Cartagena Day 1

Time for surprise destination vacation with the in laws. We wanted to take a family vacation. Original plan was to travel with both sides of the extended family, but that become too much logistically speaking. It was hard to find activities that are well suited for both sides of the family. So then next I looked at something simple like an all inclusive resort in Mexico. Well, even though I started looking 2 months ahead, all of the suites were booked and we were left with scraps of regular bedrooms with maybe or maybe no connecting rooms. Screw that. I want my separation from the kids.

So then I expanded my search perimeter and tried to stay somewhere in close timezone to Texas since we are not away for so many days. Then I remembered that I had read an article on WSJ about a group of old friends who were thinking about going to take a girls trip to Cartagena. I thought if these froufrou ladies could consider this a destination, then it’s probably fun, well traveled, and safe. Once I picked Cartagena as a destination, all the other bookings just fell into place. I asked my in laws if they would trust me with the destination and just let me book everything without knowing where we are going until we get to the airport. They were down for an adventure, so happily agreed. Cool, this will be fun.

Airport parking lot shuttle bus. It’s so early. We had to wake up at 2am and get to the airport parking before 3am for a 5:15am flight. What a pain. The other flight option was a later flight but with a very short layover that gave us a big chance of missing our connection.

We are all tired. I had nightmares about showing up at the airport and the lines being way out the door since it’s the holidays. Fortunately, it wasn’t too bad and the lines were pretty reasonable.

Except for Little KL. He’s just at the tail end of a cold, but still hyperactive.

Exhausted. Phone in one hand, coffee in the other. It’s so early, none of the restaurants are open in the airport, but good thing they had a canned cold brew vending machine.

Kids can’t sit still, Mimi and Pop pop would take them on walks.

Still so early, but almost time to board. 5:15am flight sucks. Hey, it’s my watch that I got in Japan. My other trusty travel watch was out of battery.

The grandparents got them Gatorade. They think it’s a treat since we rarely give it to them due to the sugar contents. Now they’ll be hyper on the plane…thankfully we’ve got iPads.

Florida everglades?

Reached Miami for our layover.

Tired. He’s a little under the weather. About 3 days ago, he started with a fever and missed two days of school. He’s at the tail end of his illness now, but we bought all the kids meds just to make sure he keeps on feeling better. Little did we know at this point, he would keep this same water bottle for the next 5 days…I’m writing this a week after coming back from Cartagena, and the water bottle is still in our fridge at home…RL said that LKL fell in love with a piece of trash.

Thinking.

Alright, time for our 3 hour layover. Better than having a really short layover and missing our connection.

At the Centurion Lounge. It was $190 to get the 5 extra people in on top of the 3 free entries. Seems expensive, but if we added up food and drinks for 8 people at the airport, pretty sure we would easily outspend $190.

Everyone’s been hungry since we weren’t able to get food at Austin airport due to the super early departure.

During our layover, I kept on getting texts on my phone regarding gate changes…Seriously, how many gate changes are there going to be?

Time to leave our lounge and head to the gate. Hopefully the latest gate that they’ve assigned us will indeed be our gate. Only one way to find out.

Liked these inlays.

Sky train. Our gate is way on the other side of the terminal. Plus, it’s fun to ride trains for both adults and kids.

RL takes a photo of KL

Taking a photo of this.

Of course, we get to our gate, and there’s a plane still there from the previous flight. Apparently that plane was having engine issues and was having maintenance done. Without fail, 3 mins right before our boarding time, we get assigned another gate change. Blah. Now we need to walk across the terminal again 14 gates away.

Oh yeah, since this vacation destination has been kept secret from the kids and the in laws, they finally found out that we were headed to Cartagena at the gate. And the first thing they all asked was, “What is Cartagena?” Good question, we’ll all find out together in a few hours.

And just for good measure, let’s go ahead and throw another 35min delay on top of it. Oh well, could be a much worse delay I guess.

Delay means Little KL falls asleep in RL’s arms from the early morning wake up.

Boarded, and ready to go.

….Or not. Immediately after the flight takes off, he falls asleep again. Good, he needs the sleep.

Everyone is catching up on sleep.

No good deed goes unpunished. I put my jacket on Little KL, since it’s actually pretty cold on this flight and the previous flight. While I’m shivering, he drools on my jacket while he sleeps. Life of a dad.

