This is a story about a day that was absolutely bananas.
I will chalk up the following story to evidence we’ve become super laid back travelers. Or we’ve lost all attention to detail. Or we paid so much attention to navigating harder parts of the world that we have just let go. Or our inner carefree souls are all alive and well. Or all of the above.
So, what happened?
I think we will all remember the day we arrived at the airport in Japan to fly to Perth, Australia, via Hong Kong, not knowing how many days we were going to be in Australia (answer is 81), not knowing how many days Australia lets you stay on a tourist visa (answer is 90 days), not having evidence of our exit plans (because we didn’t have an outbound flight leaving Australia) and the most sensational and egregious, not knowing you needed Australian visas. In fact, without the visas they wouldn’t even let us fly to Hong Kong. It’s all so stunning that you might think maybe we’d never traveled internationally. But alas, 200 days, 4 continents under our belt 😂 Make this make sense!! I can’t.
There is a vortex of luck that’s been surrounding us lately. I can feel it. I see things little and big just bend our way, again and again. Was it unlucky we arrived at the airport so unprepared? No, that has nothing to do with luck, that is called not-having-your-shit-together. And yet somehow, we got on that plane. We flew to Hong Kong and onwards to Perth. That was lucky.
So, after hearing that we needed visas we faded away from the check-in counter and pulled out our phones. As I started filling out Australian visa applications one by one, it felt I was staring down a precarious Jenga tower. I was surgically sliding in the last piece that was either going make us champions or the tower would come crashing down with many ripple effects. After some fits and starts, taking horrible visa selfies, awkwardly scanning chips in our passports with our phones (first time for everything), turning off VPN and finally getting payments working … we had four Australian visa applications submitted. Then we got an email receipt that said “expect to wait up to 72 hours”. My heart sank. I’d heard it might be instantaneous. The jenga tower wobbled. I’m a deep optimist at heart. We were googling like mad, reading everything that convinced us we should still hold out for hope. And sure enough, emails rolled in fast confirming our visas were granted. I have never been so happy to see the word “Granted” in big, bold font. GRANTED. There were 30 minutes left to check-in our luggage. On that day, the one thing we did right was show up at the airport almost three hours before the flight. One of our good travel habits. The jenga tower had stood. We were champions.
Lucky Bananas.
From there everything was extra glorious because it came so close to not happening. We flew 3 hours to Hong Kong then 7 hours to Perth and barely changed time zones. It was a blur.
The cameras on the front and belly of planes are so awesome. I love watching landings: the wheels, the approach, all of it. It was a windy landing in Perth and you could really see it on the jet cameras while feeling it too. Physics is cool and sometimes it’s almost bananas too. I try not to think about the plane that recently rolled upside down in Toronto. There’s no snow or ice in Perth after all. Advantages of chasing summer.
So now we’re in western Australia. Everyone is happy. Not just our family but literally everyone. These people are happy. Sunshine is endless. The roads are wide. Cars are big. Avocado toast is expensive. Feels more familiar than anywhere we’ve been since, honestly, since we left home.
留言