Travel horror stories
05-01-2013, 01:16 AM
Thread bump: Last night I experienced the worst travel drama in my life and had a full blown melt down at the airport in Manila, its such an absurd story that Kafka himself couldn't have made this shit up. This tale involves me forking over several hundred dollars, drama with immigration, a missed flight, a heart warming consolation and me reconsidering if I'll ever travel in the third world again.
Prequel to meltdown: I've been traveling in SE Asia for the past six months, in the Philippines for the past three and although its been good, the past few weeks have been very stressful (typical 3rd world issues getting on my nerves) and I've been dealing with some tax related BS back home that will likely cost me tons of money down the road. Basically I was ready to leave the Philippines and counting down the days but there was one minor issue that I had to take care of regarding my flight.
My original flight was booked from Cebu-Manila-BKK, but instead of flying from Cebu, I decided to stay in Manila and fly from there, no big deal, so I thought. Two days before my fly day, I called Cebu Pacific Air to inform them that I wouldn't be flying from Cebu but Manila instead, the flight involved a three hour layover in Manila and switching planes, so again, no big deal. I was on the horn with a customer service rep for about ten minutes trying to explain this simple issue to her in the most simple, direct and clearly enunciated English I could possible speak but the moron wasn't getting it. *Side Note* Just because a Filipino speaks perfect English, don't assume that they fully understand what you are saying or give two shits about your issue. Finally the minutes ran out of my phone and I decided to say fuck it, she took my name, phone number, flight number and I explained the situation to here several times, I should have been good to go. BIG MISTAKE, I would later learn.
The drama begins: So I met up with some friends for dinner and a couple of beers and we say our good byes and they drop me off at the airport. I go to the Cebu Pacific counter with my itinerary and passport in hand, there's a medium sized queue and the terminal wasn't air conditioned, it was blazing hot inside and I started sweating buckets. Of course a line that would take about fifteen minutes anywhere else in the world ended up taking about 45 minutes, but I arrived two hours early (from now on I will arrive three hours early and so should you) so thought I had plenty of time. Finally I arrived at the counter (of course there's no one behind me, I was dead last) and put my bag on the scale and hand the girl my papers, after a minute or so she says, "sir there's a problem, you cannot go on this flight", by now I"m drenched in sweat and say to her "yes I can get on this flight, its #531 and there's my itinerary with my name on it, so what's the problem?". She tells me that we have to go to the customer service counter to resolve this problem, oh great, I think to myself.
Customer Service Hell: So the ticket agent hands my papers off to a manager, who happens to be a flaming homo and he then informs me that because I was a no-show in Cebu, they sold my Manila-BKK seat to a person on stand by. For fuck sakes. Now before I was even informed of this, there was a European guy freaking out at these people and threatening them with every possible threat he could think of. Me being the polite Canadian that I am, it isn't in my DNA to be so rude, so I thought that I'd play it cool and see if this problem could be resolved in a more mannerly fashion.
So I ask him, what are my options? He informs me that the only way I can get on the flight is to pay 18,000P ($450 USD), I then tell him that this is unacceptable, I've flown all over the world and never heard of this nonsense, we went back and forth for about five minutes and I finally gave in and gave that faggot my credit card. I had a few workers around me listening to my complaints and the rudest thing I could come up with was to tell them that I'll never fly with Cebu Pacific again and that I may never visit the Philippines again. Of course, it takes them several minutes to get me a new ticket and by the time I have one in hand its five minutes to boarding time, I tell them about this and they assure me that its no problem, the flight has been delayed anyway, of course.
At this time I'm rather pissed off about the whole situation, but accepted it and just wanted to get on the fucking plane to BKK, I then paid the airport exit tax of about $14 and went to immigration. At the immigration counter this ugly immigration bitch informed me that I had over stayed my visa by a month, I was unaware of this but she was right, so off to the immigration cashier I went. The time is ticking down and I ask a Cebu Pacific employee if I have enough time, he assures me that I do but they had just called boarding of my flight so I only had about five minutes. There were three people in line, so I went to the first person and told him I was in a major rush and asked if I could go ahead, of course they say no, so I waited. I then get to the immigration counter and the guy informs me that I have to pay 5000P ($125), I give him my credit card and he then tells me that they only take cash, FUCK ME. So I ask where the nearest ATM is and he tells me its back inside the check in area, so there I go but I don't see an ATM, I ask two other people and they say "its over there sir" without telling me exactly where, I ended up walking a big circle around the outer perimeter of the building until I finally found one. Time is ticking and the God damned machine rejects my card, the Cebu Pacific guy is waiting by the boarding area and points to his watch, my flight is boarding.
