The Dangers of Drowsy Traveling

Once I start to think of myself as a savvy, smart traveler, something minorly bad happens that puts me back in my place.

Last week, I took a weeklong trip to Melbourne (next blog) with my roommate Jess to explore the city one last time and visit friends in the area.

The day before we left for our trip to Victoria was non-stop. I woke up at 4:30 a.m. to work one last data entry gig before an afternoon of sea mailing home essentials to myself and feverously packing, cleaning and moving out of our apartment. Once we turned the keys over to our crazy landlord that night, we set off to the suburb of Ramsgate Beach to store our remaining belongings at Brittany’s friends house while we’re out of town.

The many bags of a flashpacker

This seemingly easy trip was a challenge in itself. First off, I left my phone plugged into the apartment I no longer live in, which I realized after arriving at the train station. After a quick jog back and forth, we discovered all the elevators at the Kings Cross station were ‘under construction.’ Bouncing our heavy suitcases and heaving our bags down the stairs and through the turnstiles was a loud, hilarious feat. Once across town and on the bus to the beach, we thought we were home free, until a drunken homie boarded our bus and ensued to fall on top of me (I think I have post traumatic bum syndrome).  The rain shower on our final walk to our friend’s house was welcome after that incident.

Sleep deprived and exhausted, we all simply passed out once we stopped moving.

The next morning, Jess and I excitedly packed up our stuff, showered and set off on the 400 bus to the airport.  While on the bus, we met a sweet fellow elderly ex-pat American who kept us distracted on our journey. When we arrived at the first set of terminals at 8:30 a.m., Jess noted that we were cutting it kind of close on time. Thinking our flight is at 9:45 a.m., I thought we timed it quite perfectly. After a ticket inspection, we realized our flight was indeed at 9:00 a.m. on a budget airline that requires a strict check in time of 45 minutes before departure. So, we missed our flight. At the ticketing booth, we barely made it onto the next flight and had to a pay a fee that was almost as much as our round trip original ticket. We were packed, anxious and going to Melbourne.

Arriving at the cattle-like terminal of our budget airline in Melbourne

Lessons learned to always check your flight time the night before, and to make sure your crappy airline doesn’t have some strange check in rule and/or carry-on weight rules and/or huge fees for missing flights.

But, like I said, if this is the worst thing that’s happened to me in a while, I have it pretty good. #backpackerproblems