Lost treasures at sea...

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The other day my day started not so good, and it should be sufficient to say that I found it a tad hard to be welcoming and smiling to all the customers on the boat. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately) I had students that day, which gave me lots of good opportunities to yell at them and roll my eyes for no good reason. On our first dive for the day the students needed to do a compass swim. As I have earlier had students’ watches interfere with compasses and a few students on their way to PNG, I decided to make my students take their watches off and leave them on the boat. Which of course sounds like the most reasonable decision. However, things were a bit hectic on the back deck, since the sea was a bit rough and we had our fair share of seasick customers laying around and I should have been in the water 20 minutes ago. So, the watches were put in brown paper bag and left at the tea-and-coffee-table, and off we went into the big blue yonder.

Came back after a successful dive and compass swim, no students halfway to PNG and the number down equaled the number up, so all happy. Well up on the boat again, my student asks for his watch back, since it was a rather expensive watch and he was a bit nervous about it just laying about. I went over to the tea-and-coffee-table, and could not find the bag. Went inside the cabin area to see whether maybe some of the other crew had moved it inside for safe keeping, but not find it there either. Went outside again and asked the deck supervisor whether she had seen the bag, which she told me that she hadn’t. Asked the rest of the crew, now with a slight panic rising inside me, and the rest of the crew denied any knowledge of brown paper bag on the tea-and-coffee-table. It needs now to be mentioned that the brown paper bags are also used as sick bags, and in a terrifying moment where I swear that time stood still, I realised that someone had accidentally thrown the bag with the watches overboard in the belief that someone had been sick in it.

Asako, a Japanese instructor paddled over and readied her dive gear and jumped in, while I had to fob the students off with someone having moved the watched to a safe place and that someone was still in the water and therefore we would have to wait until that someone came back from their dive before they could get their watches back. The guy who initially asked for them back did not look to happy about it, but fortunately his friend laughed at his moody expression and told him that we were on a boat, and where could they have gone?? I guess there is no need to tell that I was praying like a madwoman that Asako would find the watches down in the great blue yonder. Five very slow minutes crawled by while I did my best of stretching out the briefing for our next dive, and to hide the terror in my voice.

Then, there were some small stirring on the back of the boat, and there is Asako, dripping wet in full dive gear, holding two watches in her hand. Brazenly I walked over, collected the watches and gave them to my students like this was the most natural thing. They both looked a bit bewildered, and one of them muttered where she came from and why she had their watches. I gave them a big smile, and jokingly told them that funny enough, someone seemed to have thrown their watches overboard. At first they looked at me in stunned silence, then decided that it had to have been a joke, and fell over laughing of how hilarious I were. Phew for that, although I did spot one of them looking thoughtfully at the water next to the tea-and-coffee-table a while later.

My day seemed to brighten a bit after that tho…

The curse of the travel agent

Travel agents are an own breed. There is a very specific person that ends up being a travel agent. And especially the ones who work in the student/backpacker types of agencies. And here in Australia they seem to be even stranger…

Firstly, they seem to be very superior to any other wanna-be travelers. And I guess for a good reason. They do tend to have traveled a fair bit more than the average Australian student that might patronize such a place, as well as sitting with lots of inside knowledge of different destinations and customs (since they do work where they work, and knowing these things is the essence of their job). However, somehow a lot of them miss a simple first-hand knowledge of how things work overseas for the simple reason that they have never been overseas. Seeing that Australia is a very lonely country in the middle of a very big sea, it is quite understandable that most Australians have never left the country. Most of the citizens will of course know what an airport is, seeing that most do tend to travel quite extensively within the country, but it is when you add the word ‘international’ to airport that they tend to become a bit more confused.

And, getting back to my travel agents, although they have traveled maybe a fair bit inside Australia, they do lack first hand knowledge of anywhere overseas. And working where they are working, and having the information they are having tend to give them a somewhat superior air to all us other sub-travelers, which is on the wrong side of the mysterious computer screen. If you ever have been in a travel agency you will know who jealousy any agent will protect their computer screen. Sometimes they act as there were super-secret state secrets of alien invasions and worse. I have no count of how many times I have slowly leaned over the counter in a vain try to see what is on the screen, and the agent has as slowly and never missing a beat turning the screen away from my prying, uninitiated, and unworthy eyes. But, I am digressing. Where was I, oh yeah, their superior air…

Most of the time that is a good thing. You don’t want to shed out A$2000 for a ticket to someone you suspect have never been outside the suburb the shop is located in. And, of course, neither would you want to ask advice of whether to cross the Chinese northern border on foot or on a donkey of someone who seem like they can’t even place China on a map. So, at most times the superior know-it-all air is a good thing. However, when they try to shovel information down your throat, which you know for sure, is incorrect for the simple reason that you have been there yourself, the superior air gets really annoying.

In the past two weeks I have been involved in a few heated conversations with several travel agents about whether a country will let you in if you do not have an outbound ticket located somewhere on your person or not. My stand that yes, countries do let you in, simply because there are other ways to leave a country than by plane, and most countries are aware of that, their stand is that no sir, no country will let you in without a outbound ticket. I even had one agent being so frustrated with my claims that most countries are quite happy letting you in, with an outbound ticket or without an outbound ticket, that in the end she refused to sell me a ticket to anywhere. Another travel agent went through great pains to explain to me that no country would let me in without me having a return ticket back to my HOME country. When I asked her how people get to do a around-the-world-trip if they have to fly back to their home country between each destination, she just sighed over my uninformed question and turned to talk to the next customer in line.

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