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6:35 PM - June 10, 2003 (total travel time 0 hours)
My journey started out at the DFW airport. I got there about two hours early, as requested, and I was the only one in the waiting area for a good 30 minutes. As I sat there nervous about the flight, meeting Niña, getting through the health inspections, finding my way around at the Hong Kong airport, making my connecting flight to Cebu, etc. I watched as the waiting area filled with people of all nationalities.
This first flight was from DFW to LAX on American Airlines, and the mix of people on the flight was interesting.
The first couple to come into the waiting two women traveling back to California from Paris. They were tired from traveling but were very talkative and I couldn’t help but “dip” (eavesdrop) on their conversation. Eventually I spoke with them for a little while about their travels. They had flown into DFW from Paris, where there was an active protest and strike at the airport. They told me that it took their taxi more than two hours to get through the traffic and the protesters so they had resolved themselves to the fact that they were going to miss their flight. Somehow they made it to the airport with enough time to check in for their flight and they were pleased about that – but the airline lost one of their bags of luggage in the process. The airline had no idea where the luggage was because they had put a hand tag on it at the airport in Paris. After talking with them for even a short time, it was obvious that these two women were long-term partners; talking about similar losses of baggage over the years and all of the places they had been. They were very proud that they were well traveled. Eventually they asked me where I was going, I told them to Cebu, Philippines. They had never been there, but had been to Japan and Hong Kong. They tried to give me some tips for travel – I figured at that point it must have been obvious that I was nervous. I accepted their tips readily, without letting them know that I am also a seasoned traveler (although I have never before visited any of the Asian countries) and that my nervousness came more from meeting Niña in person than from my travels.
After talking with the nice couple, I sat there looking around at all of my fellow travelers – trying to identify their nationality. There was a Filipino woman with her son and daughter in the waiting area. I wondered if she would be a traveling companion all of the way to Cebu. There was also one other Filipino that I could identify in the waiting area – a long haired young man, perhaps 17, dressed in cowboy boots and a big black cowboy hat. I found this amusing because, as anyone who has lived in Dallas knows, you RARELY ever see people wearing cowboy hats here in the city. Yeah, sorry to dispel all of you Dallas (the TV show) fans – you hardly ever hear a southern accent, you hardly ever see a cowboy hat, and very few people wear cowboy boots. Now, if you want to drive as little as an hour outside of Dallas you can start to see those things…. Anyhow, I saw this young man, all dressed up in a cowboy hat and shoes and wondered if he too would be a travel companion all of the way to Cebu.
It seemed that most of the travelers on this flight were from China. While I do not speak Chinese, I can usually recognize it. There were also a few travelers from Viet Nam. The rest were just regular old white-bread Caucasians like myself.
The flight from DFW to LAX was uneventful, and the couple I had been talking to gave me a wink as I passed them in first class to sit in the back of the plane.
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