At this point I've fucking snapped and wasn't thinking clearly, I should have tried to hit up another ATM (I later found out that I had walked by two of them in my tunnel vision state of retardation), instead I fucking bee-lined it past the immigration dicks and made a mad dash for the gate, there were still a few people in line so I just went right up to it thinking "please God let me get on this fucking flight"! Then I see the immigration dicks come towards me along with some Cebu pacific people and they come right up to me, "sir what are you doing, you can't leave without paying your immigration fine". FUCK FUCK FUCK, the flight is boarded, I've fucked up royally and missed it, now I have to deal with these immigration assholes.
So I'm totally out of it, as they would say in Tagolog, I'm full on loco-loco, all I wanted was to go for a smoke and now I'm getting an earful from this ugly immigration bitch and threatened to be taken to jail. I apologize profusely and explain to them that I"m all stressed out and just spent almost $500 for a flight I just missed and will likely have to spend more. They told me to get my bags, leave the airport and go to the immigration office the next day.
I went back to Cebu Pacific and the girls there asked me "Sir, why are you still here, you should be going to BKK now?" Ya, no shit ladies, if you idiots didn't take so fucking long to sort me out, I would have had time to get to an ATM to pay my immigration fine, if Cebu Pacific wasn't such a fucking shitty airline, I wouldn't have had to pay $450 for a God damned ticket on a flight I had already paid for 3 months ago. So I'm stressed to the max and damn near in tears and the Cebu pacific employee tells the ticket agent ladies about my mad dash past immigration and how they busted me at the gate, then the girl asks me why I would do such a stupid thing and I explained to her that I'm crazy because Cebu Pacific caused me all of this drama. I ask her if they will get my bag from the plane or if its gone to BKK. She assures me that they'll get the bag, I just had to wait twenty minutes or so, I told her that I was going for smoke, so out I went.
After chain smoking three darts, I went back in and walked up to the counter, depressed, stressed and sweating like a fucking pig. The Cebu Pacific ticket girl (who was pretty cute) then informs me that they have some good news for me, yay, what could this be? They tell me that I can fly to BKK on May 2nd and not have to pay anymore, they also have my bag. I thank them and apologize for my shenanigans and ask them if they can recommend a hotel, they tell me about one down the road. Then this girl says, "its my coworkers birthday and we're going to celebrate at a bar, would you like to come?"
Well I couldn't help but smile at that, here I am all fucked up in the head and these people I was chewing out an hour before are now all smiles and invite me to drink with them. So I check into this shitty hotel down the road and chill out a bit, drink some beers and smoke some cigs, then she texts me and tells me to meet them at a bar around the corner, about a two minute walk from the hotel. I had visions of me banging this girl, what a great way to end a shitty night but it didn't happen.
I met them at the bar and they were a group of about twelve Cebu Pacific employees at this shitty Karaoke bar, I walk into the room and am greeted by smiles and laughs and everyone jokes around about my drama at the airport. Even these old greasy Filipino dudes said to me "you're the guy who tried to get past immigration, we heard all about you". So there I am drinking with a bunch of strangers, the very people who caused me all of this drama, although they couldn't really do anything about it as they were "just following our procedures". These people cost me about $500, I should have been super pissed at them but I all I could do was laugh and shake my head at such an utterly absurd situation, this shit would never happen back home. They bought a few buckets of beer and we sang karaoke, I stayed about an hour until around 2am then decided to peace out and get some sleep, what a fucking day it was boys, one to remember!
Now I'm back in Manila, hanging out in a cafe, my flight is at 630am tomorrow morning, I'll make sure I arrive early this time and have enough cash on me to pay my immigration fine and have extra just in case I have to grease an unscrupulous security guard or Cebu Pacific employee, it wouldn't surprise me at all if I have to, considering my luck. I'm gonna call the ticket girl later and she if she wants to hang out after her shift ends at midnight.
Lessons learned: I'm probably the worst traveler in the world and all of this drama was self inflicted, I could have avoided it all by calling Cebu pacific back when I initially called them. I should have known that I over stayed my visa, but didn't read the fine print and now I know from now on, I will always have ample amounts of cash with me at a third world airport.