The December holidays had already started for almost two weeks and many of my friends had flew off for their holidays, I'm eagerly waiting for mine to start as well. As I'm doing research for Hokkaido, I got more and more excited when the plans started to firm up and I cant wait to set off.
Somehow, P and I are seems to be quite unlucky and our trips are always jinxed in someway. It started with Taipei trip in June 2013 when we missed our flight, got so stressed and had to go home to rest for a few hours before going back to the airport to take another Jetstar flight. In Dec 2013, our Boracay trip did not materialised and we wasted quite a bit of money due the last minute changes. In June 2014, we made a trip to Tokyo and almost missed our flight again as we overslept. Dec 2014 was the Boracay trip when it was pretty rainy and we experienced 9h of delay on the return flight. June 2015, we went for the El Nido trip and missed our connecting flight, got stuck in Manila for a night and had to fly in the following day. Even a shorter trip to Malacca earlier was jinxed as the bus broke down and P almost lost his passport (but he was super lucky to have gotten it back). After the KL trip this year, I fell sick and was stressed due to the roaming charges slapped onto my bill (fortunately the whole issue was resolved) As for BKK trip in August, things were quite okay except that P had a bad fall in the bathroom. Gosh! Are we the only couple who are so unlucky to get all these issues during EVERY SINGLE TRIP? Its a wonder in itself that we were not deterred from making travel plans and still enjoyed every bit of our trip after the issues were resolved.
This time round, it was really the ultimatum and I really felt upset and disappointment some hours ago. We had booked our flight as early as September after comparing and monitoring the air tix prices on Skyscanner. P suggested booking the tix from his friend as they were offering a few hundred dollars off from the price I obtained from Skyscanner. Other than the fact that they do not accept credit card and we had to fork out the money on the spot, I was quite happy with the booking. By end of October, I realised the hotels were being snapped up fast so I quickly get the itinerary done and started to book all the hotels after some research. As for the past few weeks, I followed up with my research and got the details ironed out, booked our ski lessons etc. I was so excited this morning as it was finally 10th Dec, the day we're supposed to make the trip on JAL! I woke up at 6am in the morning, feeling excited that our trip is finally arriving and couldnt get back to sleep after that. I felt so proud of myself as I spent hours cleaning and tidying up the house, and then got my luggage packed with some hours left to rest. After the previous bad experiences, we knew better and always made it a point to get to the airport as early as we can (but things still cropped up, sigh...)
P came home in the very rainy evening and we decided to go to the airport early as we could not confirmed our seats. A few days before this, I suddenly remembered our Tokyo experience when we sat separately on Delta. That was the few rare times we were not taking budget airlines and I forgot to log in early to do check in and secure seats. I asked P to check with his friend as we could not log in using the reservation number provided, but they did not give us a satisfying reply. It was a good thing we decided to leave our place earlier, the roads were quite jammed up with traffic due to the rain. Terminal 1 departure hall also had very terrible traffic before the dropoff point due to their expansion/ renovation.
We reached the JAL checkin at 7.30pm, still quite early for the 10pm flight. We were feeling happy and relaxed at that moment, totally not prepared for what happened next. Basically, the ground staff at the checkin counter looked at the papers and our passports for awhile, then got us to wait while she went to another counter to check something.
She came back with another JAL staff and they explained that they found our names in their system but next to our booking it was remarked “refund completed". They advised us to check with the agency and to get back to them when we are ready. P face looked grim at that moment and went off to make the call, the JAL staff helped me move our luggages aside while he did so. Unfortunately, P’s friend was just working for someone else in the Philippines to get business for this agency ’One Travel’, my heart sank when I heard that it went through so many people as it really spell disaster to me. What will happen to this trip we’ve been looking forward to for so long?
P’s friend appeared not to know what had happened, but offered to book us on another flight on SQ, a direct flight leaving at 11.30pm on the same night. For a moment, our worries lifted as we thought that it will be an upgrade from a JAL non direct flight to a SQ direct flight. We sat around at the arrival hall waiting for the confirmation email to come in, the helpful JAL ground staff who helped me earlier was also nice enough to come over and follow up, asking if he could help with anything. We explained that we will likely be booked on another flight, thanked him for his help and continued waiting. As we waited, I went through skyscanner on my handphone and true enough, the cheapest flight at that moment was a SQ flight later that evening. I kept reminding myself to never ever go through an agency just to take advantage of a cheaper flight again, unless its a reputable one.
We were anxiously waiting to end the nightmare, my stomach was growling as the initial plan was to get to the airport earlier so that we can have dinner after checkin. I was feeling excited the whole day and did not get much to eat. I asked P to get ourselves moving to Starbucks so that I can grab a hot drink and also go and collect the wifi router booked once our flight is confirmed.
