Part IV: A Concert, a Change of Plans, & a Moped Convoy
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A majority of this day consisted of concert preparation and Gracie getting the shopping out of her system, that she had yet to complete yet on the trip.
The day started with the same hotel breakfast cuisine as the day before and then we went to the grocery store for a coffee.
The morning was somewhat bland, but I feel that balanced everything out from our busy and hectic day before.
There was a point during this morning while getting coffee and getting lost in the mall, however, that it looked bleak for our original “standby” route back to the states; of going from Seoul to either Minneapolis or Detroit the next day.
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To explain myself: Flying “standby” is how myself and my family travels 99% of the time.
My mom works for Delta as a flight attendant and has been employed with them for almost 35 years; employees for certain airlines are given the opportunity to fly “standby”, which is processed through an online system and based on seniority. In the most basic sense, it means that if there is a seat available on a flight, then a non-revenue passenger, same as standby, would receive this seat. The bonus and entire point of it all is they receive this available seat at no cost. This is the only reason my family and I are even able to afford even a single domestic trip is because of our benefits. My mom began taking my sister and I on trips when we were fourteen and fifteen years old. After about five trips to Europe, a trip to Japan, and a trip down to Australia and New Zealand it was safe to say I was hooked; and after a small global pandemic I have now found myself inspired by her path and employed with United Airlines as a baggage handler getting those same benefits- only with United’s superior routes, I shall say.
However, the catch to standby is that if there are no seats available, or many other non-revenue passengers trying to get on the same flight as you; there could be problems and a huge risk of you never even stepping your feet onto that jet bridge.
As standby travel and how it works is now clearer, I will continue on with the dilemma of this day:
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Our 10+ seats on each flight had rapidly flipped on a dime and turned into three seats and two seats available, respectively. There were other cities that Delta flew to from Seoul, and two daily routes on United to San Francisco from there as well- but those flights for standby purposes never looked good and stayed that way with very few seats available if any at all.
Having been in at least half a dozen situations like this on my own, where seat counts on flights changed, so I didn’t really panic- but the added element of being responsible for getting TWO people alive and well back to America was a slightly more difficult and daunting task.
There is another system that is available to most airline employees called ZED Fair. ZED Fair allows the employee to fly standby on any airline that have a ZED partnership and agreement. This is not free, but in many cases these flights might as well be considered as robbery. For example, I have flown from Chicago to Zurich, Switzerland for $88, on Swiss Airlines, Lome, Togo to Washington, DC on Ethiopian Airlines for $115, and a direct trip from Dallas to Dubai on Emirates for $144. You save thousands, if not tens of thousands from this system and is how I can get to just about, truly, anywhere on the planet. However, while ZED allows your parents, spouse, and children, (until they are 24), to travel with them; very few airlines allow a “travel partner”, which is what Gracie would be considered due to siblings getting the short end of the stick of family members with benefits. This means we could not just teleport from Seoul to Dallas direct on Korean Air which is what solo Austin would have been able to do. There would have to be some more digging and scheming to figure something out that was possible.
I called my dad while wandering the mall and we discussed various options. He has saved up American Airlines miles for years by using their credit card for practically any purchase he makes. Of course, he loves to save them, but if we need to use them for a situation similar to this, that is what they exist for. Using this purely as a safety blanket, he booked only Gracie a confirmed ticket direct from Seoul to Dallas for 105,000 miles on American, and I would simply find a separate route home on another airline that had more seats on ZED Fair. This was a soft plan though, since it was over two days until that flight actually left, as it was still Wednesday: if there was a way to get home sooner and/or a way to save my dad 100,000 miles we would figure it out.
After Gracie’s “shop ‘til you drop” activities in that mall and a quick meal at a Japanese restaurant, we headed back to the room at about 1PM and planned to leave the hotel at about 5:15PM to leave for the concert with a 7 o’clock start time.
I took about an hour-long nap that was very vital in order for my mind, body, and soul to stay intact up to that point of the trip. I then realized I should take this time to try to figure out an alternate way home to save time and my dad’s American miles, while it also still being an option Gracie can even use. For the first ten minutes post-nap, I started by pondering mindlessly at my computer screen; I was scanning with my still drooping eyes at a map of all the routes on the planet going in and out of Seoul on a website called fightconnections.com. I am not in any way affiliated with them, but the site has helped me figure out a countless number of routes to and from wherever I may be going in the world. After getting an overview of the flights that existed at all, I then began going into the fine-print and details of certain airlines ZED Fair policies to see which ones allowed travel partners: the list was slim, but not zero.
