There is not way to travel direct from where I live to where I was going this past trip. This was not a surprise because Danang (DAD) is a relatively small and irrelevant airport on the global scene with very few international destinations. Guadalajara (GDL) in Mexico is the same although it does serve a few more international destinations mostly to USA and a few places further south. For the most part all "real" international traffic takes place at much larger and more busy airports.
No matter how you slice and dice it and no matter how many different searches you do for this sort of trip you are going to end up going to HCMC(SGN), Taiwan (TPE), Japan, or Seoul. Then, it seems as though you will almost always find yourself in LAX if you are going anywhere south from there, which I guess makes sense.
This is where our first "loser" comes into play. LAX is without a doubt, the worst airport in the world as far as 1st world countries are concerned. It would say it is far below most of the airports I have been to in developing countries as well. I don't know if they just don't care because they are 'Merica! or if this is a battle that simply cannot be won because of a poor initial design of the airport, but that place is an absolute mess. It is confusing as hell, the signage is unclear and poorly placed, and the fact that they have no contained international terminal means that the people who are not even stopping in the United States for a visit are commonly seen wandering around completely lost and it is very rare to actually find anyone that is willing to help you.
If you find yourself unfortunately needing to have a layover in LAX for 4-8 hours just like I did, don't get upset. There is a really good chance you are going to need that much time just to get through the myriad of difficult situations that you are almost certainly going to find yourself in while you are there. In my last time through I got completely turned around and found myself OUTSIDE the airport with no idea how it is that I got there or how to get to where my terminal was. I also had no idea what terminal I was in so I didn't even have much idea as to which general direction I should be heading. This is something that should be all over the walls for the people that are there visiting, and a lot of the people on my flight had no intention of even going to Los Angeles or even the United States. There was zero assistance for us.
Let me walk you through this mess
When you go to the USA, even if you are not stopping there or visiting the US at all, you are forced to go through customs and immigration. They claim this is to prevent human trafficking but I don't buy that for a second. They are either collecting your personal information for USA reasons where they want to know as much about everyone in the world as possible, or they simply cannot alter the design of their shoddy airport.
In every single other airport I have ever been anywhere in the world they have a cordoned off international area where it isn't possible to sneak out of it. Therefore, anyone that is not staying in the country cannot get out either on purpose or accidentally. In LAX, the airport terminals are a mess of god only knows what and all of the ones that I saw were open to the outside world.
After you go through immigration, which to be fair isn't that bad or time consuming, you are told that you have to go and gather your bags for customs even if you are not stopping in USA. Obviously I complied.
This area looked like it was straight out of a bus station. There was very little attempt to even pretend that this is one of the busiest airports in one of the most modern countries in the world. The baggage handlers were being very rough with the bags as well and would argue with anyone that would tell them off for tossing their bags around like they were trying to destroy them. I don't know how much baggage carousels cost, I would imagine it is a lot, but with this being one of the busiest airports in the world and what not, maybe just maybe we should update the ones that were built in the 60's?
The bathrooms are frightening. I would imagine there are prisons in parts of the world that are nicer and cleaner than this. There appears to be no attempt to make people feel comfortable here and in the meantime the Asian airports, even in poor countries like Thailand and Vietnam are miles ahead of Los Angeles in terms of making these seem nice.
This part of the journey of going from airplane through Immigration, through to get my bags, and a brief stop to have a wee and wash my hands, had already taken 90 minutes. It was frustrating but now I was home free, or so I thought. The hell in a cell had only just begun.
Once you get your bags there are a lot of signs informing you that you need to re-check your bags if you are carrying on from LAX to some other part of the world. This is an absolutely retarded sign because what do they think I am going to do? Just leave my bags sitting there after I collect them. A helpful sign would be to indicate WHERE I am meant to do this process but nah, that would apparently be too helpful. I saw one counter that might have been for this process and it had a United sign behind it so I kept walking because I wasn't, and wouldn't fly with United. Thus began my 45 minute walking journey desperately trying to figure out where the hell I am supposed to drop these bags off. I arrived in terminal 4 and needed to get to terminal "Tom Bradley." So where is Tom Bradley terminal? Why would they tell you that? Apparently they see no reason to include a map anywhere in this part of the airport so everyone is just wandering in this way or that.
