You guys, by the title of this post I am sure you might be assuming that we were late to the airport and we missed our flight...
But that was not the case.
In case you haven't picked up on it, we are early nearly everywhere you go. We typically plan for the worst when it comes to getting to the airport and we always arrive about 2.5 - 3 hours early. In true form, we finished our lunch and arrived at the girls school nearly an hour before we had told their teachers to have them ready. We chatted with a few friends and I even joked with one about how nice it was to get to the airport early and enjoy a cup of coffee. We arrived at the airport about 2.5 hours early. We were flying out of the domestic terminal because we had a layover within China. Even not being that familiar with the domestic terminal, we quickly found out where we needed to go and we were delighted to find there was no queue. I was already thinking about what my Starbucks order would be once we got inside. This is when I noticed that it was taking longer than normal for them to print our boarding passes.
About ten minutes passes and now there is a long queue behind us. I finally realize something is not right and I lean over the counter and ask, "is there a problem?". The lady called for someone that spoke English and once that person arrived they looked and looked and looked at the computer screen and talked very quickly in Chinese before asking us for our number that we booked with. Assuming they were talking about passport number, Wes pulled up our booking and showed them our passport numbers. She said, "no, no, your travel authorization to get into Australia.".
Ummmmmmmmmm, blank stares from Wes and I.
We asked, "what travel authorization?".
We sit there dumbfounded for a minute and then the frantic google searches started. Only its not google, because we are in China ;). And after about 30 seconds it was confirmed, Americans do not need a visa to get into Australia, but they do need an electronic travel authorization. Which will cost $16 and take 24 hours to process. Our hearts sank. And our (really, mine) bad mood, panicked mindset and anxiousness set in.
The lady at the counter told us that she could ticket us to Guangzhou, but she would not be able to give us our tickets to Sydney while we figured out our travel authorization. Wes found a website where we could get the travel authorization in an hour and our hopes creeped up a little. It took a long time to type in all the information, but when he hit submit I crossed my fingers and sent a little prayer up that everything would work out ok.
We waited at the ticket counter for one hour. One hour came and went (I taught the girls how to play slap jack - note to self, 4 years old is too young for slap jack;)) and no email came through confirming our travel authorization... womp womp womp... but really I was much more panicked than that. We decided to go ahead and get our ticket to Guangzhou and hope for the best. We made it through security and as we arrived at our gate, I googled instant travel authorization and found a website that looked promising. I typed in our information as fast as I could (which was not that fast because I was on my phone). We were the last ones to board the plane and as we were walking down the aisle, Wes was shouting out our credit card information. The website asked me to confirm all of the information but seeing as we were about to take off I wasn't able to do that so I hit proceed, paid a bajillion dollars and crossed my fingers again.
As the plane was taking off, we were in that sweet spot where we could still get cell service, I refreshed my email and oh.my.word., there were four beautiful travel authorizations waiting for me. Relief washed over me for the first time in 2.5 hours. But not complete relief because now that we were seated on the plane, I needed to check to make sure I got all of our information correct (if anything was not correct our travel authorization would be invalid). I was too nervous to check myself so I handed my phone over to Wes and he checked. It all looked good. I double checked. And it all looked good. I nervously waited an hour and then I triple checked. Still good.
We got off the plane, made our way to the ticket counter and found ourselves waiting about half an hour. I have never been so nervous in my life. We had the nicest airport representative. She gave us boarding passes (yay!!!), upgraded our tickets to their version of economy plus (double yay!!) and for the first time literally since we had arrived at the Chengdu airport, I could breathe a little easier. We were actually going to make it to Sydney!!!
We waited at the ticket counter for one hour. One hour came and went (I taught the girls how to play slap jack - note to self, 4 years old is too young for slap jack;)) and no email came through confirming our travel authorization... womp womp womp... but really I was much more panicked than that. We decided to go ahead and get our ticket to Guangzhou and hope for the best. We made it through security and as we arrived at our gate, I googled instant travel authorization and found a website that looked promising. I typed in our information as fast as I could (which was not that fast because I was on my phone). We were the last ones to board the plane and as we were walking down the aisle, Wes was shouting out our credit card information. The website asked me to confirm all of the information but seeing as we were about to take off I wasn't able to do that so I hit proceed, paid a bajillion dollars and crossed my fingers again.
As the plane was taking off, we were in that sweet spot where we could still get cell service, I refreshed my email and oh.my.word., there were four beautiful travel authorizations waiting for me. Relief washed over me for the first time in 2.5 hours. But not complete relief because now that we were seated on the plane, I needed to check to make sure I got all of our information correct (if anything was not correct our travel authorization would be invalid). I was too nervous to check myself so I handed my phone over to Wes and he checked. It all looked good. I double checked. And it all looked good. I nervously waited an hour and then I triple checked. Still good.
We got off the plane, made our way to the ticket counter and found ourselves waiting about half an hour. I have never been so nervous in my life. We had the nicest airport representative. She gave us boarding passes (yay!!!), upgraded our tickets to their version of economy plus (double yay!!) and for the first time literally since we had arrived at the Chengdu airport, I could breathe a little easier. We were actually going to make it to Sydney!!!
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