Four Days in Diplomatic Limbo

It seems I had a "professor moment" (like a senior moment or a blonde moment, but I was unable to carry out basic tasks in your world because I was distracted thinking about deep truths of the universe) when I was filling out my visa application to Vietnam. (Vietnam is a send-your-passport-to-the-embassy-in-DC visa process.) You see, my travels brought me to Hong Kong on the 15th, Ho Chi Minh City on on the 17th, and Nha Trang on the 21st. I simply must have read the wrong line from my itinerary, and my visa was for 30 days, starting the 21st.

I learned this at the ticket counter as I was checking in for my flight to Vietnam, on the 17th.

The ticket agent was understanding, but said she couldn't let me on the flight. (If Vietnam didn't let me, United would be responsible for my overnight quarantine and flying me back to someplace else; their liable for my presence.) I asked her what could be done, and she picked up the phone for me to talk to the Vietnamese consulate in Hong Kong (I was early, so there was no line). The conversation went something like this (I actually was feeling too stupid to be at all indignant or argumentative here):

Me: "Hi. I think I made a stupid mistake on my visa application, and put down the date for the wrong flight. Could you please let me know how I can amend it?"
...
Consulate official: "Since it was your own mistake, it would be very difficult for me to let you into Vietnam before the 21st, the date on your visa..."
Me: "Yes, I think it must have been my mistake, seeing the date. I don't want to blame anyone else for my mistake, but my scheduled flight is in a few hours, and I'd very much like to get to Hi Chi Minh City. Could you please help me with that?"

And then, somehow, he changed his mind. I think it was important that I just asked nicely for a favor. The United agent faxed my passport to him, he filled out some paperwork, and half an hour later I had a faxed letter that assured United (and me) that Vietnam immigration had been notified of my problem and that I would be allowed to amend my visa upon arrival, for a fee. (There actually is a procedure to get a visa on arrival, but....)

With my letter in hand, I got on the plane and flew to Ho Chi Minh City. On arrival, I went to the foreign visitor passport control line, where they told me to go to the arrival visa window. I went up to the glass window with one guy working, and four other guys in the back not doing much. People were coming up around me throwing their passports and visa applications through the hole in the window (there is no queuing norm in much of Asia). There was a posted amendment price of 10USD. They guy looked at my letter and my visa, and said I was OK; no fee, no editing the visa. I went back to passport control (a different officer), showed my passport and letter again, and was told to go back to the arrival visa window. I explained I'd been there and they said it was OK. The passport control officer rolled her eyes, shrugged, and stamped me through.

I'm thrilled...I made it through this ordeal, and just as my luggage is arriving on the belt. Then it hits me: all I have is a visa for four days hence, and a letter saying I would be allowed to amend it. No amendment.

Well, I avoided run-ins with the authorities for four days, and the hotel desks that needed to collect that information dutifully wrote down my visa expiration date more than 30 days out. But it was conceptually interesting to be an illegal immigrant for a few days.

So Much for That Voucher

ATA Airlines Shuts Down After Filing for Bankruptcy Protection

Based on their inability to get me to Kona on March 17th, I think have an insight into why they've utterly failed.

I arrived in Oakland at 4 PM (from LAX) with a little time to kill before my scheduled 6:15 flight to Kona, so I wandered around a bit before going to the gate and asking to be put in an exit row, whereupon I learned that the flight was delayed until 10 PM. Six hours in the Oakland airport! What fun. I read a couple books (the Warriors series, borrowed from my little sister -- they're good enough that I've started on the next 6-book series) and then started looking around to see if one of the shops would sell me a Nintendo DS or something. None were available, which seems stupid, since I was prepared to buy one, and I'm not nearly as impulsive as most other people.

Anyway, I walked around the airport 500 times, got my $10 food voucher from the airline, and waited with mounting anticipation as our boarding time approached. And then, another delay. Until 11 PM. That's when I started to fear that we were on the Road of One Thousand Successive Delays Leading Inexorably to Cancellation (which is also, incidentally, the name of a really great Mah Jongg hand).

Sure enough, at eleven, we were pushed back to midnight, and then to 2 AM. As you can imagine, the natives were getting pretty restless by now, with several macho a-holes hovering around the gate agent and helpfully reminding her every five seconds that they were paying customers who really really wanted to get on an airplane. My blood pressure goes up just thinking about these people. SHUT UP STUPID PEOPLE. I would like to put a couple swear words in there, but this is a family blog. Anyway, I put a shirt over my face and tried to get a little shut-eye before, you know, the flight was cancelled. Which it finally was, at 2:30, because a flight attendant had called in sick and they couldn't fly without a full crew.