Every now and then I would see someone with a yellow vest on and ask them where to check bags or where is Tom Bradley terminal and I and many others would just be shrugged off by the staff who didn't want to help anyone. Eventually, and after walking for the better part of 30 minutes with no increased awareness as to where I was or if I was perhaps walking in the wrong direction, I went into a ticketing office for VIP's and refused to leave until someone helped me. I don't like to be the squeaky wheel but good lord, why does this airport seem to be trying to frustrate people.
As it turns out, the quickest way for me to get to my terminal involved me walking outdoors on a sidewalk for 10 minutes and the indoor hallway that I was currently in doesn't actually connect to Tom Bradley terminal. It was cold outside and of course there was a million other people out there so this was not a pleasant part of the journey and it was made worse by the fact that I had two rather large suitcases and a carry on backpack in tow.
When I did finally get to Tom Bradley terminal, there was NO INDICATION on the outside of it that it actually was Tom Bradley terminal. I again ask, WHY TF do they not put a damn sign up? Are we just supposed to know this airport inside and out? I don't work here.
I had hoped that since this terminal wasn't a number and it was oddly named after a person instead of a number like the rest of the terminals that it was somehow going to be more modern and efficient. NOPE! It was chaos in there with again, a million people mulling around and waiting.
When I did finally get to the front of the line the guy behind the counter asked why I had my bags with me and why didn't I check them back in at baggage claim. I responded with my head shaking like "dude, let's just get this over with." I don't understand the mentality of the people that work here. I have been on hundreds of flights all over the world. I am not stupid. Your airport just sucks.
He was friendly, got my bags checked back in and then I was off to the dreaded security area that consisted of 3 parts. Phase one was a "waiting area" where people are just getting grumpy because things aren't moving. Then a guy up front gets given the green light and lets a couple dozen people go up the stairs. I don't know what they would blame this on but once you get to the next area you know why the reason is. The security area is nowhere near as large as it needs to be and if they allowed unchecked entrance to it, the area would quickly get swamped.
Then we had to go through a dog-sniffing area where people are only allowed through 2 at a time. In an airport that likely has tens of thousands of people going through it every day I can't imagine any reason why a 2 person at a time line would slow things down a lot, can you?
Then at the usual x-ray area they had people basically stripping near naked removing shoes, sweaters, coats, jackets, belts, watches, jewelry, everything. You also have to juggle all this gear while removing all electronics from your bags too. To make matters even better there is a guy with a microphone berating you for being too slow. The only reason why this guy doesn't get the shit kicked out of him is because he works in an airport and none of us want to have to go through the process again.
I had to go through a manual pat-down even though I did all the things that they told me to do. Dozens of others were in the process of going through the same thing. Turns out I had a piece of a boarding pass in one of my pockets that I didn't know was there. Props to the security scanner for being able to see that I guess.
So I get my stuff thinking that the journey is over and NOPE it isn't. Once again there is very little in the way of signage to indicate where the actual fuck you are supposed to go from that point forward. God help anyone that somehow made it through all the security and ended up in the wrong place.
Most airports would have people movers to assist with the long walk but not LAX, or at least, not where I was. I don't know if it was a design decision 40 years ago or what, but the hallways in LAX or at least this terminal, do not have straight lines. Instead there is a curvy hallway going this way and that so the long people movers couldn't possibly work here. The gate numbers also don't happen sequentially. If your flight was at say, gate 145 and you just passed 140 don't get excited. There is a good chance that all gates 141-167 or something like that are behind you and tucked down some hallway that of course, wasn't indicated by any sort of sign.
My experience in LAX was so terrible that in the future, I will spend more money just to avoid being there. I am not the only person who feels like this and there are tons of reviews made by people just amazed at how terrible an airport can be. LAX is shamefully bad. Nothing in it works, the staff are downright rude, and they should have built another airport somewhere in the area a decade ago instead of attempting to overhaul this one.
If you are ever traveling to or through the United States, I strongly encourage you to see if there is some other option than going through LAX. I've been all over the world and I honestly can't think of any airport that is even close to as bad as this one is. The often crazy recommendation that they give people about getting to the airport 3 hours early was probably created with LAX in mind. You will need at least 3 hours at LAX just to get to your gate and that is going to be some of the most frustrating hours of your life.