THAILAND!! Part 2...

And......... we're in KOREA!!!... 13 hours later o_O

In Vegas, the first thing you see at the airport after you get off the plane are slot machines... in Korea, this is the first thing you see off the plane...

Only in Korea... haha!!

Psssssshhh... you know you totally watch them Korean soap operas and listen to Korean pop! Haha!!

And as we make our way through another security check point and proceed toward our connecting flight, what do we find?....

DUH!!! Of course we would run into a cafe based off of the ever most popular Sanrio character, Hello Kitty, haha! So, you guessed it... this is where we had our lunch/dinner/whatever meal it was... our time was so off, there was no basis for it--in a 24 hr period, we were in 3 different time zones o_O

Soon after we got to our gate to wait out the rest of our layover, this happened...

My sweet girl...

Cookie looked like those many others you see snoozing on the lined up chairs at various gates... awww... poor girl was so tired... by this action alone, she should be admitted into the world traveler's club =P Speaking of which..... y'know, when I was just 6 years old, I was not as experienced as Sophia is today in terms of traveling--this gal has been to each side of the US (and Puerto Rico) and now she can check off international travel on her bucket list! Seriously!! How do I get this gig?? Haha!!

During our stay in Thailand, she was already thinking ahead and asked where we were going to travel for Spring and Summer break... WHA??? Cookie threw around a few suggestions--she mentioned PR to go horseback riding again (still gotta post that =/ ), New York to find Spiderman and to see the State of Liberty, or back to Thailand. Haha!! Got a natural born traveler on our hands! Is this like her talent/passion? Cause it can be expensive (yikes!!)! She better start looking for a job now, hahahaha!!

So, after another 6 hours, we were in THAILAND!!!!!!!!!!!

My first thought, "Thank freakin' GOODNESS!!!" I'm sure Sophia was as eager to get out of the plane as much as everybody else onboard, but it didn't help much when she was literally counting down the minutes till we landed--yes, there was a countdown clock provided on our in-flight entertainment screens... thank you, Korea Air, for providing that info... haha... it's funny now, but wasn't so much at that moment.

Our next goal was to get to through the immigration/customs line as quick as possible... I don't have a pic of it, but good luck to us cause the line was literally at least a mile long! On very little sleep and a young'n on our hands, this was going to be a struggle--so close but yet so far (this is where I cried on the inside, haha). But, FORTUNATELY, after waiting 20 min, we were able to bypass the rest of the line because an airport employee saw that we were with a young child and had us go to a different line... with ONLY 1 PERSON in front of us, YOO-HOO!!! YAY!!!!!! Was so relieved!!!! Thank you random airport employee randomly walking by!!!

And, here it is...

SOPHIA'S VERY FIRST STAMP IN HER PASSPORT!!!!

I'm so excited for her!!! (As though you couldn't tell.)

After that excitement (for me, haha), we jetted to the baggage claim... what a little trooper--if you look closely, you can totally make out the tired in her eyes and she still managed to give a bit of a smile for this shot.

That was just 1 piece of our belongings, 1 more and we'd be free to finally go meet up with my fam!!! SO CLOSE!!!!! ALMOST THERE!!! I can see the light at the end of the tunnel!!! (Side note: I was surprised that we only needed 2 pieces of luggage... YAY us!!!)

Unfortunately, we didn't get a pic of the airport fam reunion; but no worries, I got plenty of pics throughout the trip... Asian style, haha!!

So, that's it for now... see you again in Part 3 =D

XXOO,

cookie & mama

THAILAND!! Part 1...

**I'll be splitting our trip post in multiple parts since it would be too overwhelming for me to do a ginormous post of our trip in its entirety.**

OHMIGOODNESS!!! The time finally came to when we would be able to fly out and see my fam!!! I was so excited and nervous--excited because we'll get to spend almost 2 weeks with them and nervous because I haven't seen them in YEARS... like, 15-ish years to be more exact o_O Our next trip there CANNOT be that long ever again!

I'm glad that Sophia was so excited to be going! The long flight time (13 hours to Korea, 2 hour layover, and another 5 hours to Bangkok) made me a little nervous as to how she was going to be. I'm glad to report... she was a TROOPER!!! Maybe it's because Eli and I kept on telling her that it's a long flight or maybe it's all the activities that was available to her... or just a combo of both.

We got through check-in and security pretty smoothly and had just enough time to grab a quick morning bite before boarding. While I was in line to spend a million dollars on our morning breakfast, I turned around and saw this...

Things Eli will do to get a smile, laugh, or giggle from Sophia =D

Btw, that dog pillow on top of Eli's head came in very handy and was one of the better purchases I made to prep for this trip =) So, any of youse who will be traveling with some young'ns, I highly suggest making this pillow purchase =)

Camera + waiting to board = this (Haha!)

Oh, I'd like to mention that in the midst of moving 2 days before our trip (yes, of all days of the year, we moved on Dec 24th), my camera charger went a-missing. No way were we going to have time to find it since we still had to pack for our trip. So, all I could hope was that my iPhone 5s camera would do the job and that I wouldn't run out of memory (as I often did on my previous phone, which only had 16 gb... good thing I upgraded to a bigger memory this time around!). Of course, the pics wouldn't come out as good as if it were a regular digital camera, but at this point, I have no prob settling for phone pics! Fortunately, I was able to shoot over 1000 pics on my phone!! YAY!!!! My love for Apple deepened on this trip, hahaha!!!

In line to board... YAY!!! This is really happening!!

Seated and read to go!!

Was so thankful for this! 

I cannot say enough how glad I was to see the individual screens on each of our seats!! AND we were able to charge our mobile devices, FREAKIN' YAY!!!!! I was so relieved for this the most--we had the option to entertain ourselves without the worry of a dead battery. Definitely helped with the 13 hour flight to Korea. Speaking of which, we traveled with Korea Air and they are excellent!! AWESOME customer service and SUPER friendly! The flight attendants all looked absolutely Asian cute (some of you might know what I mean by this, others of you won't) and, I hate to admit this, but they all looked almost the same to me =( I'm totally Americanized, wahhhhh!! I can't differentiate facial characteristics of my own kind o_O How sad... (sigh)...

Chillin' and rainbow loomin' =)

Things have definitely changed since I did my last international flight... it was so neat--got to see the view of the outside via various cameras attached to the exterior of the plane! That awed and entertained me for a good 4 1/2 min haha... the view doesn't change much =)

Thank goodness the 13 hour flight ended when it did cause I could tell that it was beginning to get to Sophia. Her circadian rhythm was beginning to get all whacked! After landing in Korea, turned out we had to go through another security check... standing in a long line at what felt like 3 in the morning (actually 5ish PM in local Korea time) was not pleasant. Glad to say her and I made it through without any tantrums =) I know Eli was a little nervous about that--2 tired girls on his hands... good luck, buddy! Ha!

That's it for now for the beginning our trip...

:: LOVE ::

COOKIE & MAMA