Getting There

My trip to Jakarta started on a Tuesday morning when I hopped in a van with Becky, Megan, and Liberty and we drove up to Chicago for lunch at Café Iberico. After a stop at the RIC to say good-bye to Tanis and my aunt, it was off to the airport. I had two big suitcases and I thought they weighed about 70 lbs. each, which meant an extra $50 per bag at the airport. But I’d been through them both multiple times to remove items and everything left was necessary, so I was going to suck it up and pay the charge. I had stepped onto the scale with both of them and done the math. Only, I’ve never been so good with the math. So, when we got to the airport and actually weighed them, one was 49 lbs. and one was 51.5 lbs. I told the nice man that I was going to find a pound and a half to remove from the overweight one, because paying $50 for so little is silly. But he said that I didn’t have to and he put them through.

The flight to Los Angeles was uneventful except for one thing. I realized that for the past ten years I haven’t owned a watch. I’d been keeping time on my cell phone, which I now no longer possessed. Once I got to Los Angeles, I bought a cheap watch at the gift shop because going four hours have no concept of time is okay. Going 13 hours is not. I absolutely had to have one for the next leg. I checked the duty free shop and there were some really cool choices. But they started at around $100 and went up from there. The watch I ended up with is really ugly. But it did the job and cost less than $20. In some ways, I am definitely my mother’s daughter.

The international terminal at LAX is a bit of a zoo. O’Hare is, or at least used to be, the busiest airport in the world. But on Tuesday it was downright sleepy compared to LAX. There were masses of people in masses of lines. Announcements were made over the loudspeakers every few minutes, calling for flights. For my flight, there wasn’t an announcement. Instead, a woman came out with a sign on a stick, announcing first class boarding. No joke—a sign on a stick. She walked through the crowd like she was marching in a parade. When I realized they weren’t going to call for boarding by the number on my boarding pass, I got in line. Just before I got to the lady checking boarding passes, I noticed that she made a man get out of line and wait. When it was my turn, I didn’t have the right number either, but she couldn’t explain it to me in English so she waived me through.

When I arrived in Seoul, I had to go through customs because I was leaving the airport. My friend Neeru made the best suggestion—that I book a day-rate hotel room so that I could sleep and get a shower. I’d been traveling for 21 hours at that point and had another 15 to go. At the hotel, I took a four hour nap. Then, I got cleaned up. There was a computer in the room and I would have gotten online to send some emails, but I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the monitor. I couldn’t figure out how to turn on the lights in the bathroom either, so I showered in the dark.

In Seoul, the airport was much more calm than in Los Angeles. When I got to the airport, my stomach was upset and I was feeling sort of strange. I think it was because my body thought it was night because I felt a lot like I do when I have to get up really early. I was just starting to hope that I wouldn’t feel gross for my final flight when I noticed a Starbucks. One tall caramel macchiato later, I was golden. I love comfort food.

The flight to Jakarta was also uneventful, though for the last couple of hours I felt like I was going to crawl out of my skin. To get here, I had a four hour flight, a thirteen hour flight, and then a six hour flight. Like I said earlier, I’m not so good with the math, but I know that adds up to way too much time stuck in an airplane seat. I was so relieved to finally land in Jakarta, though there was a tiny problem in the immigration line.

I told my travel agent that I needed a return flight before 30 days from my arrival so I could enter on a tourist visa. Turns out, my return flight is actually 32 days from my arrival date. Ultimately, it’s my fault, because I knew the date of my return flight but I figured my travel agent knew what she was doing and, again, math. The man working at my immigration line was probably 21 or 22 and very grave. He said, “There’s a problem,” and explained to me what the problem was. Somehow, I remained calm as I asked him what my options were. I could either pay an overstay penalty of about $200 or I could change my flight. He actually started flirting with me at this point, saying something like if I stayed over I should come back and see him. I wasn’t paying really close attention because of the overwhelming relief I was feeling when I realized he was going to let me into his country on a promise that I would call my travel agent and move my flight up by two days. I wasn’t exactly lying. I am going to change my flight. Once my work visa is processed, I’ll be changing it to next January instead. Can you imagine a United States immigration official waiving somebody through like that? It would never happen.