Tag: travel

Don’t worry; this is not a story filled with turbulence and mechanical failures. I wouldn’t do that to you. None of what I’m about to tell you happened in the sky.

There are two parts to this story: the 📞 part, and the 💣 part.

It was July 2022. New Zealand had finally, after more than two and a half years, reopened its borders to international travelers. I was flying back to see Stu. We were both beside ourselves with excitement.
Gah, I can’t believe you’ll finally be back in New Zealand so soon!, he wrote, as I left for the airport.
Ahhh, don’t jinx it!, I replied, adding a crying-with-laughter emoji followed by a heart.

I flew from Boston to San Francisco, arriving sometime in the morning. I grabbed my luggage and settled in for my 14-hour layover. Yes, you read that right: 14 hours. I know; that’s an absurdly long layover, but flying to NZ is expensive and for the right price I’ll literally hang off the wing of the plane. Also, airlines generally recommend arriving three hours before international flights, so I like to leave…a lot of extra time in case something goes wrong.

What do you mean, “in case something goes wrong?”.

Buckle. Up.

En route to finding the cozy, secluded spot that would be my home for the next 13.5 hours, I headed to the bathroom, where I–as always–took my phone out of my back right pocket and–as always–put it on top of the toilet paper dispenser. This was one of those absurdly small airport bathroom stalls where you’re struggling to get your bags in just so that you can shut the door, and it’s literally impossible to exit the stall without you and your luggage dramatically bursting out like you’ve just been shoved out of a clown car. I tumbled my way out of the stall, washed my hands, grabbed my bags, walked out and around the corner, headed towards the bookstore, realized I’d left my phone on top of the toilet paper dispenser, went back to the stall, and it was gone. It happened that fast. Less than two minutes. I never saw another person there, and (spoiler alert) I also never saw that phone again.

Your immediate reaction nowadays when something goes wrong is to reach for your phone. What do you do when you don’t have it? I suddenly felt like I was standing naked and vulnerable in the middle of San Francisco airport.
I have to call my…I thought, and then went …oh.
I have to text–oh.
Wait, I can goog…..oh. Oh, no.
For those first few minutes after your phone is stolen, you are completely and utterly helpless.

I happened to be standing next to an SFO “courtesy phone” attached to the wall, and, having no idea how they worked, tried calling my sister, who is both one of the most resourceful people I know and also the only person whose phone number I knew by heart (later I had to have my sister contact Stu, whom she had never even met, via Facebook messenger to let him know what had happened because I didn’t know his number except that it started with the country code +64).

Which leads me to item #1 of my Oh S**T Travel Disaster Checklist:

Remarkably, the SFO courtesy phone was both functioning and free (my sister later told me that her reaction upon seeing “SAN FRANCISCO AIRPORT” come up on her caller ID was “Uh oh”). I stumbled over my words as fast as I could while she put me on speaker and tracked my phone on her phone. What followed was several minutes of her telling me where my phone was (on the move, in the general area I was standing), I’d hang up and bustle off with my bags in desperate hope that I would…I don’t know…see someone holding my phone, which looks like everyone else’s phone, and then like…roundhouse kick them in the face and forcibly take it back?

After each failed attempt at spotting my phone, I’d run back to the courtesy phone to call my sister for location updates. After a few minutes my phone was shut off, the signal dropped, and it was gone for good.

I grabbed a pen and paper from my bag (note: never find yourself without a pen and paper) while my sister did some speedy googling and told me 1. the location of the SFO airport police desk, 2. the location of the taxi stand at SFO, because of course I couldn’t use Uber because I didn’t have a phone, and 3. the location of the nearest T-Mobile store.

I made my way to the SFO police headquarters where, with the unmistakable look of someone who knows this is a complete waste of everyone’s time, a policeman handed me the report to fill out. Which brings us to…

Oh S**T Travel Disaster Checklist item #2:

I handed the report back, myself now wearing the unmistakable look of someone who realized that was a complete waste of everyone’s time, and went out and hailed a taxi like it was ye olden days of 1987. I handed the driver the scrawled address of the store my sister had told me about, which was 25 minutes away. (See?! Thank god I had a 14-hour layover you guys!!). Although I have insurance to cover a stolen phone, it wasn’t something they could magically do on the spot, so they sold me the cheapest smart phone they had and informed me I could go through the stolen phone/insurance process when I was Stateside again in 3 weeks.

