When travel goes wrong
AS part of my work, I dispense all sorts of advice to travellers: how to pack lighter; tips for beating jet lag; what to pack for Covid-19 travel.
I’ve written numerous articles about how to travel smarter, better, more efficiently. Yet on a trip to Canada this April I made a classic rookie error – I’d forgotten to apply for travel authorisation.
While planning a month-long trip to North America, I was completely focused on getting the Covid-19 documentation right. I’d notarised my vaccine certificate and submitted my details on Arrivecan, the country’s public health and travel app. I got my online travel authorisation for the United States. But somehow, I’d overlooked the Canadian one.
“You can apply now, but it might take one or two days to be approved,” said the check-in agent with a sympathetic grimace.
You know that feeling of dread in the pit of your stomach? It hit me then.
Here’s the thing about travel. It can be aspirational, bucket-list stuff, the kind that marks milestones through the course of a lifetime. Backpacking through Europe on a shoestring during university exchange. The heady, blissed out honeymoon. The long cruise holiday empty nesters finally get to take.
But it is also messy, prone to mishaps. You wouldn’t hop on a bike for the first time and expect a smooth ride. Why should wandering around a foreign land be any different?
Travel has grown yet more chaotic in recent months, with lost luggage, flight cancellations, staff shortages and strikes causing disruption in major airports and airlines, especially in Europe and the United States. Throw in Covid-19 requirements that vary by country and travel skills made rusty by a long hiatus, and it is a wonder anybody arrives
at their destination unfrazzled.
When I shared my experience on social media later, it was met with everything from support to commiseration. Some were spurred to check on their visa requirements for upcoming trips. Others shared their own travel woes, and of these, there were plenty.
Who has not sprinted desperately for a flight, lamented a baggage delay, or clutched their stomach in a dingy toilet battling a bout of travellers’ diarrhoea?
On a trip to Berlin last year, close to tears and desperately looking for the right platform after missing a train to the airport, a colleague sought directions from a local who not only showed her the way, but also picked up her 20kg suitcase and carried it up and down escalators while she ran behind him.
She still missed the next train by a minute, but was touched by his effort. And after a mad dash to her boarding gate, her plane turned out to be delayed by an hour because it had to be de-iced before take-off.
So here’s another thing about mishaps.
They illuminate kindness, be it in a stranger, friend or loved one who steps up. And no matter the disaster, it usually turns out okay.
After paying about S$140 (RM450) for the Canadian travel authorisation on a scam website that we clicked on in our haste, my husband realised our mistake and managed to apply for it on the correct site, which cost just C$7 (RM24), in the nick of time. By the time we were in the air, our distress had turned to mirth, the situation no more than a footnote in our shared travel history. Next time, we would be wiser for it.
What a luxury, then, to take life lessons from the open road.
Of these, I have many. Loop your bag strap around your arm when sleeping on public transport. Always carry toilet paper. And do not expect things to run on time always, everywhere.
I learnt some of these on my graduation trip, the first time travel really tested me.
It was 2013, a time when China still used cash, and I was backpacking through the western parts of
Sichuan province that border Tibet.
The scenery was beautiful but the journeys, brutal. The only way through was by minivan – mudcaked bone shakers that jolted their way along mountain passes.
These trips took hours, always double what drivers promised, and even if the van was full, a new passenger would somehow find a way to slide in.
At one point, I found myself squeezed half on the lap of a Tibetan woman who tossed prayer flags out of the window – a divine appeal for safe passage – as the van leaned over sheer cliff faces with no guard rails.
When someone was desperate enough for the toilet, they’d ask the driver to stop, and everyone would tumble out and find a bush. That’s where the toilet paper came in handy.
One day, our van pulled over in the middle of nowhere. Roadworks, came the curt explanation from a worker. The grassy patch by the side of the road was already littered with watermelon rinds, empty cup noodle containers and locals killing time.
How long are we stuck here? When can we go again? No one had answers to my halting Mandarin, or mounting frustration. Lack of information made the wait feel interminable, my nerves already jangled from the morning’s journey. I fumed at first, then gave in and settled grudgingly on the grass.
It was sheer relief when, hours later, we trundled off again. But for the locals, living in a part of the world where landslides are common and roads often damaged, these delays are the norm.
For one man’s travel inconvenience is another’s regular day, something marketing manager Malcolm Koh, 33, took the chance to explain to his daughters, aged six and four, on a trip to Perth last month.
A storm cut the power to their farmstay for two nights, which meant no heating, and – to the delight of the girls – no showers.
With the family bundled up in sweaters and huddled under blankets, he explained how electricity, a given back home, is not so in the rest of the world.
I was reminded of this last Saturday afternoon when I found myself at the back of a packed immigration hall on my way to Johor Baru.
Even before the pandemic, I had never seen such a crowd, and judging by the horror on other Singaporeans’ faces, neither had they.
But mechanical and lifting supervisor Mohammad Alauddin, 34, a regular commuter, said this was the norm.
“Maybe four hours,” he said of the wait. It took 3½. Of course he knows. He travels there every couple of months to visit his brother, who runs a shop in Malaysia. Both of them are from Bangladesh. He called it a holiday.
Here’s the thing about mishaps: there is usually a silver lining.
Waiting by the roadside in China, I broke in a new journal, recording my observations to kill time.
Realising I would likely never be back in this corner of the world made it easier to appreciate the good things, like the mountains in the distance, or how lucky I was to have put off adulthood to backpack for a month.
Ahead of me in the immigration queue, a girl pulled out an empty Moleskine notebook, pausing for a long time before she put pen to paper.
I hope she found some meaning in the mayhem. I hope the next time travel goes awry, that you do too. – The Straits Times/asia News Network
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