This 40-hour journey from DaNang, Vietnam to Guadalajara, Mexico has been the longest journey I have gone on in my life. The only way I could have possibly made it longer would be if I were to want to go to some place in South America. This is because there isn't a great deal of demand to fly to that part of the world from Asia, and therefore you really don't have a choice but to fly through the United States in order to get there. I suppose there would be an option to go through Australia, but that would probably take the same amount of time and likely add a bunch of money onto the cost of the trip.
The 12-hour portion of the flight from Taipei, Taiwan to Los Angeles was the longest (by far) portion of the trip, but in the end since I was on night time, my time, and arriving at morning, my time (even though it was afternoon in LA, I was able to accomplish some level of sleep.
I am a firm believer that there is no such thing as a comfortable seat on an airplane, even the couple of times that I have flown business class. Perhaps it changes in 1st class but I'll never find out about that because someone that spends 10x the amount of money just to be more comfortable for 12 hours is a person that I would have a difficult time relating to. I will try to circumvent this lack of comfort often by requesting an exit row and as you can see above I have basically unlimited legroom, so that is nice. I suppose this made it a bit easier to sleep and I managed that, thanks in part to a sleeping pill, to get 6 hours of sleep or so on this flight.
Arriving at LAX was about what I expected, as people do the usual dance where they are just so damn impatient about getting off the plane despite the fact that the door on the airplane isn't even open yet, and in LAX, as well as any other arrival in the USA, you are required to gather your bags and go through security, customs, and immigration even if you are never leaving the airport. The USA is the only country in the world that does this and it irritates me to no end. I suppose it would be reasonable if they were actually accomplishing anything but what they are really doing is collecting information about the people of the world.
There was a funny video about this on the airplane as we were landing where I "very concerned" immigration official was explaining to a little girl that asked "why are you fingerprinting my mommy?" and the official responded "to make sure that your mommy is really your mommy, and this is to keep you safe as well!"
What a crock of shit.
Anyway, before I go off on an anti-government rant let's just talk about the LAX airport, which has continually been rated as the worst airport in the United States as well as one of the worst in the world.
We had to walk for absolute ages to get to customs and immigration and for Americans this part of the process was not time consuming probably because they already have my fingerprints and a scan of my face. For foreigners though, I could see that the line was horribly long. It was likely going to take hours for them. Welcome to America!
Then I retrieved my bags and carried them to the screening area where they were observed by basically no one, as everyone, none of whom were actual government officials, all stood around looking at their phones. They just put my bag on a conveyor belt and lord knows what they actually do with it after that.
This is where the "really fun" part of my LAX experience began. I arrived at terminal 4 and my next flight, which wasn't leaving for another 8 hours, was in terminal 6. I decided to walk this for 2 reasons: I had a ton of time and I couldn't figure out if there was any other option.
LAX has a reputation of being like a maze to those who come to it and this I can attest to. Without question, this is the biggest mess of an airport where basically everyone is lost. The hallway I found myself in, pictured above, seemed like an MC Escher painting rather than a real building. I meandered around until I eventually found the hallway that was leading to the next gate and that was when I started being "really impressed."
Apparently they are in the process of doing a $14 billion overhaul of the entire airport and had to redirect people another way to the terminals in the process. This would be all fine and dandy if they had just started these renovations but they started in 2018. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that it would take this long. Nothing happens quickly in LA. This basement, with the exposed pipes and wires is meant to be a flagship airport of the USA.
Then you get to some absurdly long hallway that looks like the floor was designed by a local kindergarten, and just walk and walk and walk and walk. During this time, there is no indication that you are actually heading in the right direction and the girl that was in front of me in the first basement picture had walked something crazy like 2 terminals in the wrong direction. She was told by airport staff that her terminal was the other directions and kind of laughed about how she had around a 40 minute walk ahead of her. How can any airport have something this distant and not offer some sort of train/tram/bus/transport? What if someone was disabled? Fuck em! right?
When I finally made my way to terminal 6 the intense confusion caused by what has to be the worst imagineable design possible continued. Thank heavens that I wasn't in a hurry.
Here's an example: From this point you only have two choices of which way to go and it is basically a circle anyway. On the bottom there you notice that that is a very odd range of gates right? 59-70 other than gates 64 are just not indicated as to where they even are. In fact, since my gate was gate 61 I just wandered around for a while and then found out that they were behind where this sign was around the corner from where the gates 30-39 were located. Why in the hell would they do the numbering this way? The signs lead you in the wrong direction frequently or even to dead ends because of the construction and while the people are friendly that you talk to, many of them don't speak English and don't know what you are asking them. You read that right: A lot of the staff in America do not speak English. Good times!
I found my gate after about 2 hours of getting off my previous flight. Imagine if you had a tight connection? This would be maddening to me.
After finding my gate I looked around and saw the uncomfortable seating and decided to go pay to be in a lounge instead. That was an amazing choice and something I will do again in the future if I have a layover of more than a couple hours.
I had read that certain lounges that are normally reserved for people that spend considerably more on travel than I do will sell you entrance to the lounge provided they are not busy. When I went to Alaskan Airlines lounge, I was nearly the only person in it so yeah, they let me in.
It's $60 to get in and I know that sounds like a lot and I agree it is a lot but here are the reasons why it was a good deal. I wanted a coffee at the time I was in the airport and I checked a few menus during my grueling walk and say that they were over $10 each at a restaurant: They are included for free in the lounge. I also knew I would probably pass the time with a couple of beers and noticed the price of beers, even shite beers like cheap lagers were around $10 each. These are included, as many of them as you want, in the price of getting into the lounge. If you eat almost anything in LAX you are going to spend $20 on it. In the lounge there is a buffet that stays out all the time and during mealtimes they bring out something else that is by the plate.
So if you following so far even if I only had something to eat, 1 beer, and one latte-style coffee outside of the lounge, I would have spent $40 anyway. In the end, since I was in this lounge for 8 hours I ended up having 3 pints (2 IPA and 1 Pilsner), a latte, a glass of wine, and went to the buffet several times. So even if it weren't the comfortable seating and what not, I actually saved money by using the lounge.
I know it doesn't look like much but I didn't take photos in the direction of other people because I hate it when people do that to me.
One major reason to use the lounge that I hadn't considered and was absolutely wonderful for my peace of mind was that the never-ending announcements about changing gates, lost call, looking for a particular person, or whatever else they put on the PA are NOT in the lounge at all. This was huge because I have always found that really annoying that you can't get a moment's peace in the regular parts of the airport.
Since Alaskan Airlines was also the airline that I was flying with (I think that is required that you at least book a flight with them to get inside) They also knew what flight I was on and when let me know when I should be headed to my gate.
This made my long layover in this horrible airport so much more endurable. In the future, and especially if I ever unfortunately find myself in LAX, I will be using these lounges for any layover over say like, 3 hours.
So there is only one more flight to go and when I land it will be the first time I have ever been to an airport in Mexico? How bad can it be?