I can’t remember what kind of phone it was, but when I say I hated it, I mean I absolutely *loathed it*. Gone were the familiar swipes and taps and icons of my beloved iPhone, instead replaced by a weird lock screen with a stupid geometric picture on it, some obtuse way to get past the lock screen into the phone itself, and–of course–none of my apps and contacts. I took a taxi back to the airport, found a secluded corner where I could panic privately, and proceeded to try and remember all of my banking and social media apps, and then figure out how to download apps on this stupid phone, and then install each of them and log into each one of them, change the password, and make sure everything was in order, the whole time imagining a group of balaclava-wearing guys in a van rapidly siphoning money out of my bank accounts.

Oh S**T Travel Disaster Checklist item #3:

So the trip was going great so far, and I still had another 8 hours before my flight boarded. I’m not advocating that people traveling abroad get to the airport 14 hours early, but I’m not not saying they should.

I made my way to the Fiji Airways desk in the International terminal, which was at the very end of what seemed like a comically long corridor ending with at a set of escalators. I went down into a cavernous space with floor-to-ceiling windows, lots and lots of chairs, zero people, and two generic, unaffiliated airline desks, both of which were deserted with blank screens above them. It turns out I was so early for my flight that the check-in counter didn’t exist yet. Did you know that sometimes generic airport counters sit there completely unaffiliated until an airline suddenly appears from the mist several hours before a flight, like Brigadoon? Neither did I.

I awoke from a nap to find that a few other people had joined me. And then a few more. By the time check-in was within an hour, the whole section was crowded with people. The desk remained unmanned, but when the board illuminated with our flight number and departure time, I was finally able to relax. I was going to New Zealand to see Stu! It was really happening! I settled back into my chair with a sigh of relief.

Oh but wait, there’s more. Remember when I used the “bomb” emoji earlier? Yeaaaah…..

Within the space of about thirty seconds, everyone who was looking down at their phones started muttering, which is a pretty terrifying thing to have happen. I asked the guy next to me what was happening. He informed me that the entire airport had been evacuated because there was a bomb threat and a suspicious package had been found in the International Terminal.

I’m sorry, WHAT?

I called up a news article online and yep, sure enough, not one hour ago the airport police had received a bomb threat after someone was found acting erratically alongside a suspicious package (we found out later that it was a young man having a mental health crisis and that the package was completely harmless). But the whole thing went down in that long, long corridor that separates the International terminal from the Domestic one: right between where we were sitting and the entire rest of the airport. They evacuated “everyone” except somehow forgot about the 200-something of us essentially trapped at the end of the building. No one ever came to check on us or tell us what was going on. Here’s proof I’m not making this up.

By this time it was 10 p.m. and our flight was scheduled to leave at 11 p.m., which was obviously not going to happen, and yet the information board above the desk was still confidently insisting we were leaving at 11 p.m. I was so delirious at this point that I was imagining myself being interviewed on national television about the whole ordeal, and I thought I was pretty clever for saying “You know, when you think of everything that could go wrong with a flight, this isn’t that bad.” The reporter laughed.

A little while later the board changed to say we were now departing at 12:30 a.m.. There was a collective muttering. Then it changed again to say 2 a.m., and there was a collective moan. By the time it changed to 3 a.m., most people were asleep.

But, remarkably, our plane did leave at 3 a.m., and when I got to the desk and realized I’d forgotten to download the Fiji Airways app that had all my flight information, I just pulled out the printed copy of my itinerary and boarding pass.

Oh S**T Travel Disaster Checklist item #4:

Because our flight left four hours later than expected, we all missed our connecting flights in Nadi. As we got off the plane there were cheerful people in bright floral shirts and big smiles, welcoming us to Fiji and directing us which line to join depending on where your connecting flight was supposed to go. I have to say, Fiji Airways was amaaazzing with the whole bomb scare thing, even though it had nothing to do with them. I joined the Auckland line, and by the time I got to the smiling woman with a frangipani flower tucked behind her ear, she informed me that I was on the flight to Auckland that left tomorrow afternoon, but not to worry because they were putting us up for the night in a gorgeous resort and giving us a food and drink allowance. As we waited for the shuttle to the resort, I managed to pause my nervous energy and marvel at how beautiful everything around me was. And the resort was gorgeous, and my room was great, and I was able to take a shower, and the free drink and free pizza were fabulous. But then, as I was chatting to my fellow stranded passengers, I found out that *they* were on a flight to Auckland in just a few hours, but unfortunately that flight was full.

