, a bit smaller than the 777-300ER we came to ICN on, but a very nice and quiet ride. I slept for 80% of the flight, but Hunter was less fortunate with sleep. Overall the flight was long, and we wished we could have had D1, but we survived!
Premium economy to MSP!
Our plane in MSP
We did it! Our routes are always an adventure!
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DATE: June 9-10
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