What happens when one of the craziest tropical cyclone hits your hometown and you’re away on vacation? You get delayed, stuck, and not really knowing when you’ll be able to get back. Read more of our ‘stuck overseas’ experiences when traveling during hurricane season after our Thailand Budget Travel Trip in 2017…
Ok… while we were traveling, we watched the news for Hurricane Harvey live updates and asked friends/family what was going on back in Houston. The hurricane made landfall and everything was a mess back home. The biggest concerns were power outages and flooding. Law and I left on time in Bangkok, but got delayed at Narita Airport. Our flight was supposed to be directly to Houston and that’s where our Stuck Overseas in NRT and LAX story begins…
Bangkok International Terminal… we got there early and had extra time to chill…
As you can see here, Law and I made ourselves at home…
We took advantage of the USB charging station to charge our phones and power banks…
We fly out from Bangkok International Airport to NRT now…
We arrive to NRT and it’s a little wet…
The NRT Observation area reminds me of a prison lol….
Law and I wait for our flight but little did we know it was indefinitely delayed….
They comped us each hotel rooms to stay at but for only 2 days which was fine but we needed to get home as we didn’t have any flight protection plans through our 3rd party tickets. We thought there would be some direct flights to Houston from NRT the next morning, but nope… **If you’re traveling during hurricane season, think about getting flight insurance.**
We ran into a family that had the same problem, but they came from Vietnam to NRT, and now trying to get back to Houston. They were on their 3rd day at NRT and the airline would not be able to comp them any more hotel rooms or be able to book them flights. We needed to get back because we didn’t want to get stuck any longer. It took us 3 tries to get ANA to do something. We finally got lucky as one of the flight attendants booked us a flight to LAX and another flight voucher to Austin, TX (we would have to confirm the flight at LAX)… we were super relieved.
We actually didn’t know if our flight from LAX to Austin, TX was even possible because of post storm conditions. If the airport delayed our flight, we were both down to drive back home… fortunately, we didn’t have to.
We landed and had 12 hours to kill so we ventured around Venice beach for awhile…
The weather in Cali is always on point….
The vibes in Venice beach are always chill and that’s why I always like visiting…
The light in California is different… something about it I can’t describe…
Law and I would explore some more, eat falafels, and then we hit up Linhbergh and Karissa….
We didn’t feel like feasting on KBBQ so we opted for tacos!
If you visit Leo’s taco truck, get the Al Pastor…. sofa king good.
Visitors from other cities or states visit this place as you can see….
Look at that meatspin bomb dot com!
Don’t forget about the pineapple!
One of the best street tacos I’ve had in a while… muy bueno.
We each killed about 4-6 tacos… and still had room for more but we saved room for Salt n Straw ice cream…
The trip photos end there… Law and I would fly into ATX around 9PM and then a friend, Jimmy Ton, from ATX volunteer and drive us back to Houston. By the time we got home, most of the main roads were clear of high water. My area, chinatown, was unaffected. Areas around there, not so lucky….
I want to say 30% of Houston area homes looked like this, September 2017. I’m writing this post now in April 2018 and some of my buddies homes haven’t been finished being rebuilt yet…
As always, thanks for checking out the post and if you have any questions or comments, just email or reply in the comments section!
Danh Phan
http://www.dtphan.com
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