Travel Mishaps and More

In our first month of travel, we’ve already had more travel mishaps than I would like to admit. We’re seasoned travelers, I figured, how hard could this be? Brady summed it up well while we were sorting out our latest mistake: “Once again, we’re at the airport and there is a problem.” Funny enough (though it wasn’t in the moment) each mishap has gotten progressively worse….I certainly hope that trend doesn’t continue.

The first challenge was sprinting to our gate through the airport in Narita (tip #1: Narita is a LOT further from Tokyo that Haneda) to make our flight to Hokkaido. We were literally sprinting as I was cursing myself for bringing too much crap and wishing I’d hit the treadmill more often, and then I thought Glenn was going to have a heart attack after having to run back to the counter to go retrieve something from the bags (tip #2: low cost airlines don’t like batteries in checked bags but you can take them in your carry-on, go figure). 

Lesson learned, a week later we arrived to Sapporo for our next flight with plenty of time to spare to find that I had booked our flights to Kyoto for March 27th, not February 27th (yes, it was February 27th as we were attempting to leave). Of course, booking that short flight on the spot was 4x the cost of our original flight, but thankfully we found a low cost airline that only cost us an arm vs an arm and a leg. The counter woman we first spoke with, however, was very upset that we were arriving without an actual reservation and told us to go to another airline if we needed to purchase tickets. Luckily, Glenn pulled out his New York and found another rep to get us booked on the flight and on our way. And then there was more airport cardio - yes, it was becoming a thing. 

Most recently, we arrived at Osaka feeling pretty confident that we were going to be okay. Arrive to the airport early, check. Have Glenn double and triple check the flight details with me, check. Visas for Myanmar we’ll get upon arrival, check. So off to the counter we went, looking forward to some browsing and relaxing before our flight took off. Unfortunately, the visa scenario I just mentioned was for Bhutan, not Burma (Myanmar). Damn, not again.

As an aside, did you know that Americans have the freedom to travel visa-free or visa-on-arrival to 174 countries, as of January 1, 2017? That's a lot of freedom, ranking the United States passport as the 3rd highest travel freedom in the world (tied with Sweden, Finland, and some other nice countries). See here for the map - pretty cool, right?  I looked it up, finding it curious that I’d never actually had to get a visa before (guess I wasn’t the seasoned traveler I imagined myself to be). Unfortunately for us, right up there with Pakistan, Iran, Iraq and a handful of others, Myanmar also requires Americans to have a visa in hand before arrival.

I may have mentioned that the Japanese like their rules and we seemed to be constantly breaking them. The woman behind the counter was utterly baffled that I was trying to convince her that our visas would be waiting for us when we arrived (how, I hadn’t quite figured out but I was sure I could make it work) and couldn’t she please just check us through to Yangon and we would figure out the rest. Finally, I think because she just wanted to get rid of us, she did book us through on our first leg to Bangkok, where we could get a visa (on Monday to fly on Tuesday, and it was a Saturday). There was simply no way she would book us all the way through to Yangon, Myanmar.

After shooting off a quick email to our tour organizer that I didn’t seem to have our visas (wasn’t he arranging, after all?) and it looked like we may need to stay in Bangkok for a few days, we boarded our plane where I gave Glenn the first out: “Should we just go home? I’m failing miserably at this planning stuff.” A few tears later and insistence from Glenn that we should stay the course, I resigned myself to our fate and was looking forward to some good Thai food.

Upon arrival to Bangkok, I had an email from Gerry the tour guide in Myanmar. He had miraculously pulled a rabbit from a hat and said our visas would be waiting at the airport in Myanmar (but no, the visas were not his responsibility and I should have gotten them previously) and he’d already alerted the airlines that we were all set. We were all a little shocked….talk about teaching your children to be flexible and roll with the changes! Super excited that our plan was back on track, we didn’t even blink an eye when we had to retrieve our bags, go through immigration, check back in with Thai Airways, and get back through security. Myanmar, here we come! If only we had known what was in store….