On 15 May 2014, my friends Gael and Celine, and I booked a cheap
flight to Taipei for 21 November 2014. I was so excited that although the
Taiwan visa application only takes 3 days, I applied for mine a month before.
As a woman of science, I don’t believe in things such as
luck or signs. But in this case, I think bad luck sounds better than idiocy.
Omen 1: Case of the Colds
A couple of days before our departure, I unnecessarily spent
hours packing and repacking for a local business trip and my trip to Taipei,
which was back-to-back. I ended up sleeping late and waking up with a scratchy
throat. I didn’t get to sleep well for the next couple of days and the night
before my Taipei trip was spent in an 11-hour bus ride. On the night of our
flight, I already had a runny nose and a headache.
Omen 2: Can't find a Cab
It was a Friday. It was rush hour. I had difficulty finding a cab willing to take
me to the airport. It took me 30 minutes before I finally found a cab driver
who would take me there—but he wanted a flat rate of 300PHP. I asked the driver
to run the meter anyway. Traffic was relatively light, considering it was
Manila Friday Rush Hour. I gave myself an hour and a half to get to the
airport. To my surprise I got to the airport in less than 30 minutes. Even the
cab driver didn’t argue when I paid him what was on the meter (PHP150). I
arrived 4 hours before departure, before the check-in counter was even open.
Omen 3: Forgotten Visa
While we were checking in, Gael remembered that she forgot to
print her visa exempt form. We asked the lady from the Cebu Pacific counter if
there were printers in the terminal but she just shook her head and said they
didn’t have any. But another Cebu Pacific employee told Gael to email him his
form and he’d print it for her. So, Gael called her brother and had him fill up
the form. It wasn't as easy though. After an hour of connection problems and browser problems, Gael finally got her visa and we finally got our boarding passes.
Omen 4: Immigration Migraine
While Gael and I seamlessly went through immigration, Celine
was held up. As a government employee, she needed a travel authority to leave
the country. But after about 10 minutes of convincing the immigration officer that
she was on vacation and had a return ticket home, she was finally let through.
Omen 5: Kota Kinabalu
30 minutes before our scheduled departure, we calmly started
towards gate 103, our boarding gate. We didn't hear any boarding announcement
yet so I was assuming it was a few minutes delayed. I remember telling Gael about how my cousin missed his flight to China. When we arrived at gate 103, Gael mentioned that the gate was marked Kota Kinabalu. A part of me wanted to
verify if we were indeed in the right boarding area, but I just shrugged it off
and we continued with our conversation. *Cough, cough*—Stupid, right?
Omen 6: Run! Run! Run!
Although I’m clinically mildly deaf, I could clearly hear
boarding announcements from other flights, so I figured I would hear it if our
flight was already boarding. We calmly chatted away and at some point, Celine
was laughing at a couple of passengers running towards gate 106. (Guess who's laughing later?)
Implication of the Omens:
PHP 3,650. At around 11:00, an acquaintance that was also on
the same flight called Celine and told them that we were the only ones left who
haven’t boarded. I checked my boarding pass again and to my horror, the boarding
gate read gate 106 (I bought a new pair of glasses the next day). There were
three of us and none of us heard our flight being called. None of us bothered to check
our boarding pass. Stupid, stupid, stupid! We rushed towards the gate
but it was no use. The gates were closed. We were about to miss our flight. 10
minutes later, we missed our flight. There goes our PHP 3,600.00.
NTD 1300 / 3 persons. I don’t normally use an airport
pick-up service but since we were arriving in the wee hours of the morning, I
decided to book a car service (it would cost the same if we were to take a
cab). We called the contact in Taiwan who booked us the car service but he said
the car service was already on its way to the airport.
NTD 650. Well duh, we have already reserved 3 nights for 3
people in a hostel. We cancelled the rest of our stay right away. Fortunately,
each of us was only charged the first night.
Priceless. We've been anticipating for this trip for 6
months. As a national scholar, I had to arduously obtain a travel permit (this
is hard to obtain when you’re working and saving your leaves) and I didn't even
get to really use it. But worse of all, this trip was going to be Celine’s
first travel abroad.
Total Cost of Damages: ~PHP6,000(USD135) per person + a lot
of disappointment
I really didn't expect something like this to happen to me.
It reminded me of my trip from Bruges to Paris, when everything that could go wrong went wrong.
Except this time, we only had ourselves to blame. But oh well, the silver
lining to this experience is that we now have a helluva travel blooper to
tell—how we missed our flight to Taipei. We also got to experience how to
depart from departure area of the airport. LOL.
We booked a new
flight the following day with a new addition to the crew (so we aren't the 3
idiots anymore!) and this time we’ll be more than ready for Taipei 2.0!
Note: We got a full refund of our PHP1,620 travel tax
and our PHP550 terminal fee was still valid for our next trip.
