16 Months of Travel: A Reflective Layover in Hawaii Before Returning to Los Angeles

When I left Los Angeles in June 2018, I traveled for more than 16 months. In October 2019, I returned to the United States after being abroad for eight months, the longest I had been out of the U.S. I blogged about each day of my travels and finished with this post about leaving Australia. 

On my flight back to Los Angeles, I had a 10-hour daytime layover in Honolulu. I arrived in Hawaii at 11:45 a.m., and customs was a breeze. I grabbed my sandals and toothbrush to get refreshed after the nine-and-a-half-hour overnight flight. The restroom was outside, and the humidity made me start sweating. I desperately felt like I needed a shower, but that wasn’t an option. I did my best to wash my face and brush my teeth, and then I changed into shorts and a T-shirt. 

I searched the airport for luggage storage, but an employee at the “transfers” section told me that after 9/11, there was no longer storage available. I had read online that luggage storage was available, so I looked for someone to direct me. My carry-on bag hurt my shoulders as I walked around the airport, searching for anyone at the various counters. This was typical Hawaii – they operate on their own timelines. 

My cellphone had an Australian SIM card and wouldn’t work. I found a phone near a billboard advertising a baggage company. The man on the phone said it would be $10, and he’d pick me up in a blue van. After a while, nobody showed up, so I paid $8 to use the airport Wi-Fi. I rented a car on Priceline for $37 for the day and decided to store my bag in the trunk and use the vehicle to explore Hawaii during my layover. 

I stood in line at the car rental for 30 minutes. I was hot and sweaty, and my back was hurting. When I approached the man behind the desk, I explained that they just give you a car in Australia. I forgot that the U.S. does overkill when renting a car. The man laughed, “That would be nice, but how would they go over everything?” The man made me feel better as I explained that I had a rough two hours trying to figure out my bag storage, and the $15 I spent on data disappeared in a few minutes. The man told me that I had made a good decision to rent a car because an Uber one-way could cost $35, and I got a good deal. 

I still couldn’t use my phone because of the Australian SIM card, so I drove to Pearl Harbor without GPS. I had to check my purse for $5 at the entrance, and they told me that the Arizona was sold out. It’s free, but the 3:00 p.m. tour was full. I decided to check with someone else to see if just one ticket was left. I can usually squeeze my way into things since I travel solo. It worked, and they said they had space for one more. 

Seeing the Arizona was a humbling and sad experience. Thousands of people died. It reminded me of when I was in Broome, and their museums talked about how the Japanese invaded them. These were often just kids that were killed. We took a boat out into the ocean a bit, where the USS Arizona was submerged. We walked around on platforms, and there was a wall with the names of people who lost their lives. 

Part of the tour involved showing a film, and I was happy to have some air conditioning. Unfortunately, the four hours of sleep I had gotten on the plane caught up to me in the dark, cool room, and I struggled to stay awake. 

After visiting Pearl Harbor, I drove to Walmart to get some Excedrine for my pounding headache. I was so used to driving on the left side of the road that I accidentally drove on the left while cruising through the parking lot, until I quickly corrected myself. I felt like a zombie. While at Walmart, I picked up a 30-day prepaid SIM card with a Missouri phone number to have some data. I felt extremely lost without cell service and GPS. Traveling alone means the connections to my friends are all through my phone and social media. 

I drove to Waikiki, and it started to sprinkle outside. Thankfully, the rain was brief. I walked around and enjoyed the palm trees and sunset even though I didn’t care for the heat and humidity. Walking around Waikiki reminded me of my ex-husband, Aaron. We celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary in Waikiki and the Big Island (the only other time I’ve visited Hawaii). It was strange thinking of our time there seven years earlier. This time, I was alone. 

It was so beautiful walking around. Hawaii is an awesome place to have a long layover. I found a restaurant/bar on the beach and decided to have dinner there. I ordered a huge brisket, and of course, I ordered a fruity Hawaiian drink. When the bill came, I was annoyed that I needed to tip. I had spent so long outside of the U.S., and it was so nice to know the price of the bill in advance and not tipping. 

