The Trip Where Everything Went Wrong

To be fully transparent, my winter 2019-20 vacation was among the messiest I’ve experienced. We could blame this on a few things, like the fact that I moved to a new city just 10 days before the trip (over Christmas and visiting with lots of family across the state. We essentially lived out of my car for a week). Before that, I was stressed out with my end of year at work, and coming out of three weeks of training. I had an endoscopy in the midst of training and spent two days a bit drugged and recovering. I threw myself a going away party, and also had business to take care of, packing and shutting down shop in Raleigh. It was a bit much, and as it turns out… I failed to cross the t’s and dot the i’s before we left for Asia. Oops.

This is not to take away from the many wonderful parts of what I’ve named the Baesia trip, like the self-cooked hot pot dinner in Shanghai, surviving 250(!) miles on a motorcycle through the Laotian countryside, witnessing the sunrise at Angkor Wat, and dancing at a full moon party in Koh Lanta. But I’ll save those highlights for a separate post. The purpose of this story is to share a tale of all the shit that went wrong. Because it was unfortunate, I don’t want you making the same mistakes I did, and… it’s sort of funny in retrospect.

After 20 or so hours of travel, we landed in Shanghai mid-afternoon. There’s nothing like the instant relief felt stepping off a long, international flight and we joyously, albeit a bit groggy, entered the airport. Unfortunately, our happiness was cut short when the immigration officer asked to see our visas. “We don’t need visas,” I confidently stated, knowing we only had two nights in Shanghai before departing for the next country.

I’d already verified that U.S. citizens could stay in Shanghai for up to 144 hours visa-free. The officer insisted a visa was required and I was puzzled, not to mention dealing with a strong language barrier. After being passed around between various unhelpful employees, a young official with kind eyes and better English appeared. ‘Nico’ reviewed our tickets and explained that our departing flight was causing the issue. As it turned out, we had a 2-hour connection in Kunming, China, and because Kunming was outside of the Shanghai province, we were not visa-exempt.

I should mention that the whole reason for flying into Shanghai in the first place was to save money. It was the cheapest gateway to southeast Asia (and supposedly visa-free with our short stay). Nico then dropped the bad news: it would take 4 days to order and process visas, and that Chinese immigration was keen on deporting us back to the U.S. Flying home would mean forgoing the entire trip and forfeiting lots of prepaid flights and hotels. Not good.

As it turned out, Nico had a big heart. He asked us to hold and said he would see what he could do. He Googled and contacted a random Chinese travel agency in the city, and asked if they could help us with an expedited “group” visa. He took cell phone pictures of our passports and sent them over. He made no promises, and directed us into a holding cell where we awaited our fate, unaware of whether or not we would be sent home.

Four hours later, a woman arrived with a single document, serving as our group visa. Matt converted $250 into RMB, paid, and we were cleared through immigration. We later learned that group visas are reserved for parties of 5 or more individuals traveling with an agency. I don’t know how we got so lucky. I even confirmed that we were not up-charged. I’m truly grateful for Nico (who saved the trip), for the agency able to produce a fair, last minute visa, and for driving it to us at the airport. Total insanity.

We eventually arrived at our hotel in Shanghai, having sadly missed a non-refundable food tour I’d pre-booked. The trip was off to a rough start, but I figured things could only go up from here. Right? Wrong.

We really enjoyed our short stay in Shanghai. The city was clean, metropolitan, and easy to navigate. We got lucky with clear weather, ate great food, and quickly adjusted to our new time zone. On the morning of December 31, we left for the airport, knowing we had the brief connection in Kunming, but that we would soon be arriving in Luang Prabang, Laos, where we’d ring in the new year.

The Kunming airport was huge and it took us a while to figure out where to go for our second flight. As we stood in the security line, an officer yelled for those on our flight to come to the front, as we were close to the departure time. Matt went first, and unbeknownst to me, handed the group visa to the officer, explaining that it represented my China entry, as well. I stepped up next and then was ushered through for the final security clearance. We found our gate, boarded the plane to Luang Prabang, and were on our way.

We were thrilled to exit the plane in Laos, where we instantly experienced a warm breeze, sunshine, and lots of palms. We purchased our Laotian visas-on-arrival for $30/person, and then stepped up to the immigration counter. This is where we ran into the second major problem.

The immigration officers flipped through our passports and asked where our China stamps were. In our haste, we hadn’t realized our passports weren’t stamped, but also knew we had the group visa document to fall back on. “Where is it?” Matt asked me. “What are you talking about?” I replied, “I was never carrying it.” I didn’t know Matt had given it to the officer in Kunming, and for some absurd and irresponsible reason, the officer did not hand it back to me. Matt’s receipt from the visa purchase was deemed insufficient.

Now we were in serious trouble, as we had no legal proof of having been in China. We were informed that no one had “ever” been granted entry into Laos without proof of country of origin. Once again, we were taken to an airport holding room. We were initially told that we would have to return to China, which sounded terrible. I pleaded with the officer in charge, and again, we were told to wait. Phone calls were placed, and conversations were had in front of us, but in a language we couldn’t understand.

Finally, we were given two options: either return to China or pay a fee of $100/person. Matt kicked me under the table when this was presented – obviously we were totally OK with the $200 if it allowed us entry. We paid our bribe and left the airport. We made it into town as the sun was setting, and had a nice evening full of Lao food and beer, wandering the market, and dancing at the town NYE party.

The trip continued, and good times were had, but not without a few more hiccups. I was really excited about our hotel in Siem Reap, Cambodia, arriving only to learn that I had booked it on the wrong dates. The hotel was sold out so I had to book something else which was farther away, and not quite as nice. Unfortunate oversight.

A few days later, in Koh Lanta, Thailand, I realized my entire collection of daily contact lenses had been left behind in Cambodia. This would prevent me from snorkeling or wearing sunglasses. Unbelievable. I did, however, experience a random act of kindness: a guy on the snorkeling tour I had pre-booked overheard me grumbling about not being able to participate. We got into conversation and he realized he had an extra pair of contacts on him, in the same prescription I wear. How does that even happen? He gave them to me. Instant spirit lifter.

What else happened? Bad sunburn and lots of ant bites (far worse for Matt). Oh, and learning that our flight home had been cancelled, with United Airlines failing to notify us. It was only when we went to see our seat assignments that we learned we had been bumped off and weight listed. Fortunately, Matt was able to sort it out, getting us re-booked on a flight that routed through Tokyo with a long layover which was quite fun.

When I thought things couldn’t get more absurd, just days after getting home, we learned about the novel coronavirus which had struck China hard (and remains a serious public health crisis as of this posting). Kind of scary knowing we were there just 3 weeks prior! We narrowly missed airport health screenings, potential delays, reroutes, and/or cancellations, and the possibility of contracting major illness. Timing is everything, I suppose.

Thankfully we are optimists and overall, still had a blast. So, now I’m curious: what is the craziest or most complicated thing that’s happened to you while traveling? How did you overcome the situation? Please share in the comments below!