We FINALLY made it to the Philippines!
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| Dodong and Kuya at the Manila Airport |
Okay, our ordeal isn't complete yet, as we are stuck in a "quarantine" hotel until February18th, but at least we are now in the country we have been attempting to get to.
This giant fustercluck of a trip began on 03/Feb/2021, when after multiple trips to the airport shuttle service to lug the mountains of ultra-heavy suitcases Sweetie felt compelled to pack, we turned in the keys to our apartment, returned the rental car, and watched as the shuttle service employees struggled to load all our bags into the shuttle. Then it was off to Atlanta, where we spent the night in an expensive, crummy hotel near the airport. (Poor Old Grump had to lug all those super heavy suitcases up to our room. Ugh!)
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| The Majority of Our Ridiculous Assemblage of Heavy Suitcases |
Way too early on the 4th, (4:00 am!!), we were awake and ready to go to the airport. Our mountains of bags were shoved into the hotel shuttle, then unloaded at the Atlanta airport, where thankfully we didn't need to fuss with the majority of them again until arriving in the Philippines. Unfortunately we were over the baggage limit, and many of our suitcase were over, (way over!), the weight limit, so Old Grump had to fork over NINE HUNDRED DOLLARS to send whatever crap we had jammed into them along with us.
Getting on the airplane in Atlanta was relatively painless. International travel during the "Covid Era" is insanely difficult, but we had been warned about this, and advised to bring along all sorts of seemingly unrelated documents. (E.g., Sweetie's birth certificate and expired Philippine passport, Kuya's and Dodong's birth certificates, Sweetie and Old Grump's marriage license, and, possibly most crucially, a letter from the mayor of Sweetie's hometown stating that we were permitted to reside after our quarantine period.) So our trip started out smoothly. And then we arrived in Dallas.
In Dallas we had to transfer from a domestic to an international flight. We had paperwork galore to facilitate this process, but for some unknown reason the folks behind the check-in desk were insistent that we needed to have a filled out e-CLF form for each of us before we could board the airplane. There was a bit of tense conversation back and forth between us and them, but once we produced the "permit from the mayor" document, the check-in ladies relented, and we got on the airplane. (We have yet to fill out an e-CLF form, by the way!)
It was a long, long flight from Dallas to Korea, and none of us slept much. Arriving at the Seoul airport, all went smoothly at first. We arrived at our gate in plenty of time, and partook of a couple of the world's worst "smoothies". (Juice mixed with crushed ice? Yuck!)
Then just before boarding it happened: one of the women working at the gate held up a sign with our names on it. I asked her what she wanted with us, and she said there was a problem with our paperwork, and we had to go to ..... well, I never did understand where exactly she expected me to go. Now understand that Sweetie's mom "Lola" was traveling with us. Lola has arthritis in her hips, and walks (painfully) with a cane. We had been refused a wheelchair upon landing because her name "wasn't on the list". So Lola had to hobble all the way down the long, long terminal to our gate, which was at the very end. Now it appeared that they expected us to walk all the way back down the terminal to meet with unspecified parties to go over our paperwork one more time.
To make a painful story short, we walked all the way down the terminal twice, and never did find anyone to help us at the locations we were directed to go to, except for one young lady who was exceedingly unhelpful. I know it is stupid to lose your cool and holler at authority figures, especially as a foreign visitor, but after our second unsuccessful attempt to find anyone to help us, or even pay attention to us, I started fussing at the ladies at the gate, and stated how disgusted I was that they made Lola walk all that way multiple times for absolutely nothing!
Maybe it was my anger that caused a change, or more likely the sight of Lola hobbling to the terminal for the third time, but suddenly a person who seemed to know what she was doing appeared, and began going through our paperwork. Everything she asked to see we could produce, so after a few minutes she signed some other paperwork, and we were good to go. We were the last folks to board. Our ordeal caused the flight to be delayed, but even so the ditzy stewardesses wouldn't let us on the airplane without some ridiculous paperwork demands of their own. (They wanted to see the ticket stubs of our prior flights.)
Finally, late on the evening of the 5th, we arrived at Manila airport. We still had regulatory hurdles to leap over, but at least we had arrived at the Philippines.
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