I had to get on that flight. I *absolutely had* to get on that flight.

I booked it back to my hotel room and proceeded to try and call Fiji Airways to have my flight switched, but the goddamned smartphone they sold me back in San Fran, the one they promised me worked in other countries, did not in fact work in other countries. I’d finally get through to the airline and the call would suddenly disconnect, or it would give me the busy signal, which I’m pretty sure isn’t something you’re supposed to hear when you call a major airline.

Throughout this whole ordeal, I was frantically texting my sister, the lone contact in my phone. The keyboard was a nightmare, the predictive text was so far off the mark it felt like it had to have been an inside joke with the developers, and then at one point the phone started inserting shrimp emojis for absolutely no reason while also trying to get me to pay for something.

My texts went something like this:

“Thss is the moist insane tounge ever the resport is beautiful 🦐and but I cant enjo🦐🦐 what the F**K 🦐🦐🦐 🦐 🦐 ITS TYING TO make ME PAY for srimp emajs i dant anymore.” I also remember her writing back telling me she was so sorry but she could not stop laughing.

I finally gave up on trying to get through on my cell phone and used the hotel room phone, knowing it would cost a fortune. But I did eventually get on that earlier flight.

As I waited in the lobby of the resort for the airport shuttle, the soft, warm breeze and subtropical flora everywhere renewing my sense of bliss and excitement, I treated myself to a flat white—the delicious, creamy Oceania version of a latte—which I had the absolute pleasure of enjoying while chatting with a group of enormous Pacific Islander guys, all of them covered in traditional tattoos. They told me they were professional rugby players in New Zealand who had since been recruited to play in Japan, which is when I learned that rugby is apparently huge in Japan. I remember how kind they were, and how adorable it was that these absolutely massive men were, like me, sipping at their flat whites that looked Alice-in-Wonderland dwarfed in their mitts.

Alas, though, we are not quite to the end of this ordeal yet. When I went to check out of the hotel to catch the shuttle back to the airport, the man behind the desk informed me that my phone calls to my sister and Fiji Airways from the hotel phone had cost me $285 USD. Which, of course, I had no choice but to pay. But then I remembered that—aha!—I was smart enough to have purchased travel insurance for just such a scenario!

Oh S**T Travel Disaster Checklist item #5:

Let’s talk about travel insurance for a second. People ask me about it, assuming that I’m well-versed in the subject. I am not. The one time I ever purchased travel insurance was for this trip, and they covered exactly none of it—including the $285 hotel room phone bill.

Which I found appalling, because have you ever actually read the fine print of a travel insurance policy? It’s always so incredibly specific and absurd. You’d think this would be exactly the sort of ridiculous chain of events travel insurance was designed for:

“If your plane gets delayed for more than two hours due to a false bomb threat, and you accrue upwards of $100 in hotel-room phone charges because the replacement phone you purchased after your original phone was stolen doesn’t work in Fiji even though the guy who sold it to you promised it would…”

But nope. They denied my claims. I did eventually get credit for the phone bill, though. My sister called T-Mobile, told them my entire saga, and threatened to burn down the person’s grandmother’s house if they didn’t credit me. Thanks, Gillian!

Here is a summary I made about how I personally feel about travel insurance. Click on the first photo so you can read them better. Note: I am *absolutely not* trying to talk anyone out of getting travel insurance. I cannot stress this enough. I just had a bad experience with it the one time I tried it. You should do your own research and make the decision based on that, rather than on one chaotic woman’s unhinged blog post.

After all of this, the stolen phone, the bomb threat, the shrimp phone, I did end up making it to Auckland, 12 hours later than planned, and I ran off the plane and straight into the arms of the most beautiful man I’d ever met.

Ngā mihi nui to my whānau and e hoa mā (thank you so much to my family and friends) who actually read this in its entirety.

Aroha always,

Hilary ❤️🦐🦐🦐

And now please cast your eyes upon “Hilary’s “Oh Noooo!” Travel Disaster Checklist.”

May you never need to use it but, if you do, may my suffering be your saving grace.

Click the checklist below to download the PDF and print your own copy.