Cue the seething mob! I am proud to say that I was second in line, by which I mean that there was a mosh pit around the podium with a nice orderly line forming behind it, and I was second in the nice orderly line. Everyone could feel the waves of righteousness coming off of me, I'm sure.

OK, we all know this story, right? We've all been to the airport (except one of my relatives, but I don't want to embarrass my dad by naming him specifically), we've all had flights get cancelled and been surrounded by morons who think the gate agent is in charge of scheduling and plane maintenance and who lives and who dies. So it's not like this is some kind of unique tale so far. But I haven't gotten to the good part.

Normally, at this point, everyone gets put on different flights. ATA's Kona flights were booked for the next 10 days, so we were all going to have to be booked with some other airline(s) to get there. Not unusual. I don't know how they usually deal with this process -- usually the gate agent works his/her magic, occasionally saying things to placate the masses, and then gives out everyone's new flight info, and that's that. It might take a little while, but it doesn't seem complicated. They have procedures for these things.

I'm trying to give the gate agent the benefit of the doubt here and say that it's ATA's fault she had to do things this way, but it might just have been poor training and the fact that no one else who knows anything is working at 2:30 AM. In any case, the agent got on the phone, and this is roughly what I heard of her side of the conversation.

I need to book some passengers on a flight to Kona. How much room do you have in coach?

I have 160 people.

One hundred and sixty.

ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY.

ATA.

A - T - A.

Can I talk to your supervisor?

[More discussion of how many people she was trying to book]

There's no credit card. I'm rebooking passengers from ATA.

A - T - A.

One at a time...? There are ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY PEOPLE.

From all this, I was starting to get the impression that she had called United's reservations line. I'm not sure how airlines usually rebook passengers on other airlines, but... I'm pretty sure they don't do it THAT way. Eventually, she managed to straighten a couple things out, and started rebooking us in groups of nine. She did this by taking each person's boarding pass, reading his/her name into the phone, spelling it, spelling it again, spelling it again, acknowledging to the person on the phone that the passenger did indeed have an unusual name, reading a confirmation number, and reading it again. Needless to say, this meant that it was taking well over a minute to rebook each person, and only one agent was working on this. You do the math.

This was making the natives EXTREMELY restless, to the point where they called in six actual police officers to stand by the podium. No one was being violent, but it did seem prudent. Since the mosh pit refused to be assimilated into the orderly line, it was quite a long time before the agent even got to the line. The righteous line-people were remarkably patient, although the lady at the very end did lose it at one point and rush the podium, demanding to know why she had to be last. Well... hate to say it, since no one wants to be last... but someone has to be last. Some amount of glaring from the line-people seemed to communicate this to her.

Things did speed up, and I had my new booking after about an hour -- for a United flight leaving at 8:40 AM from SFO. They were giving out vouchers for a hotel and a cab ride. The cab voucher was essentially a blank check to get us out of Oakland, and they had announced that the hotel voucher was for the Crowne Plaza near SFO. I decided that the hotel was pointless, since it would pretty much just get me a shower and a 1-hour nap before I had to get to the airport again, so I went straight to SFO (an $80 fare). There were plenty of people who sounded interested in the hotel option, so off they went to the Crowne Plaza. Thanks, ATA!

Except.... the vouchers weren't for the Crowne Plaza. They were for a Best Western, which you would only know if you happened to call the phone number on the voucher. I groan in sympathy for all the people who did not call the number and arrived at the CP to find blank stares and no available rooms.

As for those of us who went straight to SFO, we were greeted by a phalanx of United agents who were waiting just for us. They were so fast! And nice! And I was assigned a seat in Economy Plus! And.... once I got to the gate.... they had those seats that are arranged in sets of four with NO ARMRESTS between them. Only people who have been awake for 38 hours can truly appreciate those seats. And we did, my friends. It looked like a hobo camp at that gate.

So, in the end, we all made to Kona on a real airline, each with a voucher for a free round-trip domestic or international ATA flight. What a nice gesture. I've already redeemed it by folding it into a paper airplane and flying it across the backyard! Thanks, ATA!

This Post Brought to You by Kona Coffee

We got back from our travels a few days ago -- Soren and I spent some time in Santa Barbara while Chris did workshop stuff in Honolulu, and then I flew out to Kona and hung out with my hubby while Gramma, Grampa Richie and Auntie Kelly Ann (hereafter known as "The Goldens" because I can't be typing all those names all the time) took care of Soren for a few days. The trip had its ups and downs, but on the whole, it was great!

Chris flew with us as far as LAX, and was nice enough to let me use his first-class upgrade while he sat with Soren in Peasant Plus class. Have I mentioned that I love Chris? Because I do.