I talked with the woman beside me, who looked around my age. She was from Alabama and was there for a work event with a coworker, and her grandma came along, too. She worked with the Army in some training capacity. I told her all about my travels abroad and how I was on my way back home. 

As I walked back to my car, it started raining. After getting some gas, I drove to the airport. Thankfully, the car dropoff was quick. My seat was in the very back of the plane with just two seats. The guy next to me manspread, which took away from my space. I flew Hawaiian Airlines, which was okay. They turned movies off 30 minutes before landing, which was frustrating. Thankfully, I was so tired that I slept most of the five-and-a-half-hour overnight flight. 

When I arrived at LAX, I grabbed a bagel sandwich and a medium latte. The size of the food and coffee shocked me. In Australia, that medium would have been considered large, and the bagel would not have been that big. 

My friend Sarah picked me up from the airport, which was lovely considering she had to battle early morning weekday L.A. traffic. Sarah and her husband had recently retired and had a trip to Italy for a couple of weeks, so I was going to house/cat/bird sit for them. I met her husband, Bob, and briefly chatted with them when we returned to her house. The jetlag was setting in, so I took a 4-hour nap. We went to a Mexican restaurant for dinner, which I had missed in my travels. 

Highlights

I spent three weeks in Los Angeles before heading to St. Louis, Missouri. I saw friends, went to doctor appointments, and had my furniture moved out of Los Angeles. 

While I was in Australia, I bought a house in St. Charles, Missouri. It was a complicated process, but my parents and sister helped me by seeing the house in person and showing me videos of the house. I had been using the money from the sale of my house in L.A. to travel, but I didn’t want to blow all the money and have nothing left. I used some of the money for a down payment on the house in Missouri. Housing is much cheaper in the Midwest than it is in California. I was paying about $250 a month in storage fees in California, so I decided to move my furniture to the house in Missouri and set it up as an Airbnb to earn money while I continued to travel. 

I used the Pods company to relocate my furniture to Missouri, and they were awful to deal with. They were great at the quote stage, but they were terrible when it came down to scheduling the day and time for delivering the pod. The storage unit company had strict rules regarding when a pod could be delivered and how long it could stay there. Trying to manage the Pod company and the storage unit people drove me crazy. 

I hired movers to load my stuff from the storage unit (which was inside the building, on the second floor) and into the storage pod for transportation. Two guys in their late 20s with tattoos showed up (Sergio and Eddie). I said, “We’re going to finish this in two hours.” One guy said, “You think we’ll get all of this down to the pod in two hours?” I explained, “Yep, because I’m going to help.” 

When I opened the roll-up door to my storage unit, the guys were impressed with how well it was packed. They said I must have paid a pretty penny for those movers to pack it in so well. I said, “Yep, but now I’m broke, so I gotta get it done quickly.” I felt financially pressured after traveling to expensive countries for more than a year and buying a house.

Sergio and I stayed at the bottom of the elevator, unloaded the items, and sent the elevator back up. Then, we’d take the items from the ground floor to the pod outside. We chatted as we loaded up the pod, and it was so cool that the elevator would appear full of items for us to load.

At one point, I went upstairs to check on Eddie, and he was on the phone. I asked Sergio, “What’s up with that?” He replied, “It’s his mom.” I explained, “Well, he needs to hustle.” Then Eddie started carrying small items while on the phone. 

We finished loading up the pod in one hour and 50 minutes, which I was happy about because I was paying by the hour. When I talked with the storage manager about closing everything out, she said, “I saw on the security cameras that you were helping them, and I thought, ‘She hired people and is also helping?’ Most people just sit in the lobby or stand there watching.” I laughed, “Well, I needed to finish in two hours, and because I was helping them, they were hustling.” The woman said, “Yeah, when people come to the lobby, I can see on the cameras that they’re not always working.” 

