I have a confession: I love traveling with my laptop. My fellow Window Seat writers prefer to unplug when they’re exploring the world, so I’ve often pretended I only bring my gadgets (laptop, iPhone, etc.) to work on the plane. But that’s not really true.

The truth is, while I'm glad others relish being lost to time, I take no pleasure from unplugging. Relaxing for me is waking up to a good cup of coffee, posting a few new pictures to my blog, reading the New York Times online, and then researching a local restaurant for dinner. And until this last trip, I think I was even a little embarrassed about this.

As you might remember, I was planning a trip to Thailand for my honeymoon--and I was even a little anxious about the political situation there. The first week of our trip, everything went off without a hitch, but when we flew to Koh Samui for the second week, things went from bad to worse in Bangkok.

On Tuesday, November 25, my husband and I were eating dinner at our resort when I opened up my iPhone to glance at the front page of the Times. Things had been a little tense in Bangkok since a huge political rally on Sunday and we’d been monitoring the situation. What I saw was an article about protesters taking over the Bangkok airport and violence erupting around the city. My husband said, “Check, please!” and we hightailed it back to the room to get my laptop.

We quickly canceled our existing flights home, which connected through Bangkok, and then scoured the Internet for another way out of the country. After an hour or two, we figured out that every other day, Bangkok Airways flew one non-stop flight from Koh Samui to Hong Kong. If all went according to plan, this new flight should have gotten us to Hong Kong in time to pick up our Cathay Pacific flight home to San Francisco.

Sadly, in the following days the situation worsened and getting planes out of the Bangkok airport to service other areas was difficult. Our flight from Koh Samui to Hong Kong was delayed a whopping five hours, while Bangkok Airways scrambled to find a plane. Meanwhile our hopes of making it home to San Francisco were slipping away.

Luckily we were flying two incredible airlines, who were willing to pull together during difficult times. I alerted Bangkok Airways about our tight connection and they were able to check our bags all the way to San Francisco, even though we were flying Cathay Pacific for the second half of our trip. They also moved us to the front row of the plane and told us to check in online for our Cathay Pacific flight.

“But we don’t have a printer to print our boarding passes!” we told them. “Save them as a PDF on your laptop and be prepared to show the screen as we take you through customs.” We were a little shocked by this but some Germans we’d made friends with told us that Lufthansa even lets you use a PDF of your boarding pass on your phone.

By the time we touched down in the Hong Kong airport, we had exactly 30 minutes to get through customs and on our next flight. A Cathay Pacific representative was waiting for us at the end of the skyway with our names on a placard. We told her we had checked in and showed her the PDFs of our boarding passes skeptically. She nodded and we were off and running through the airport. She personally whisked us through a special customs line, showing the officials our passports and laptop screen, and we made it to the gate in the nick of time.

Now that I'm back I've heard many stories about people who were stuck in Thailand an extra week or more, tales of travelers who had to be flown home on military jets, all because they didn't take action quickly enough. And that is precisely why I have two new travel rules for myself: 1) Fly airlines based in Asia whenever possible and 2) Never leave home without your laptop.