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Published: February 13th 2006
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Opera House
You've seen it a million times, one more won't hurt... As has been the case lately, the lack of planning has stung particularly hard whenever needed the most. Simple things like checking into hostels have been of no real problem or importance due to the abundance of housing opportunities within any given town. Trains, busses and cars however, we’ve been definitely been paying a premium because we’ve not booked passage more than 2 hours prior to departure. A visa, a completely overlooked aspect of the trip until this point would become the newest thorn in my side.
The girl at the Qantas check in counter was kind enough to offer us a place at her house in Manly Beach after reading the expression of exasperation on my face.
‘What do you mean we need a visa for India?’
There must have been 4 Qantas representatives checking and double checking the repercussions of boarding a flight without a visa and attempting to find any and every way around this minor oversight. Once it was discovered that a $3000 fine would be levied against the individual who checked in a passenger without a visa and immediate deportation would await that particular passenger, the matter was resolved. No India today…
Distraught over
Harbour Bridge
Yep, yep, same thing... not being able to go to India as planned, and waaaay over budget for Australia, Royal and I held a minor strategy session in the airport lounge. What to do? It was Sunday so the Indian consulate would not be open to grant us expedited visas. Sunday aside, the Indian consulate was known to be exceptionally slow in granting visas and there was no guarantee that we’d get anything expedited. The term “red tape” originated within the Indian government for whenever a file was transferred between departments, back in the old days before electronic scanning and computers, entire files would be wrapped together in red tape and the general sorting out process of what was within the red tape would take ample amounts of time. Hence we held little hope of receiving visas fast so we rebooked flights for the following night as well as for a few days ahead.
We could hang out in Sydney for another few days, which was not high on the priority list as I had already mentally moved on from the land down under. The only option was to go to the consulate first thing Monday morning and wear enormous signs around our
necks saying, “We’re stupid, please help!” Now with the mental passing from Australia into another less expensive country such as India, my wallet had gone into lock down mode. I had been spending rather liberally within Australia but the exchange rate had most definitely caught up to me and it was most definitely time to conserve money if I were to make it to the end of the road.
Royal had made contact with the sister of a friend from his time in Cambodia and after a Wednesday night of drinking, she informed us that she would be leaving town for the weekend and we were free to use her place as long as we needed it while she was gone. This proved to be most beneficial in our plans to conserve money but now that we had exhausted that avenue and were to be staying in Sydney for an unknown period of time, with hostels not an option, we searched the contact list for potential couch crashing hosts.
Our good friend from High School, Casey, had lived in Coogee Beach for a few months after college and had alerted her friend who remained with her Aussie boyfriend
that we would likely be in contact. Kara and Paul were absolutely incredible. I made one of the most forward and frank phone calls of my life. ‘Hi, we both share a friend and I don’t know you, but I’m in a bad position and need some help. Can I sleep on your floor?’
Within the hour we were accepted into Kara and Paul’s flat with open arms. Within 2 hours we were enjoying beers overlooking the ocean on our way to an awesome Thai dinner. They informed us that we could stay as long as we needed, which was absolutely amazing! This is the type of selfless and open-minded behavior that allows moronic travelers the type of grace cushion most of us need. Many travelers are under the mindset that ‘I’ve been there before’ as Kara explained her couch crashing sessions when she moved to Australia. Paul was quite a traveler himself offering his insight into how to trek through the Himalayas as he’d made the trip not too long ago to the foothills of Mt. Everest.
With the comfort of knowing we had a soft spot to land if things at the consulate didn’t work out as hoped, we headed off to downtown Sydney. At 9:00am we were already #s 20 & 21 in line to apply for a visa. Not a good sign. When the windows opened at 9:30 the room was full and after being called, before ever being able to give away my sob story of the inexperienced traveler, the jaded woman behind the counter informed me that with an American passport, there was no was to attain a visa any sooner than one week. With a quick glance from Royal, I could tell he was of the same mind frame as me. One week was much too long, we needed to be moving. I liken this need to move much to the end of high school. You’ve enjoyed your time, but the knowledge of the challenge of college looms just ahead; you become disenchanted with your current situation and long for the next. We had to be moving on…
So beer in hand at 10:00am for the kickoff of the Superbowl, we had another strategy session. Where could the path of least resistance take us immediately without the necessity of a visa? Qantas flew to Hong Kong but we couldn’t go anywhere without a visa from there. Thailand did not require a visa but Qantas doesn’t fly into Bangkok. The choice became obvious. Singapore. Singapore was on the list of places to visit only we would now need to entirely rearrange the next two months. Initially we were to land travel from Bangkok to Singapore, flying back to Singapore to travel east to China. Now we would land travel from Singapore to Bangkok and then fly to Delhi (via Hong Kong, just shoot me now!) It would work? Would Qantas allow us to completely change our flight without charging us outrageous fees?
The power of a sincere smile is immeasurable. We were not only able to add an extra flight to the itinerary hours before takeoff, but were able to shift flight dates, change cities and all without an electronic ticket just because the Qantas lady liked us. Good thing I got that haircut!
Monday turned out to be a beautiful day; the Steelers took the big game so I shared in a little home state pride, I was able to walk around Sydney Harbour and re-shoot some of the film I had taken a few days before when the clouds ruined most of every shot I had planned out and finally Kara and Paul were nice enough to drive us to the airport so we didn’t have to lug our bags onto the crowded subway again. Now sometimes I envision my life as a movie and most of the time my movie gets panned by the critics and gets no results at the box office, but the events of the past few days were so surreal that in retrospect I feel as if Royal and I were puppets in a film writer’s dream manipulating the events of the world around us at his whim to see if some type of volatile chemical type reaction would react. Without pictures, all I have are memories and words of which I hope have portrayed the serendipitous nature of the past few days.
Singapore? Ok, let’s go to Singapore……
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red tape
I believe the term "Red Tape" did in fact begin in India, but it used to be referred to as "Red Dot". Have fun.