When flying does not go as planned Part 1

When you are trying to travel the world, there are different ways to do so. You can travel by foot, bus, train, car... I won't list all of them because there are too many to list, especially if you like to crawl to places. But the easiest would be to fly, yes it's not the most earth friendly version, but back in the day I didn't know any better and choose flying over a 20-hour bus journey and is a topic for another day. We learn as we grow. So I flew a lot to connect different continents or islands, as I wasn't a fantastic swimmer over long distances, 

I thought flying was easy. I thought there was not much that could go wrong. That is probably correct for a lot of people travelling, but in my case I learned the following over the years.

There is a reason why you are advised to be at the airport 2 hours earlier. They have created this rule to account for the time I need to fix my flying issues. So if you ever decide to fly with me, being there early enough is a non-negotiable. I can't tell you why I always seem to get into issues, get checked or have police dogs run after me. But I learned to accept my faith and prepare myself for anything that life throws my way. So get comfortable, grab some snacks and lean back for some of the most ridiculous airport stories I have in store for you. P.S the Stories are not in order.

There are many moments in live where you get yourself in situations where you think "I should have thought this through". This was one of them. I decided to try something new. Step outside my comfort zone and be more spontaneous. Let me be the first one to tell you. I won't be doing that again. I was about to leave China after 4 months of living there and thought it would be good to just go to the airport and wing it. Before checking flights in advance, I wanted to jump on any flight at a random time and not book it in advance. It sounded like a great adventure but turned into a bit of a logistical nightmare. I went to the counter to buy myself a ticket to fly back to New Zealand for a couple of months. When the lady at the counter told me that they would not accept my credit card and I would have to go to the next ATM and get some cash out in order to pay for my flight in cash. After a moment of utter confusion not understanding why my card was not accepted as we live in a world where you can even pay with the wave of your arm, I made my way over to the ATM. I inserted my card excited to fly in a couple of hours when I stood in amazement watching the little text now showing on the screen. It ate my card. It would not give it back. I decided it was time to pull the old elevator trick and press all the buttons a few times and some all at ones. My innocent brain thought this would be the solution, the key, the ultimate way of making it spit my card back out. It did not. I tried sweet-talking to it before I rolled my eyes and started walking back to the counter. Due to a severe English barrier, she was not able to understand what I was saying. I then decided to book myself a flight online and figure out my situation at a later point. Normally the Airports have free Wi-Fi but in that particular airport you needed a Chinese phone number to access the Wi-Fi as they will send you a code to access it. That raised two issues. First one being I don't own a Chinese phone plan. Issue number two the instructions were written in Chinese characters. So I could not even change the language as I did not understand which button to press to change the language.  There, I was ready to embrace my life as the guy in the movie Terminal, played by Tom Hanks. I decided to just ask someone to use their hotspot for a few minutes. After a few minutes, I was online and mass messaged everyone I knew that was possibly online. One of my dear friends actually was, and my emergency text was something along the lines of. "It does not matter where you send me, get me out of here, I will pay you back as soon as I can". And because she was absolutely amazing, I had a flight ticket in my Inbox within a couple of minutes. I got to leave the airport and also managed to get a new card a few days later.

I always travel with a knife. It's good to have while you are hiking, to cut cheese, or to simply have a tool to sharpen a pencil with. There are so many uses, and you will never see me without one. Back in the day I carried a diving knife and not a small one. It was big enough to cut a loaf of bread and somehow gave me some sort of security and comfort in my first years of travelling. I do now use other things which I won't make public for my own safety, I knew that I was actually allowed to carry it in my check in luggage as I read the regulations on a regular basis. I am not able to recall the exact measurements right now, but it had to have a certain length, not sharp on both sides and had to be visible enough. So I packed it as usual and gave my bag up for check in. It went through the first check without any issues. When I took back my documents and wanted to leave, I suddenly heard alarm sounds and turned around. Simply out of curiosity when I saw an annoyed man loudly ask who this luggage belonged to. It was mine. By this time I already knew what it was about and walked over relaxed. I knew I was within my rights, and they probably just needed clarification. When I got there they asked me if I had any dangerous goods in there and I said well I do have a diving knife in there, yes. They asked me if they can open it and proceeded to do so. Somehow, they had a station where they checked items that was a prime location to anyone curious enough in the check in line. The line was pretty long as I was one of the first to check in due to my arrival time and the entire flight was able to see how the officer pulled out this big ass knife. He gave me the typical" It's always the innocent looking ones" look before he asked me why I was carrying it. I explained it to him and told him it's within the regulations. Of course, he had to check. I don't blame him, so he took it away while I stood there, chill as a bean. I was a tiny bit amused by the fact that people looked at me like they were about to board the plane with Michael Myers. The pure disbelief of some of the older folks faced was completed when the officer returned telling me that all was good, packed the knife back in and moved by bag back to the check in carousel where he turned off the alarm, and we waved my luggage goodbye. Happy and with a slight swing in my step, I moved past the people in the queue, saying" Bye see you later".