Day 5: ETA gone wrong

Saturday, August 31

Up at 4:30AM. Head to airport. Uber comes nice and quick. He is Mr. Know it all and extremely rude. “You get what you paid for” dissing everything, but of course it just gives us something to laugh about.

We show up at airport, ready to rock and roll. Our bags completely organized, nice and early. Nothing can go wrong, right? False. Something always goes wrong. Now onto our travel fails. We get up to the front, ready to check our bags (With Jet Star you can only have 7kg TOTAL between all your bags, per person), which we are aware of, but then they tell us we need an ETA. Huh??? News flash to us, ETA does NOT mean estimated time of arrival. It means Electronic Travel Authority. Which was something we didn’t have. We saw somewhere on the internet that getting into Australia is easy and you don’t need a visa. They have this thing called an ETA and there’s only ONE app where you can get it. If you ever want to go to Australia, download it now. It’s called “Australia ETA” and set aside a few hours to take your photo, because it will tell you a million times that it doesn’t match your passport or the quality isn’t good enough. Stand in front of a BLANK WHITE background, and use an older iPhone. We were certain we were going to miss our flights. Christopher already started looking up other flights. I don’t think I stopped praying the entire hour we were trying to figure this out. We both remained calm, and Christopher kept assuring me that it would all be okay, and we are going to make it. After talking to 4 different airport attendants, one finally stepped up to the plate to help us. His name was Jin. Great man. He gave us the company iPhone, which was super old, and the photos worked on the FIRST try. Weird. We tried our phones countless amounts of times. I saw a girl traveling solo who was also struggling. So once Christopher and I got it all figured out, I ran over to help her complete her ETA as well. She was from France and traveling around the world as well. She was very grateful, and we ended up chatting for awhile once we were all to our gate. Her profile said, home is where the heart is, and I shared with her how we always say home isn’t a place, it’s a person. I love meeting so many incredible souls and sharing stories. That is always one of my favorite parts about traveling. A smile is the universal language of kindness. Connecting with other humans all over the world is such a neat experience.

Take-off at 8:20AM, right on schedule. Everything on the flight costs money. Even the little games. So we pull out the iPad and play hangman on the sketch pad. We get a couple of ham & cheese toasties. 

We still aren’t sure where we are staying yet, but we have our rental car booked.

We arrive in Australia on September 1st so fast forward a day…. We time hopped into the future.

My highlight of the day was when our photos on the visa app finally worked. Christopher just told me that his highlight was watching me help the French girl. He said there was no way she would have made it without my help. I told her how I have traveled solo around the world before, and there are more good people in the world than bad. Humans love helping other humans. I am so grateful I could pass on the help to her, because there have been countless people who have offered me their kindness & help throughout my life. The goodnesss always comes back in double. You should never give to get, but it is true how the more you give, the more you get. There is no such thing as too much kindness in this world. We should all strive to be the best we can be, each & every day. Always treat others the way you want to be treated. Isn’t that the golden rule? Be kind. Pass it on.