Yesterday I told Jamie how remarkable it is that this trip has gone off without a hitch so far. All our travel and hotel reservations have come off exactly as planned. Six weeks of international travel and we haven’t had a single problem.
She said, “Don’t say that. You’ll jinx it.”
Well, I guess I did, because this has been the worst day of our trip.
We had reservations on a flight from Hong Kong to Perth, but the airline cancelled our flight and we ended up taking a very roundabout path to get here: Hong Kong to Manila to Melbourne to Perth. We were in airports or in the air for exactly 24 hours.
Our flight from Hong Kong to Manila landed just ten minutes before the scheduled departure time of our Melbourne flight and making it from one to the other could have been a huge problem, but the airline kept that from happening.
A woman standing at the door of the plane was hollering, “Melbourne?” to all the disembarking passengers. When we said, “Yes,” she said, “Look for a woman holding a Melbourne sign at the end of the tunnel.” We found that woman and she ran interference for us as we sped through the airport.
Since she spoke in Tagalog to all the security people we don’t know what she said, but it worked. We bypassed long lines other people were standing in, went up several flights of stairs and down several others and finally ended up at security right at the gate for our Melbourne flight. They quickly looked through our carry-on bags, frisked us just as quickly, and sent us to our plane.
The rest of the trip was uneventful, but long. We had a two-and-a-half hour flight from Hong Kong to Manila, followed by a seven hour flight from Manila to Melbourne, followed by a four hour flight from Melbourne to Perth.
But we’re here. And much to our surprise, so is our luggage.