Kimberly and the
Terrible, Horrible,
No Good, Very Bad Day.

I sat in the bus depot outside of the Manila airport at 2 am, white-knuckled and fuming. How could I be so stupid? I started breathing loud and fast as I flitted between anger and hopelessness. The night-shift drivers moved away carefully as if I was a bomb that might burst at any moment. They weren’t that far off.

…let me back up.

The Taal Volcano had been calm enough for me to catch a flight out of the Philippines. After the White Volcano eruption in New Zealand, wildfires in Australia, and now the Taal Volcano eruption in the Philippines, I was really hoping that my luck would change with Vietnam. I was becoming certain that I was a cursed talisman leaving a wake of destruction everywhere I went.

Attention to detail has never been my strong suit. I’d done research on the Vietnam visa but saw repeatedly online that you get it at the airport, so I didn’t give it much thought. When I arrived at the Puerto Princesa airport, they asked me for my Vietnam visa. I said I didn’t have one. They let me on the flight, letting me know my bags would go to Hanoi, Vietnam, but I’d have to check in again at the airport in Manila.

My flight to Manila was 2 hours late, not taking off until almost 11 pm. Not to worry though – I booked a cheap, 5 am flight to Hanoi and had plenty of time to catch it. I landed in Manila only to be told that I can’t board the flight to Hanoi without a visa.

Turns out, while you get your visa at the airport in Vietnam, you have to apply for it ahead of time and have a background check done by a tour agency prior to boarding a plane. Of course, I had no idea. Here’s how the next 20 minutes transpired:

1. Thankfully, my bags transferred with me and were not on their way to Hanoi. However, I couldn’t pick them up until after 2 am.

2. I scrambled to find an agency that could get me a last-minute visa approval. There was one that offered ‘urgent rush’ approvals, but 9 am was the earliest it would be available as everyone at the office was gone for the night.

3. I tried to change/cancel my flight only to find the change fees higher than what I had paid for the flight. I would have to just wait until I received my visa approval to book a flight and hope prices weren’t outrageous by then.

4. I booked a hotel with hotels.com and prayed that the front desk would be open for a tentative 3 am check-in.

At this point, there was nothing I could do but wait for my bags. I had already spent all of my pesos (since I thought I’d only be around a few more hours) so I stopped at Wendy’s as they were the only place open in the airport that took credit cards.

Leaving the Manila airport is a nightmare (when I arrived in Manila the first time, it took two hours by taxi to get to my hotel with was about two miles from the airport) and the city is notorious for its crime, so grabbing a bite outside the airport wasn’t much of an option.

I ordered a junior cheeseburger (comfort food) but the cashier couldn’t get my card to work. A line started to form behind me as I uncomfortably stood there not understanding why my card would be declined.

“Can you pay with cash?” the cashier asked? I couldn’t. I had already spent all my cash assuming I’d be leaving soon. I told her to cancel the order, and I took a seat in the red plastic chair out front, hungry and somber, knowing that all of this is my own fault.

A few minutes later, the cashier brought me my order.

“Oh no, I didn’t pay for this,” I said.

“Someone in the line took care of it.” She smiled and set the food down. I looked back to thank whoever it was, but there was no one around.

Open weeping, commence!

I could handle everything else, but not being able to thank or repay the person in any way brought me immense gratitude followed by intense guilt. I had been feeling hopeless, and this small act was exactly what I needed to restore my faith in humanity.

I ate my junior cheeseburger and composed myself, cruising Facebook and scanning through news articles of this little thing called ‘Coronavirus’ that had apparently left Wuhan and was starting to spread throughout other Asian countries. It was the least of my worries at the moment.  

At two am, I retrieved my baggage after quite a row with airport security, who couldn’t understand me or why I was standing in front of the locked-up baggage in the middle of the night, trying to gesture to them that I needed to get my bag.

I had tried calling the hotel I had booked, but couldn’t get an answer. It was a bit outside of the city and I didn’t want to get stuck alone in Manila at 3 am, so instead I followed the signs that said ‘Hotels’, hoping I could find one with a vacancy. Unfortunately, the signs lead to a bus depot with shuttles to hotels, but the shuttle couldn’t take me anywhere as I didn’t have an existing reservation. I couldn’t make a reservation online because it was technically the next day, and I didn’t have any change to use the public phone (my cellphone plan didn’t include outbound calls).

I chatted with an airport security guard while I tried to figure out what to do. Upon telling her my situation, she said one of the drivers may be able to help.

She found one that spoke English, and he said he could make a reservation for me. It was $45 USD/night (expensive for a hotel in Manila) but it had free breakfast and wifi. I was so tired that I agreed. He made a call, but then things got weird. He said the wifi wasn’t working and asked if that was alright. I said it was. In addition, now the fee was actually $60, not $45. Oh, and their credit card machine wasn’t working so they only take cash.

“What’s the name of this hotel?” I asked. He told me and I googled it. The hotel was 45 minutes outside of the city – much too far considering I might need to catch a quick flight once I get my visa approval.

