Around the World in 4 Days, 3 Hours, 48 Minutes, and 7 Airports

(written by: Joel and Mike)
While Mike and Vijay flew directly from Chicago to London, I took an 8-hour flight to Amsterdam, followed by a 4 hour layover, then continued on to London, only to wait 5 hours to rejoin them for a 7-hour flight to Dubai. Apparently when Vijay and Mike arrived to London, they decided to spend their 10 hour layover in the city. Not wanting to lug around their luggage, they attempted to check-in early. The Emirates agent asked if they were planning on going into town, to which they replied "yes." They were then informed that they could not check their bags. After walking over to the storage area, and determining that the cost was 6 pounds ($12) per bag, they returned to the check in counter. Their conversation with the same agent went as follows:

Agent: I already told you that you can’t check in your bags
Mike: But we decided to stay at the airport.
Agent: Are you sure that your not just going to check your bags and then go to the city?
Vijay: No, it’s too expensive, so we decided to just hang here at the airport.
Agent: Are you lying to me?
Mike: No, we promise, what is there to do here at the airport anyway?

For some reason, the agent was not convinced, but after further negotiations, consisting mostly of whining and empty promises, the agent begrudgingly checked them in. They immediately caught the next subway into the city to meet up with Mike’s high school friends and check out Big Ben.

Returning late to the airport (Mike underestimated the travel time), they had to run to make their flight (which is probably what the agents were concerned with in the first place). Ok, back to me and my 9 hours of layovers, in case you were wondering, I got sick of airports very quickly, in large part because there is no internet access, and very few electrical outlets that work (apparently this is a worldwide issue), so I spent a lot of time just trying to sleep. We were able to get an 8 a.m. check in at our Dubai hotel due completely to Mike’s attentiveness to junk mail. He had filled out some card for Starwood, so he was now a premium member, which was as much a surprise to him as it was to us. The good news was we had a room, the bad news was that we crashed. Hard! I think we woke up around 8 p.m. Mike and I went to go check out the Mall of the Emirates (the mall with the ski slope), which is apparently open past midnight, and when we left there were still 5-year-old children hanging out with their parents. Who knew? The next night we hung out with Ewoma, a first-year student who is out here for his internship. After a night of hanging out in what had to be the highest concentration of American tourists of any bar in Dubai (a little Journey anyone?), we were back to the airport to complete the last two legs to Cameroon.

During our layover in Nairobi, there was an Emirates agent who told us he would transfer our bags through customs for us to save the $20 per person visa fee. What a nice guy! After about an hour, we saw him again and were told we have to check in at the transfer desk again. When the ticket agent said these guys “belong in a cellar," I gave our chances of getting our bags in Douala at 50%. Surprisingly enough, they were waiting in customs for us. Score one for the Kenyan Emirates agent! Total trip time: 26 hours of flights and 20 hours in airports! Fun stuff encountered on the way to Douala from Dubai: a $17 USD bag of M&M’s knock-offs at the Nairobi airport; the bilingual sign for customs at Douala meaning “French only"; TGI Thursday’s in Dubai (I don’t think they are affiliated).