The Mexican Candidate

          
         What better way than to start 2019 with a rant? I'm already back in Japan, but I promised on twitter that I would vent on a post about my adventure going home for the holidays, so here it goes.

         A bit of background: I've been living abroad, meaning outside of Mexico, for more than a decade already. This includes undergrad, (aborted) grad school, and study/work in Japan. Regardless, there hasn't been a single year I haven't been back home for the end of  year holidays; which are pretty important, family-centered celebrations in Mexico. It was in this context that I, of course, made plans and bought tickets to go home for the end of the year.

         All these years I've been using Expedia to buy plane tickets and 2018 was not the exception; buying a round trip package from $X$ to Mexico City. The first leg of the trip, through China Eastern Airlines had me make a transit in Shanghai (need to renew my American visa!) for a couple of hours before the flight to Mexico. 

Fast forward to the week before Christmas, the day my trip started. Everything went smoothly and my flight left and arrived to Shanghai as scheduled. 

Can you find my next flight?

         As you can probably tell from the intro, I'm a veteran at navigating cheap flights with very short transit times. In particular, the cities I've lived in the US (Ithaca and $Y$) didn't have direct flights from Mexico City, so I always had to make a stop in some other US airport. I don't think I need to describe just how chaotic US customs can be, but even with just two hours between flights, I was always able to run, push, and claw my way through it all to always make it on time for the next flight...
I missed my flight this time. It was just impossible to make it: Spending more than 10 minutes in a bus from the airplane to the terminal itself, getting my luggage, standing in line waiting for a transit visa, and then running all the way from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 (there's a security check between terminals btw). Even with all that, I made it to the Aeromexico counter 4 minutes late. Their policy is that you can't check in luggage one hour or less before the flight and I was 56 minutes before.

         The staff there weren't very helpful (although one guy there spoke pretty good Spanish) and after getting through the shock of what had happened I verified that my first flight had indeed arrived in time, since so far that's been the only reason I've ever missed flights. The only option I had was to contact Expedia about it. As described before, I'm not someone who takes it slowly on airports, so it would have been their fault for having given me such a short transit. 

The Great Wait

         It was at this point that a period in history I call "The Great Wait" began. Talking about great things, since I was not expecting to spend more than a couple of hours in China I didn't prepare a VPN; which meant I was at the mercy of "The Great Firewall of China". I couldn't check my email, nor use Facebook, Twitter, or any other of my social media. Putting aside the stress of not being able to contact anyone to tell them what had happened, it was also a challenge to find some way to contact Expedia; though eventually I found a number I could call. This is where the "wait" comes into play, since I was on hold for several intervals of up to 40 minutes long while they figured out what had happened.

         Originally they were adamant that the plane was late and even had me check with the counter again, which I did to be thorough. Eventually (and I mean after around 2-3 hours on the phone), what had happened became clear: Between the time I bought the ticket and the actual flight, China Eastern changed the arrival time from the original 10:25 to 10:45. This meant that from their perspective and as far as other airlines were concerned, the flight was indeed on time. Expedia said they weren't able to contact China Eastern and I couldn't get much from the counter since their English isn't particularly good. 
I did  recall the last itinerary saying arrival at 10:45, but since it was the first time I saw it months after having bought the tickets I didn't realize the inconsistency. While that final itinerary reflected the change, Expedia never warned me about the change in any specific manner or otherwise tried to change that transit. I was fairly certain of this, but being unable to access my email's inbox I couldn't verify it. As such I concentrated my energy on finding a way to get to Mexico...

>twf  you're Mexican and you're stranded
(this is part of some expo in between terminals in case you wonder)

         Or I would have, but I had to deal with yet another issue: Having lost one of my flights, the return leg of the trip was in danger of being canceled. Expedia told me that I had to deal directly with Aeromexico or Korean Air (which was the airline actually in charge of the tickets) in person at the counter since they couldn't do anything on their side. Of course, I had been for several hours on the phone by the time I heard about this, so both counters were closed. I tried calling by phone, but after struggling to make myself understood I was told that Expedia should handle it. Like a hot potato they kept shifting burden to one another. Regardless of this ongoing issue, I wanted to get home as soon as possible so I bought a new ticket. Shanghai-Mexico City isn't a particularly popular route, so the fastest one I could get was the same flight on Thursday (I had arrived on Tuesday). By that time I was fed up so I decided to continue the fight the next day since I would be staying at the airport for two nights anyways. 