Soren and I had a great time in SB, enjoying the disgustingly nice weather. Gramma got out all the awesome old Fisher-Price toys she'd been hanging on to since 1977 (you know, back when Little People were still a choking hazard), and Soren was in heaven. OK, as an aside, remember how you used to be able to wind toys up? Why don't they do that any more? One of the toys Mom held on to was the Fisher-Price record player, and I got it down and was like, Oh, there's no way the batteries in this are still good, but then I remembered that you're supposed to wind it up! And then it goes! Only for thirty seconds, but who cares? If you want your toys to make annoying noises, you should have to work for it. Not like the big garbage truck Soren has, with the lever you can push down to make the horn honk CONTINUOUSLY FOREVER. Anyway, I'm sure Big Battery has the toy companies in its pocket, but I'd like to see a return to good old-fashioned winding up. </aside>

The Hess family was nice enough to have us over for dinner and give us some of Liam's old clothes, which was wonderful! Then Emily came over and gave Soren an awesome Sock Monster (I'll have to take a better picture of it one of these days) before we went to a lovely brunch featuring the hugest mimosas in the entire world. Sadly, this brings us to one of the lower points of the trip, which was the stomach bug that Soren had had a couple nights before, which then manifested in me after brunch, and which apparently I later passed on to Emily and Kelly Ann. And now Chris has it. So don't come near me, I guess.

Let's talk more about fun things, though. The Goldens hosted an Easter party, with egg decorating and egg hunting and candy! Soren even found a couple eggs before deciding that it was more fun to play with trucks!



And he had his first ride on a carousel! He was a little nervous, but managed to have some fun. When asked if he wanted to ride again, his answer was a prompt "No," but I'm sure he'll warm up to it.



He also got to run around making airplane noises with Grampa Richie and Kelly Ann...



And he gave Gramma some very nice kisses.



That's enough for now. In my next post: Why I will forever hereafter stick to flying REAL airlines; humuhumunukunukuapua'a, palila, and akiapola'au; and molten lava.

The Aforementioned Fun Times in Florida

So, as I said earlier, we went to Florida and had lots of fun with Erica, Michael-Paul, Chelsea and Brady. Oh, and we also had fun with Calvin and Clementine (the Great Danes), Vincent (the Eclectus parrot), Jasmine and Azrael (the cats), and the koi.

We got a couple Mr. Men shirts for Brady and Soren -- Brady was Mr. Mischief, and Soren was Mr. Funny. Our little Mr. Men are pictured here getting good and wet in a fountain in St. Augustine.



We went to the zoo and rode the choo-choo!



There was gambling!



And there was lots of Wii! But there are no pictures of that, because we were all too busy, you know, playing Wii.

I stole photos from Chelsea's Flickr account for this post. Thanks, Chels! Erica, POST YOUR PHOTOS!!!1!111

Soren is a Big Boy

Soren finally got his first haircut! He didn't want me to take his picture this morning, so this is the best I could do:



He was a very good boy throughout the whole experience, probably because we kept plying him with lollipops. When the hair started sticking to the lollipop juice that was all over his hands and face, it was time to go.

This momentous step toward big-boyness took place in Jacksonville, where we met up with Chelsea and Brady at Erica and Michael-Paul's house. It was so much fun! I haven't been able to spend that much time with Erica and Chelsea since I left home (and I didn't really want to hang out with them back then anyway), so it was really nice to hang out, play Wii and let the cousins get acquainted. I don't have any photos, since I didn't have my camera with me, but Erica and Chels took plenty, so I'll post copies of theirs.

I was worried about flying alone with Soren, especially since he was sitting on my lap the whole way, but he was a complete angel 99% of the time. We sat next to a couple different women who were very gracious about playing with him (which mainly involves saying "Bless you" after each of his fake sneezes), and nothing untoward happened when we ended up sitting in the same row as the guy who informed us that A) he was on his way to detox; and B) he had been drinking whiskey and Coke for the past six hours. Gotta love those Southwest flight attendants! They'll serve anyone!

Anyway, the flights were fine. However, we almost hit a major snag last night, during our connection in Philadelphia. We had a layover of less than an hour, and we had to go to a different terminal to catch our next flight -- and, because there was construction going on, we had to go through another security line to reach said terminal. Of course, since one really only plans on going through security once per travel day, I had already celebrated our entry into the secure area by tying my shoes extra tight with triple knots, buying three gallons of expensive water, and opening up my quart-size Ziploc bag in order to spread the various liquid containers throughout my luggage. I hate you, Terminal E of the Philadelphia airport. Anyway, we made it just fine, since our flight to Providence was delayed-- they'd had to drop off an unruly passenger in Baltimore en route to Philly (so THAT'S why Baltimore is full of unruly people!).

Next time: fun stories about our time in Florida!