While Little KL slept, I put on my noise canceling headphones with music, and drifted off to sleep myself. Roughly an hour before landing, I woke up and am just sitting in my seat listening to music when I looked ahead and saw a phone raised above the seat two rows ahead of me. The phone was on selfie video mode. It was a middle seat, so I thought the person was just using the phone like a video camera to look at the back of the plane to see if there’s a line for the restroom. Then I see the same phone pop up again, and this time, I notice that I’m in the frame. Then I notice there’s a filter that distorts my face in a funny/insulting way…Then it happens again, and I try to move my head and it happens again. This is not something I ever expected to happen, so I couldn’t at first comprehend what was happening. I try to duck behind my seat or tilt my head, but the hand with the camera tilts it and follows me. By now, it’s obvious that it’s a very intentional act. What in the actual fuck. I could also see that it wasn’t just one person, but all 3 of the people in that row were in on it and laughing about it.

I’m stuck in my seat, short of just going into fetal postiion, I can’t really get out of the way. So after a few sessions of this trying to duck out of the way, I tapped on DH’s shoulder(who was seated in the row right in front of me along with PL and CL), gave her a short rundown of what was happening and asked her if she could ask the person(it was a girl due to her painted nails) ahead of me to stop filming me. DH tries to talk to them through the gap in the seat, they ignore her. She gets fed up, she gets out and stands in the aisle to look at them in the eye and confront to them. They all pretend to be asleep the moment DH gets up and she took a photo of them and asked them to stop and called them rude. Thanks DH for standing up for me. Made me feel really protected and loved!

This is what DH got a photo of. Three teenagers all fucking with me and all pretending to be asleep. We couldn’t be sure who their parents were seated or if they were even traveling with their parents, so DH sat back down after calling them rude. We thought DH yelling at them would be the end of this incident…but this bizarre inexplicable incident continues…

About 5 minutes after DH yelled at them, DH helps an old lady seats across the aisle from her to the bathroom. The old lady was old enough that she had trouble walking on the unsteady plane. As this was happening, I see that the three little fuckers had started recording me and putting filters on my face through the gap in the seat. WHAT THE FUCK!!!! The whole time I”m just thinking about how I’ve never expected to be openly harassed by 3 teenagers seated in an airplane via a facial feature video recording. Like…I’m literally right here and they know that I know they are doing this.

I lean over the seats ahead of me to get close to the three kids and I say something along the lines of, “What is going on, stop recording me! This is ridiculous!” I get zero response. I thought enough is enough, push the call button for flight attendant. Flight attendant comes over, I explain the situation, and the whole time I’m explaining, I feel like an idiot and embarrassed. It’s so bizarre that it seems unbelievable that I’m even having to call her for this. I felt shame, oddly. This is what victims of crimes and harassment feel like? Shame and embarrassment even though the victim is totally innocent? Right now writing up this incident, I can still feel the shame that I felt at that moment. It really sucks.

The flight attendant did not need any convincing from me. I told her what was happening and immediately she went to work. She walked two rows up, tried to talk to the piece of shit kids. They pretended to be asleep. Then she turned across the aisle, and woke up the asleep man with a sleep mask on, who she presumed to be the kids parents. She probably saw them coming in together as a family earlier as they were boarding. Told him in Spanish what was happening. Then I see him talk to the kids very briefly for maybe like 5 sentences, then puts back on his sleep mask, and then the flight attendant came back to me and told me she told the dad. She asked the kids in Spanish to delete the videos, and she’s sorry this is happening and let her know if it happens again. Hard to explain, but I felt totally supported by the flight attendant at this moment just based on how quickly she went to take care of the issue and her no nonsense tone dealing with them.

Soon after this, RL who was asleep next to me wakes up and I tell her what has been happening. Rightfully so, RL immediately gets super fucking pissed off at the situation like the rest of us. By now even my two girls sitting next to DH on their ipad are fully aware of what’s going on. I feel ashamed that they see their dad getting harassed by teenagers, and it seems like their dad cannot even protect himself from them. How do they expect me to protect them if this was happening to them? So many emotional layers to uncover and I’m still sorting this out internally 6 days after the fact as I’m typing this out.

The hair of the main bully literally just two rows ahead of me. I cannot believe the impunity she feels about this whole incident. My girls were obviously on my side and joked that they should just cut her hair while it’s hanging over between the seats. I said we should put gum in it, jokingly of course. But really, I was furious, and flabbergasted. I’m just going to let it all go, and as long as they stopped filming, just going to enjoy my vacation and not let it ruin things for me.

In about 3 hours or so after leaving Miami, we saw Cartagena through the clouds.

