Our dramatic exit

It seems we were not done with surprises and had to go through a final one as we exit Manila.

Our flight was scheduled for Sunday 8:45pm. Sofia had a last play date, we had lunch with a family friends, and was planning to take a nap before leaving around 5pm for the airport. As I was doing the online check-in, I realized that only my ticket could be found, the family’s ticket could not be retrieved in the airline system!!! MAJOR panic.

I called airlines to ask what happened and they hanged up on me both times. I called the travel agent and found out that the flight change was not processed! How could this happen???

4:30pm. Still no tickets and I had to ask the agent whether we go to the airport or not.

4:40pm. Tickets rebooked and we left our temporary home with 11 pieces of luggage and saddened souls.

5:10pm arrived at the airport with plenty of time to do the check-in. The line was long and took us 30 min to get to the counter. As we started the process, cat documents needed to be checked. The lady obviously was not used to do this she had to ask several times to confirm we had all the documents. Finally that was done. Then, she started to tag our luggages. Turned out 3 of our luggages were oversized. She gave us a quotation of the excess volume, over 1000 USD!!! Insane! Husband got mad and started to argue with them which was not welcomed. I intervened, begging for another solution. Repackage! We bought 4 sacks, and tape our luggage to reduce the volume. Finally it was accepted, instead of 1200 usd, I paid 450 for the excess weight. Better but painful.

It was 7:40pm as we left the check in counter, boarding time was 8pm. I rushed to the inmigraron and realized I didn’t have my boarding pass, only the girls’s. Go back to the counter to reprint, went back to immigration to realize that she printed husband’s!!! The immigration officer said it was fine and let me go. Sofia got a new passport so they couldn’t find her entry stamp. I didn’t have the old passport with me so I begged them to let us go anyway, obviously Sofia is not criminal and entered the country legally. They let us go.

By then it was 8:10pm and announcement was calling our names for boarding. We ran to the gate, but the agent didn’t accept my wrong named boarding pass and insisted they needed a print copy of my boarding pass. So they sent someone to re print it. Took another 20 min.

We were the last ones to board on the plane. 😦

Few minutes into flying, husband realized he left the backpack on the chair near the gate!!! My laptop, iPad and cash were in that bag!!! I was mad!!!

Girls slept on the plane, I dozed off a bit as I was really tired.

Entry to Jakarta was uneventful, thankfully. I called the airport in Manila to see if they found the backpack, trying out my luck at that point. And they did!!! So someone from the office will go to pick it up and finds a way to send it to me.

Pic of us after arrival, before they took Cookie for 2 weeks quarantine.