The pod would take two weeks to arrive in Missouri, so I got it shipped off as soon as possible. 

Doctor Appointments

Once my items were safely shipped to Missouri, I focused on getting into various doctor appointments. One of the appointments was for my six-month cleaning at the dentist. I always loved talking with the dentist and one of her assistants, Cherry. They’re from the Philippines, and I told them about my travels. They insisted that I go to the Philippines, which I would love to do one day. 

My dentist told me she thought I had been grinding my teeth in my sleep. I had that issue a few years earlier when I was very stressed out. She recommended that I get a nightguard to sleep with, and since I still had good insurance (I had Cobra), I decided to order a custom nightguard. I went in on a Saturday when the guard was ready for pickup. The office was usually closed on Saturday, but Cherry was in the office getting some work done, so she said I could stop by to pick it up. 

The office was in Orange County, and a homeless man and woman were hanging out outside. I hadn’t seen homeless people there during the week. They didn’t really look homeless, but they looked like drug addicts. Cherry told me they can’t get them to leave the property, and they often stay behind the building or on the side in the shade. Because of tourists, Anaheim forced them to leave the area around Disneyland, so they moved to nearby cities. Since the office can’t force them to go, the doctor has asked them to clean up after themselves. They leave needles, poop, and pee in the back of the building. The police won’t do anything about it (they just tell them to move along), and the doctor tried to put up a gate, but the city told her she wasn’t allowed. 

Cherry told me, “The mayor won’t do anything about it because he says it’s a housing crisis, but it’s not a housing crisis. They choose this. There is government housing for them, but they require people to be clean of drugs.” Cherry went on to describe two people she knows who are homeless. They have a house or someone to live with, but they choose that lifestyle. She explained that the problem is drugs. I told Cherry that there were virtually no homeless people in Thailand and Vietnam. She said, “That’s because we are all very hard workers. It would be shameful not to work and to live on the streets.” Cherry said that in the last five years in the U.S., homelessness had become an epidemic, which I agreed with. 

The last month I was in Australia, I felt exhausted and sometimes dizzy. I saw my primary care doctor, and she told me to see a cardiologist since I had a slow heartbeat and it was irregular. I had seen a cardiologist years before, and they said there wasn’t anything they could do. This time, I saw a different doctor, and she wanted to do a 24-hour heart monitor. I told her that I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to pass out. By the time I could get in to see her, I was leaving for Missouri. The doctor said, “Your doctor told me about you, and you’re basically leaving tomorrow?” 

Each time I went in for a doctor’s appointment, I had to explain that I had been traveling long-term and that my mailing address was now in Missouri. The doctor gave me a heart monitor the day before I left L.A. and told me to mail it back once I was done with it. 

I went to the OBGYN and got a mammogram, and it was normal. I saw all of my doctors, which was exhausting. I did a bio meridian scan (it scans your body and tells you what is going on). One thing that was interesting to me was that it said I was reacting to pesticides. I definitely felt that. When I returned to the U.S., it was October so Starbucks had their pumpkin spiced latte out. I ordered one and couldn’t drink it because it tasted so sweet and gross. The next time I went to Starbucks, I ordered a vanilla latte and couldn’t drink more than half before feeling sick. The third time, I ordered a flat white and added my own sugar to it. Not being in the U.S. for so long meant I had finally detoxed all the chemicals we’re subjected to. Now that I was back, the chemicals were making me feel sick.

I even saw a reiki specialist. She told me that I make decisions with my heart, and then my head comes in and contradicts it, and they’re in conflict. As I was heading out the door, she said, “I’m not sure if you’ve been in an accident or had a really bad heartbreak, but you have closed your heart off because you don’t want to feel anything.” It was crazy, she said because I had visually envisioned a border around my heart to avoid heartaches when I was in Australia. She told me I needed to open up and let go of fear because it’s part of the human experience. The woman told me she thought I would meet someone while traveling, maybe in Africa, and that I’d email her about it. 