Convent of Santa Cruz de la Popa on top of that mountain. May make plans to visit it if time permits.

It turns out the incident wasn’t over. RL who was seated next to me and missed most of the incident while she was asleep is fuming.

RL gets up to get her backpack that’s in the bin above the three teenagers. She gives them the stare down. She gets her bag down aggressively and the dad of the teenagers complains that she almost hit him with her bag. Then RL just fucking goes off on him and the kids. She calls the girl a bitch. We question their shitty parenting to bring up kids who would do such a thing and they should know better. The dad gets defensive and says that they are kids doing kids things. Also implied that we are shitty parents to our kids. WTF. We argue, I’m yelling, we ask how old she is and that she should know better. She’s 15. My fucking much younger kids know better. He defends them, the mom sitting next to him says nothing. RL questions him if they are just racist because why else would they be picking on me, the only Asian on the entire plane(or at least that we could see). That hit a nerve with the dad and he explodes, calls us idiots. How we could say such a thing. They are Americans(from Colombia) who lived in Miami for 27 years and they are Jewish. They are not racist. blah blah blah blah blah. We are yelling and a whole show for the entire plane as everyone is standing getting luggage, the plane is slowly disembarking from both the front and the rear of the plane. It’s getting so heated, I worried that we are about to get in a fist fight in front of my kids. The dad calls us idiots and looks at my girls and implies that my kids are idiots too since I’m calling out his 15 fucking year old kid for videoing me and won’t stop. Finally, I say, look, all I want is I want my videos fully deleted. I said that we apologize for my wife almost hitting him with her bag in accident/anger but his daughter needs to apologize to me for videoing me. She makes a really shitty half hearted sorry. Can he check his kid’s phone to make sure that the videos are deleted. He gets her phone, pulls up the app, and deletes more videos. Shows me the phone, look look look, deleted. I don’t even know if they were videos of me or of her recording others. This whole time, the fucking bitch instigator says basically nothing while the dad defends them.

It made me feel like I wasn’t a person with feelings. But like an animal to be prodded and hit for the amusement of someone evil.

This goes on long enough the whole plane is empty. I got my bag and was going to exit the plane walking behind them, then a flight attendant comes over and asked me to exit from the rear. I hadn’t noticed that there’s also a stair pulled to the rear exit as well until this moment. I think she wanted us to exit off of different doors to separate us(and maybe hope that I won’t fucking push him down the stairs). This is a different flight attendant, I think maybe the lead one, she says she knows what’s happened. She’s also heard from other passengers about this. Asked me if I wanted to call security. I said, thank you, but I’ll hold off for now. We just landed in Colombia, I didn’t want to deal with Colombian security. How I wish at that moment we were in America so that I could feel comfortable calling security and filing a report.

Getting off the plane fuming…but, I’ve always enjoyed the stairs straight onto tarmac.

You can see two of the bitches standing on the top right of the photo. Why are they standing there, I don’t know. Did they come off the plane and get a talking to from security or the airline?

My girls had to go to the restroom, so they along with everyone else went into the immigration building. I was last one out. I hate this bad taste in my mouth. I don’t want to start out this vacation like this. Somehow them saying that they were Jewish made me more understanding…whether correctly or wrongly. Maybe because of the recent gun incident on Bondi Beach against the Jews gave me more sympathy. But then I also thought about Jews treating the Arabs…but that’s another topic and goes both ways.

Either way, since they were there, I spoke to the dad some more. I need closure and some peace from all this. I spoke to him, temperature is slightly lower, somehow in a span of 1min. I told him it’s not cool and imagine if it was the other way around. He’s a little more understanding. I said that his daughter was “harassing” me on the plane and I had no where to go or hide. Somehow the first time I used the word harass, it struck a chord with him. I could tell his demeanor changed in that instant. He says he’s sorry and starts to admit fault with his own side. This whole time, the mom says not a single word. It’s strange. The daughter and other kids also say not a single word. Dad says to daughter, “you apologize and even if you don’t want to, you need to look at him(me) and give him a real apology.” It was awkward, I didn’t want him to force her, but in retrospect it was much needed. She looked at me in the eyes, and I could tell she was angry, embarrassed, ashamed, holding back from crying. She forced herself to look at me and utter, “I’m sorry”. That was good enough for me. I can’t force her to be sorry, but I got the dad to force her to do the last thing she wanted to do, which is to verbally apologize to me again. The closure for me is that from now on every time she thinks about fucking with me, it’ll always end with her fucking eating shit and apologizing to me. Perhaps there’s even a slight chance she’ll think twice again in the future about bullying other people in the future. Just still unbelievable that her victim this time was a middle aged man traveling with kids and family on vacation seated only two rows back from her on a plane. Like…What the actual fuck!!!