Minutes went by, P was still trying to settle the issue with his friend but I got increasingly angry as hours had passed and it was already 9.30am but still no confirmation yet. I just felt that whole thing was a scam and they were not going to get us booked on SQ flight after all this pointless waiting. I did not want to give up on this trip so easily, it was meaningless sitting around waiting for them to rebook a flight for us as it had shown to be just a waste of our time. I was only hoping to get us booked on a flight as soon as possible, but I was looking at skyscanner and there were not many options left flying to Hokkaido, either it takes 20+ hours for a cheaper flight or flying at exorbitant price. I tried to book SQ on my own but apparently they only had one seat left or something, so we were not going to get on that flight. It looked like it was impossible to fly off till the next day and we might even need to go home. I was feeling tired, hungry and my head was throbbing. Despite all the obstacles met during our previous trip, it was the first time I had this feeling that we might not get to travel at all.
I made a trip to the washroom to clear my head. I told myself not to get upset at P as the whole point of the trip was to enjoy ourselves and it was not really his fault although I did feel angry with him for trusting this friend. i continued to search for flights at Starbucks and finally found one that was just slightly above 3k for 2 people, we were willing to lose some money to get our trip going and only hoping to get back a full refund of what we had paid earlier. I completed the booking of flight at 11.30pm, and this change affected our next trip as well as we had to fly back one day later so that we can get a cheaper airfare flying on weekday. We decided that we will not travel home and come back again as we will need to be back in a few hours to checkin for the UA flight.
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| Give us a flight to Sapporo plsssss :( |
It was a really long night but finally our spirits lifted a bit. By the time we left Starbucks, it was already past midnight and the airport was already getting deserted. We had a lot of time till our flight so we traveled to T3 to look for food, finally time to fill our stomach! I looked at our e-Ticket on my iPhone and realised that our flight was actually at T3 too. I regretted not picking up my wifi router at T1 before heading to T3, but then again, we had a lot of time to go back T1 again. We decided to go to the food court at the basement of T3 for food, as there were not many 24h dining options. Fortunately, we were spending a few hours at Changi airport, which I am proud to say that it is comfortable and quiet enough to make the wait less daunting and miserable. If we were stuck at Manila like the previous time, I would go to the motel again to escape for the 24h crowd. We traveled back to T1 by skytrain again to pick up the wifi router, get my currency changed etc. It was already 2am and I could see that P was looking very drained, after whole day of work and then solving all the issues earlier. I suggested that we rest at this “Shawarma cafe” (forgot the name) at T3 as I saw people lying on the comfortable sofa there and there were also a charging station where we can charge our drained laptop and phones.
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| Very empty skytrain after midnight |
P was excited to get some juice into his draining phone so he sat at the charging station chatting with his friend about the refund, I was also glad that my laptop is revived so that i can check our flight online and search for hotel for the additional night we had booked. Thankfully we had such facilities at T3! I decided to go check out the UA counter at 3am to see what time we can check in, our flight was actually at 7.15am so I thought the earliest should be 4.15pm since it was an onward flight to US. Surprisingly, I saw a short queue already forming even though the UA counter was not opened yet. We got our stuff and joined the queue, we wanted to get checked in as soon as we can and get some rest in the departure area. After the previous scare, I don’t feel at ease till we get the boarding passes.
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| Very tiring passengers waiting for flight |
With our precious boarding passes on hard, we arrived at the departure area at 4am and there were people lying down on some of the chairs, deep in sleep. We found a good area equipped with charging sockets/USB outlets, rows of chairs away from main human traffic so it was more secluded. P slept well for the next 2 hours while I started blogging, I felt tired but only get a few minutes of shut eye as the last thing I wanted was to miss our flight. At times, I got up to walk around to keep myself awake. Finally, at 6.15am, I woke P up as it was almost time for boarding.
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| So glad that we finally get a boarding pass |
Previously, I heard negative reviews about UA and had avoided booking it at all costs till tonight. Moreover, the onward journey from Tokyo was booked on Jetstar, a budget airline and surely not our top choice even though it was just a two hour flight from Tokyo to Sapporo. However, since we were really desperate, we could not afford to be choosy and on the contrary, we were really thankful there were two precious seats left for us at a reasonable enough price. Honestly, as I’m typing this now after a good sleep on board, I find the flight quite okay, negative points: the seats is a tad too squeezy, food is quite bad even for someone who loves on board meal (me!) and the touch screen in flight entertainment system has limited choices. Well anyway, I was so tired that I fell asleep even before the plane took off and only really woke up 4h later to continue this blog.
