I awoke to my alarm early in the morning, prepared to meet Rev. Roeske as planned at the airport for our flight from Manila to Davao City. But I awoke to texts from the airline telling me our flight had been cancelled, and prompting me to begin the process of rebooking. Scant moments later Pastor Roeske texted me with his revised flight at 9pm in the evening. I groggily navigated the airline website but couldn’t find his flight. Probably sold out already. However I was able to locate a flight leaving a few hours earlier than his. Perfect. I successfully rebooked in less than 20 minutes.
This left about 12 hours until my departure. Pastor Roeske suggested we could try to rendezvous ahead of time since we were staying at different places. But considering Manila was dealing with flooding – though not as severe as the last time a typhoon struck the day before I landed, back in late July of this year – it seemed wisest to me to minimize trying to get around and allow people who could help have run of the roads for a while. Fortunately I was able to negotiate a slightly later checkout time.
Fortunately it only took about an hour and was uneventful. Flooding was severe around my hotel but subsided as we transitioned to another area of the sprawling metropolis. And then I was lugging my bags into Ninoy Aquino International Airport. I had accounted for possible delays in reaching the airport. I had not accounted for delays in actually getting through the airport.
NAIA is not the most comfortable or efficient of airports to depart from at the best of times. And this was definitely not the best of times. I printed the luggage tag for my bag and then chose one of two lines at random. Over an hour later, I had deposited my bag and been waved on with my digital boarding pass through immigration and customs. I still had three hours to kill before my flight was due to takeoff. I found a spot to recharge my phone but once again had no access to any kind of wi-fi. More offline preparations for the days ahead.
An hour before my scheduled departure I started looking for the gate for my flight. But while the flight was listed on digital schedule boards that also showed it was still scheduled to be on time, there was no gate assignment. Nor was there 30 minutes later. Or ten more minutes later when I asked an airline employee. Finally, just ten minutes before scheduled departure we were informed the incoming flight was late and boarding would be delayed until they unloaded passengers and serviced the plane. I know from experience this usually takes about 30 minutes. They weren’t calling my flight late though.
Roughly 30 minutes past scheduled departure time we pushed back from the gate, and then were informed after about 15-20 minutes of taxiing and idling that we would have to wait another hour for departure. Miraculously, despite cloudy skies and uncertain weather we made it safely to Davao. It was a bumpy flight and landing but safe.
I emerged into the tiny airport in Davao for the first time. There wasn’t much to it. We had agreed I would just wait for Pastor Roeske’s flight to land but even with my delay it would be another two hours before he landed – if he landed on time. He hadn’t departed yet. Finally I made the call to just find an inexpensive hotel and get some sleep, rather than wait until nearly 1am hoping his plane took off and landed on time. We agreed to meet in the morning for our drive up into the mountains where we’d be staying the next few days. I prayed his plane would indeed depart and arrive more or less on time – or things were going to get even more interesting without his translation abilities!
The Nelson Family Indonesia 