The immigration lines were long, but we had kids which means that they put us in a priority line so we got through much quicker than everyone else. Score…then we had to wait a line in customs where every bag had to be scanned, and they wouldn’t allow the whole party to be part of the priority line, so then we had to wait some more.

Finally out of the airport, found our transport driving holding a piece of paper with my name. I wanted to make sure to find my name quickly so that that fucking bully girl didn’t see my name on a piece of paper and look me up or whatever. OK, Let’s go!

Reminds me of…Central America and Mexico. Not surprised.

From the airport to Old Town, where we will be staying, is a pretty short drive. Maybe 10min.

Kids were very excited to see horse carriages.

Old town city wall.

About to turn into old town. Due to the walls, there are only a few entrances and exits into old town, which obviously means traffic jam at those spots.

That looks very much modern inside the old city. Wonder what it is?

About to go into the old city. The airport is nice and close to old town. It’s only taken us 15min to get here from the airport.

That brand new looking building inside old town. Looks like a mall?

Cool looking streets and buildings here.

Very scenic.

And we are here at our airbnb! Short and easy to get here. We knocked on the door, and our housekeepers that we’ll have over the next few days were already here waiting for us.

This is what $1,222 a night gets you inside Old Town Cartagena. Beautiful inside. It’s a renovated old style Cartagena house inside the old city walls. There are 4 bedrooms with all ensuite bathrooms and AC inside the bedrooms. There’s no AC in this kitchen/living area, but has a lot of fans.

Beautiful courtyard, and it immediately feels cooler in the courtyard. Evaporative cooling from the wall of plants?

3 level house. Two bedrooms on first floor, two bedrooms on second floor.

A beautiful roof terrace with a sitting area on one side under perhaps the biggest grape vine I’ve ever seen in my life.

And a small pool on the other side. This place is as amazing as expected. Awesome!!

What an beautiful home base for the next 5 nights.

All 4 rooms look more or less like this. The kids are in a room with a queen and a single bed so that they can all sleep in the same room and only annoy each other and not the adults.

There’s one thing I do dislike about this. Perhaps due to tradition, the bathrooms and showers only have wooden shutters for privacy. There’s no glass, so there’s not much noise privacy. You want to take a loud shit in the bathroom, everyone outside in the courtyard will hear that. Not as huge of a deal with family, but definitely on my mind every time I do my business. Also because the wood shutters are not super tight, the bathroom door needs to be kept closed at all times so the AC doesn’t escape out through the bathroom. Odd for a place that’s been completely redone to modern standards to keep this part of the traditional house design.

We’ve been traveling all day, and up since 2am this morning in Austin. Hungry, and tired, time to get some dinner. We looked on our phone and picked somewhere close. We are in old town where it’s touristy, so lots of options all around us for food.

All really excited to be here! The airplane incident just happened, but we are all trying to put it behind us.

Dinner spot.

Outdoor seating. The temperature is warm. Feels like mid 80s with high humidity.

He’s ran out of gas. Losing it.

What a beautiful setting for our first meal together here in Cartagena. My SIL CH majored in Spanish in college, so even thought it’s been decades, she still speaks pretty fluent Spanish. We noticed pretty quickly that most Colombians, even in this very touristy part of town doesn’t speak much English. CH’s Spanish skills will become very much appreciated this trip.

Just can’t hang.

DH really excited about the beers arriving.

Very much enjoying this beer.

Our calamari appetizer shows up. It’s really good, like really really good. DH deems it the best she’s ever had.

Wakes up a little to eat some food.

Food starts showing up, looks amazing and tastes even more amazing. Wow.

Tastes even better than it looks! I haven’t had much Colombian food before this, but I think we are all in for a treat with the level of food in this town.

Seafood stew shows up. Yummmmmm.

Spanish colony means Spanish food influences as well. Patatas Bravas. CH has never had it before, and she was blown away by it. She talked about this for days afterwards. What an amazing meal to start our time here in Cartagena.

After dinner, half of the group took the kids home to prep them for bed. I went with BH to pick up some snacks, beers, and water at the grocery store just two blocks away from our airbnb. This close proximity will be super awesome.