Friends

I went into the job that I had before I left Los Angeles to see old coworkers. I hung out in the cafeteria so I could see people as they went on break or lunch. The time flew by. It was so weird because, in some ways, it felt like I never left. It almost felt like I had been on a 2-week vacation and just returned. The work was the same, but there were new faces. Seeing everyone was exhausting, but catching up was so nice. People were really encouraging and told me that I looked happy. 

Between doctor appointments, I had a lot of individual lunches with friends. It was easier to track them down on their lunch breaks. Then, I’d meet up with others for dinner. The only problem was that I felt like I was driving everywhere. Shortly after I arrived, I met a friend on the west side and left my credit card at the restaurant. I was so used to Australia, where they don’t take your card. When it’s time to pay the bill, they bring a card reader to your table and you pay right then. They think it’s crazy to give your card to a server.

I was able to attend a birthday party for one friend, which allowed me to see a few other mutual friends. It was so great being able to talk about my travels with people in person.  

One day, I went whale watching in Newport Beach with a friend. It was so refreshing to be on the ocean and soak up the sun. Now that I had A/C, the warm weather outside didn’t bother me as much. 

Overall, the three weeks I spent back in L.A. were great! I got to see friends, catch up on doctor appointments, and move my furniture to Missouri. Since the pod was being shipped to Missouri, I took a flight to Missouri to get to work setting up the house for a short-term rental. 

I sat in a middle seat on a Southwest Airlines flight. I kept getting up from my chair to grab stuff, and getting set up took a while. I apologized to my seatmates for the disturbances. 

My neck pillow was one that I picked up in Australia, and the design was the Australian flag. The guy sitting next to me on the aisle appeared to be in his early 30s. He had fluffy, sort of curly, short brown hair and was cute. He looked at my pillow and asked me if I was from Australia. I explained that I had just spent six months there and showed him some pictures from my time there. Eric loved cities and said one of his favorites was Tokyo. 

It turned out that Eric was from Alton, IL, but had been living in L.A. for a while. He said Alton was the self-described “scariest town in the U.S.” Eric told me he writes horror movies (primarily B-movies). He also does copyright work for Disney to make ends meet. Switching his brain multiple times a day from horror to Disney was hard for him. I told Eric that I don’t like horror movies because they scare me too much. Eric replied, “That’s how you know it’s good.”

I told Eric, “When I would get scared years ago after watching a horror movie, friends always told me, ‘It’s fake, don’t worry. There’s no reason to be scared.’ But I always responded with, ‘Yeah, but someone was capable of imaging and writing such horrible things, so the brain is capable of it. Those are the creepy people I’m afraid of.” 

Eric said, “So, I’m that creepy guy – THE WRITER.” I exclaimed, “Exactly!” We both laughed.

I said, “But you haven’t executed it. There are people out there who have.” Amused, Eric replied, “Yeah, the key is execution.” 

Eric told me that he couldn’t afford L.A. housing. We both thought the housing market was going to bust again. He made ends meet, but housing needed to be more affordable. 

When the flight attendant came around, Eric ordered orange juice, and I ordered ginger ale. Then Eric changed his order to ginger ale, too. He was flying to St. Louis to attend a wedding. Four days earlier, the coupe asked him to write a speech. He hadn’t written it, so he got to work on it after we chatted. 

Eric seemed like a great writer. He was funny with a dry sense of humor, and used interesting words and phrases. At one point, he got up and said, “I’m going to investigate this restroom.” We connected on social media and have stayed in touch. 

When I left California, it was 95 degrees. When I landed in Missouri four hours later, it was 47 degrees and raining. It didn’t seem like fall until I got off that plane. Returning to Missouri after not living there for about 17 years was strange. L.A. had been “home” for so long, but my family was still in Missouri. It was also “home,” but I needed to discover it as an adult. It was familiar and foreign at the same time. 

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