D36 & D37 – 32 hours down, 22 hours to go

We are sitting at the Hong Kong airport waiting for our next flight. Although it was wonderful to get free tickets using frequent flyer miles, we are really paying the price on this leg of the trip because frequent flyer seats on the direct flights from LA to Auckland were not available. We arrived at the Dallas airport at 8 p.m. on Monday. We caught a 3 hour flight to Los Angeles, then a 15 hour flight to Hong Kong where we have a 16 hour layover (yikes!) before boarding our 9 hour flight to Sydney, where we have a 4 hour layover, and then finally a 3 hour flight to Auckland. By the end of this journey we will have spent 54 consecutive hours in either an airplane or an airport. We are both exhausted and yet we still have 22 more hours to go.

The upside is that we had enough miles to fly business, which is a huge advantage, especially on Cathay Pacific. Our seats recline almost all the way, the service and food on board is great, they have tons of movies to choose from, and we get to use the airport lounge, where there is free food and drink, wireless internet, and showers. They had one of those rainfall shower heads - I love those. We also managed to find a paid lounge at the Hong Kong airport that has futon beds. We paid $40 each for 4 hours of mostly-quiet sleep. Expensive, but definitely worth it!

-Thomas