We are approaching Tokyo in another hour or so, finally going to land on our dream venue, nippon land!
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| Got busy with some activities at the departure terminal to keep awake |
After reaching Tokyo, we landed in Terminal 1, we found our way to the JR East Travel Service Centre to get our Hokkaido Rail Pass done. Prior to the trip, I’ve already printed the forms needed, so we only d to pass them the forms with our passport. One rail pass cost a whooping 24,000Y and it seems quite expensive, but after calculating our cost of train trips for the last 7 days using Hyperdia (we bought the 7 days pass), there was still cost saving of 30,000Y. On top of that, we can also get reserved seats for the longer journeys at zero additional cost.
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| Yeah! We're in Japan! |
The transit time before our next Jetstar flight was 3h, but we were only left with 2h after the rail pass was done. We took some time clearing immigration and collected our luggage. Next, we took a free shuttle service to Terminal 3 and apparently that was the budget terminal for Narita Airport. The check-in was quite smooth and we went to a convenience store just in front to get some food stuff, it was already 4pm+ and I was feeling quite hungry. There were also cheap winter stuff (beanie and gloves) that I bought for P. As it was a budget terminal, there were not much shopping to be done. Soon, it was near boarding time (5.30pm), we went into the departure area, scanned our belongings and headed to the gate to wait. Surprisingly, we soon heard them announcing our names over the system and was informed that there was something in our luggage that had to be removed as the scanning failed. I immediately thought of the Eneloop battery that I had in my luggage. When we checked in our luggage, I already told P that the battery is inside when the lady briefed us, but we thought it will be a hassle to open the luggage to remove it since we did not have issues when flying UA earlier. We had no choice but walked back to the checkin counter to look for our luggage. We reached the area when people were scanning their belongings earlier and saw the lady who helped us check in. She was blabbering something to us but communication was quite difficult, as always in Japan. We were trying to tell her of the situation but she told us after awhile that they've already 'finished' with the luggage, we were skeptical but we scanned our belongings and went back to the gate area with her.
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| The place in Terminal 1 where we got our Hokkaido Rail Pass |
The whole area is fully of people waiting for their Jetstar flight to different areas of Japan, our flight is delayed by half an hour and I could see other flights always delayed so it was quite crowded. Finally, we found seats when people boarding another flight left. I was enjoying my cream dorayaki when they called for our names again, it was the same lady who apologetically told us that we have to go back to security area to remove the battery from the luggage. It's a few hundred metres walk up and down some stairways and I was feeling tired from carrying my laptop and stuff around, but we had no choice but to walk the same way for the 4th and 5th time to retrieve that battery. Sigh...
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| Air port shuttle service between terminals |
Our nightmare did not end there, we finally boarded the plane and I fell asleep while waiting for it to take off. However, I woke up after awhile and realised that it was already 8pm and the plane was still at the berth. It was raining earlier when we boarded the plane and the announcement went on to tell us that there's a long queue to takeoff so the flight is delayed. I just wanted to get to Hokkaido and end this torturous day, already 24h since we first met with issues at Changi airport, sob sob...
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| My Hokkaido Rail Pass |
The plane finally took off and the actual flight was only 1h 10min after so much delay. Everyone on the plane put on their down jackets and stuff and started running once they got their luggages. The weather was quite okay at Tokyo (air con temp) but I supposed Hokkaido is much colder so I put on my down jacket on top of my Juicy suit and another long sleeve tee. We got our ticket at the JR station for the rapid train to Sapporo and found the platform with the train waiting. Finally! We're one step closer to the destination!
As this post is getting too long, I'll post the review of the hotels in a separate post for this trip. After checking in, we decided to try out this 丸海屋 (Maruumi-ya) as the menu looked good from outside. P is craving for steak again and they looked like they have some bbq pork stuff even if there were no steak. I enjoyed dining at izayaka as there's a variety of food and I get to try the yummy Japanese stuff while not compromising P preferences. I ordered a donburi with fish roe and salmon sashimi, it was really the best I had ever tasted. Even the rice tasted so good and heavenly, and the seafood was really fresh. P had a grilled pork dish, seafood 'fried rice' and a buttery corn dish. I wondered if we were too hungry or the food was really that good, I guess its a mixture of both. We left after the satisfying meal, bought some stuff from 7-11 and headed back to the hotel. I tried to update the blog about my adventures after a very good hot shower but my eyelids became heavy as it was already 3am.
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| Satisfying meal at Maruumi-ya |
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| Very yummy donburi |
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| Vending and ice machine at our floor lift lobby |
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| Anti slip soles for walking in winter (bought in 7-11) |
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