Almost there . . . and almost on time! (Jackie's Post)

Whew! We haven’t even reached Phuket and already our plans have taken some unexpected and potentially disastrous turns.  The description of Isaac and me as ‘seasoned travelers’ seems significantly misguided as we went to the wrong gate and missed our flight to Seoul despite having a 4 hour layover between flights. After some pleading, United Airlines set us up with a free room at the Hilton and free food while we dealt with the disaster of trying to find an alternative flight to Phuket as soon as possible and with as little of extra cost as conceivable.  After spending what seemed like hours on the phone with Vayama and Asiana airlines learning that all flights were booked and extremely expensive Isaac and I came up with what seemed like the best case scenario: repurchasing tickets for $500-600 each and leaving on the 26^th – 5 days after we were supposed to arrive.  This would mean I would not show up to sign my teaching contract as expected, we’d lose the deposit on the hostel we’d booked for the first week, we’d each be out about a quarter of our trip savings, and we’d be stuck in Chicago for 5 days. This was our BEST case scenario (and we’re very optimistic people)! The worst case was leaving on the 26^th and paying an excess of $1000 each.  We decided to try our luck with standby the next morning even though we were strongly discouraged due to the filled flight but we were pretty much out of options and getting desperate.  We also woke up to a $111 phone bill from the Hilton which I had to spend my much needed sleeping time dealing with. I cannot believe how many people I have argued with this trip already! I feel like I am always at the front counter complaining and explaining problems. Ick! And I hate confrontations of any and every kind. However, I will mention that everyone I dealt with was wonderful and did fix all issues in the end.

On a much sweeter note, after waiting standby for a couple of hours this morning learning card tricks and surrounded by our tightly packed and rather unwieldy luggage, we were hustled on to a flight to Seoul along with a woman and her 2 little girls who had missed the same flight the previous day as well as 2 other people within minutes of the plane taking off. We even had Asiana airline attendants come find us in the security line and rush us to the front of the line.  To make the entire unbelievable situation even better, not only was the flight free of cost, a woman volunteered to exchange seats so that Isaac and I could sit together! We were absolutely stunned to be handed our passports and boarding passes at the desk and even with both clutched in my hand I could not relax at all until we were in the air, and even then all I could do was sit there and wonder about our good luck and contemplate how this disastrous situation had somehow resolved itself quickly and without question and surpassed the outcome of even our most hopeful scenarios.  After 39 hours of travel we are now waiting for our (delayed) 6 hour flight to Phuket and an hour taxi ride to our hostel. Almost there… and almost on time! Cannot wait to crash out on this plane…