I told him I don’t have any cash, and I didn’t think it was going to work. At this point, I’m pretty sure he’s trying to scam me, charging me double the room fee and keeping the difference. I probably would have gone along with it if the hotel wasn’t so far and didn’t have such poor reviews.

He was being pushy, and I lost it. I kept saying I don’t think I can do this and when he kept badgering, I snapped. “THIS IS SUPER SHADY. YOU ARE SUPER SHADY. EVEN IF I WANT TO STAY THERE I CAN’T BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE ANY CASH SO JUST STOP!”

I threw my things on the ground and collapsed on the bench fuming. The drivers stared at me wide-eyed, watching me like I was a wild animal. I sat there for what felt like hours but was probably 15 minutes. I stood up and grabbed my things.

“Where are you going to stay?” the driver asked. I glared at him and walked back through the security doors.

The previous guard was gone now, and the new one thought I looked suspicious, face glowing red and my eyes half-crazed, but he let me through anyway, not bothering to ask for a flight number, which I didn’t have anyways.

I wandered around the airport, glowering at the signs posted all over that said: “No Sleeping Here”. By this point, it was 3:30 am. I was exhausted. All I wanted was to sleep in a bed. I walked up and down the moving walkway trying to figure out what to do when one of the drivers who had witnessed my meltdown outside stopped me.

“The 3^rd floor in the back – there are beds. You pay by the hour and sleep.” I could have kissed him.

I went to the third floor and tucked away in the back where I would have never looked were sleeping capsules. $20 for 8 hours, and it was the best $20 I’ve ever spent. It was by no means luxury, but it was cozy and cool. I put on my noise-canceling headphones and immediately fell asleep.

• 

• 

I awoke a few hours later to a ding on my cell phone – my application was approved. Ecstatic, I got dressed and checked flight times. Because the volcano canceled so many flights, prices were astronomical. My direct flight from Manila to Hanoi originally cost me $120 – flight prices were now well over $1000. The only flight that was semi-reasonable had a layover in Hong Kong and would take 9 hours. I had 90 minutes to get dressed, buy my ticket, and get through security to that flight.

At 9 pm, I finally made it to Vietnam.

My flight and transfer were thankfully uneventful. I headed to the visa line with my approval letter. I chatted with a group of Australians and a young Canadian backpacker. I told them about the whole fiasco I’d had over the last 24 hours and was happy to realize I was able to laugh about it – which was good because they all thought it was hilarious.

“What bad luck!” was the general consensus. After two hours of waiting, I got my visa and said my goodbyes, heading through immigration and picking up a sim card.

Before leaving the airport, I headed to an ATM with a ‘Visa’ logo to take out some cash. I put in my card, selected ‘English’, and was promptly shown an error screen. I was taken to the main menu and tried to hit the cancel button, to no avail.

I heard a soft ‘clink’ as my card hit fell into the back of the machine—the ATM machine had eaten my credit card.

I stood in front of the machine, dumbfounded, and just started laughing. Not a ‘haha’ laugh but a ‘based on today’s events what else could you have possibly expected’ laugh. A Vietnamese man tried to use the machine and I hugged it and wouldn’t move. He stared at me for a moment before moving to another machine.

The day I left Chicago for New Zealand, I realized I had left my debit card at home. I had brought a credit card as backup, and while the fees to take out money were outrageous, it was better than nothing.

The ATM machine had eaten my backup card. I had $100 USD for emergencies, but that was it. I had no other money or way of paying. It was now 11 pm in a country I had never been to with a language I did not speak.

A European man used the ATM machine next to mine, only to find that the same thing happened to him. In Vietnam, as well as some other Southeast Asian countries, you can only use an ATM if you use that bank. Instead of spitting the card back out, the machine just sends it into the void where all lost things go to die.

The Canadian man who I had been talking to earlier walked over to ask what was wrong. I must have looked distraught. I told him the machine ate my card and he started laughing. “That’s the worst luck I’ve ever heard of”. He and his friend asked if they could help, but I told them I was fine. I’m not sure why I said that as the situation in retrospect seemed anything but fine, but I at least had a plan. My Airbnb was already booked so I didn’t need to worry about paying, and I could pay for a taxi on my phone. I wasn’t nearly as concerned about losing my card as I had expected to be.

A Vietnamese woman came to offer assistance, but it didn’t do any good. She recommended that I go talk to the bank, which had a currency exchange booth in the airport. I was afraid to leave the ATM machine with my card (I was still hugging the machine at this point) but saw no other option. I ran to the bank booth as the woman was closing up and was attempted to communicate that the machine ate my card. She couldn’t understand me and just kept saying to come back tomorrow. A woman walking heard me speaking English and translated. Thankfully, the worker had a key to the ATM.

We walked back to the ATM, she unlocked the machine, and handed me my card. My hero!

I took a taxi to the neighborhood I was staying in and went for a quick walk before settling into my Airbnb. It was midnight, and the streets were quiet save for a few older men sitting on the stoop drinking, stray dogs digging through the trash, and a few motorbikes zipping through the alley where I was renting a loft.

I could not have been happier to be there.