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         We're not nearly done, but lets balance things with a bit of positivism: While I was on hold a girl sat near me and started speaking in what was Mexican Spanish on her phone. I said hi and we chatted for a bit before she had to leave for a flight to Vietnam. I later found her (Andrea) and her sister (Natalia) at one of the business centers of the airport. As fate would have it, they had had some trouble too and weren't able to board their plane. It was nice to find compatriots who were facing a similar situation, although Natalia actually lived in Shanghai so they had much better contingency plans than me. We ate Chinese Burger King for dinner, hung out, and drank a couple of beers in the airport. Natalia had a VPN in her phone so I was also able to contact my mom to tell her I wouldn't be arriving on the original plane. It was only for a few hours, but I'm pretty thankful to them. I managed to stalk find them on Facebook but I'm not sure I should add them, I don't have much to say other than "gracias".

         Back to our depressing tale. When they left I booked a room in the terminal hotel for the night and after a not so refreshing night of sleep I was ready for the next round. First thing in the morning, I went to Korean Air counter and once I made myself understood they told me that they couldn't do anything there and it should either be Expedia or China Eastern. I tried with both for some more hours but the game of hot potato continued. In the end, I was told by Expedia that it would be best to first get to Mexico and try to save the return flight from the counters there. They also gave me a couple of vouchers worth $\$300$ for a trip in 2019! By this time I was so tired of it all that I couldn't even muster the strength let them now how insulting that was, so I decided to leave it be for the moment.

Nothing like ramen noodles for comfort.

The Last Hurdle

         After another night at the hotel airport, I was ready to go back home! I got to the counter three hours before, checked my bags, and entered immigration; where the last obstacle awaited me: The transit visa I had was only valid for 24 hours and in my struggle to solve the plane issue it never occurred to me that I had overstayed my welcome, as the officer was quick to point out. As such I was taken aside to talk to other immigration officers, who after a very long wait told me I had to pay a fine of 500 yuan (around 74 usd). If the overstay is caused by a delay, they usually waive this fine, but since their English was not good enough to be able to follow the explanation of what had happened, they kept insisting it was my fault. 
Written it's just a couple of lines, but they made me wait so long that even with those 3 hours I was once again in danger of losing the flight. And so I gave up and just told them I would pay; only to be informed that it had to be in cash, which I wasn't carrying with me. With the departure time getting really close that would have been impossible...

         Here's where the second good thing happened. A very kind woman who was in the same interrogation area as me heard what was happening and gave me the money. Just like that. I asked for her name or something so I could repay her, but she insisted she didn't mind and that I should hurry up so as not to lose my plane. Some more stressful minutes ticked by while I waited for the documents to be produced and I finally got on my way... to the security checkup line. After some other kind people allowed me to go first, I managed to get to the gate just in time to board, marking the end of the ordeal (and the beginning of a 14 hours long trip).

Yes, this is the actual money I was given.

Epilogue

        That's it, as you can see this story required a bit more space than a tweet. After arriving to Mexico I went to the counters of  Aeromexico, but nothing could be done from there either. However, once I got home and having eaten my mom's pozole, I was ready to truly have a go at Expedia for what had happened. After a couple of hours on the phone I managed to get a reimbursement for the original trip (and I kept the vouchers!). Considering the Shanghai expenses and the new flights, I ended up losing a couple hundreds of dollars after all was said and done, but it could have been much worse.

Food for the Gods.

Lessons learned:

• Do not make transits on China (or at least prepare a VPN).
• I need to renew my American visa asap to avoid transits like the above (although American transits are only slightly better)
• Don't let whatever airline or Expedia to be pushing you around.
• As far as humans go, I'm solidly in the cynic side of the "cynicism vs idealism" scale, but there are indeed good and selfless people out there.

In any case, being home is always relaxing so it was a good trip overall. Perhaps as compensation from the heavens, in my return flight with transit in Seoul (Incheon is like heaven compared to Pudong) I had a whole row of empty seats to myself, so I enjoyed it quite a bit. Hope it's a good omen for what's to come in 2019!