I knew that Swiss Airlines and Croatia Airlines allowed travel partners. This was only because in May I had gone with a friend from Zurich and made our way to Croatia through a crazy day where we hit four different countries- but we’ll save that story for another day. Other than those two airlines and from my investigations, I concluded our options were Air Canada, Air New Zealand, Avianca Airlines, Brussels Airlines, LOT Polish Airlines, and Lufthansa Airlines. It seemed that it was just a select few airlines from the Star Alliance that permitted travel partners, which is the alliance that United is a part of so that aspect made sense. Avianca, Brussels, Croatian, and Swiss Airlines had zero that went anywhere from Seoul; those were out. While the rest had options from Korea, Air Canada and Air New Zealand had no seats on those flights which quickly eliminated these two options as well. The final hope was LOT Polish and Lufthansa. The first plan I actually created was with LOT Polish on a route from Seoul to Budapest, Hungary for a layover, before ending up in Frankfurt and using options from Delta, Lufthansa, or United to get home. But I decided that to be a wash as we could simply opt to fly direct to Frankfurt and save money and stress of connecting through Budapest; even though, of course, that would have been exciting. There were enough seats at the time and the plan was then set. We would be saving my father over 100,000 airline miles and we would actually be getting home two hours earlier than scheduled from his American route. We were going the opposite way home, but circumnavigating is always an adventure! This was actually the first time I would ever be doing so. That is a somewhat neat thing.
I used many braincells I didn’t know were still functioning for a good two and a half hours to create this plan and scheme the entirety of it out; but it was done. Now that our dirty work for tomorrow was taken care of, we still had a concert to get to.
To Daniel Caesar we went.
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Our outfits were properly constructed, and we were ready to roll:
We called a cab at approximately 5:15PM. Somehow, despite all the planning and brain mush, we were only slightly behind schedule.
The concert was located at the World Trade Center Manila, which, despite only being about 5km away, it took about 45 minutes for the commute due to some heavy rain showers and that great Manila traffic I mentioned in my previous blog.
The soothing Filipino rain and the inching forward movement of the car would put even a toddler jacked up on red bull to sleep; and indeed, almost the whole 45 minutes was a wonderful snooze fest and continuation of my nap from earlier. Usually, it is the calm before the storm, but I did quite enjoy this rendition of the calm during the storm. However, in one whole piece, we eventually made it to the venue!
PC users, I apologize for this jump scare as I do not know how to shrink the image.
We located the end of the line for “gold access”, which it said on our tickets. You would think that meant we paid a premium and got special perks for gold access, however, this was simply to make the people who bought the cheapest ticket feel special. It meant nothing and came with zero perks.
The line moved so slow at first that I questioned if we were even in the right spot. I wandered around for a few minutes and left Gracie to save our place in line, in case we were in fact correct to begin with. I finally noticed the very front of the line progressing ever so slightly and I was able to track the linear conglomerate of people right to where our spot in line was. We were in the correct location; we were just going to be there for a while.
After the first 20 minutes of patience-testing the line actually began to move quite quickly. We went from a dead stop for almost half an hour to going through the entirety of the line in just 15 minutes. This was not a record of any sorts for a line of people moving so fast after no movement at all; but it felt like enough of a victory for us.
Upon our entrance into the building, it felt like a rite of passage to purchase the Asian Tour T-Shirt as a souvenir. I assumed this niche item wouldn’t be so easy to come across again if we rejected this opportunity. With two oversized, black concert t-shirts inside of a clear plastic bag in-hand, we were now ready to officially enter the enormous room where the action would commence.
We were a bit later than we desired to enter the golden ticket access area; but that was our own fault, so there was no room to get cute and complain about where we would be wedged. We actually did pretty decent, all things considered, and got sandwhiched up with some Filipinos about 1/4 of the way behind the VIP section. I was very content with somehow still ending up in the front 25% of our section at the venue!
Based upon the chatter we were forced to endure from the people around us during the opening artist’s act, and the waiting period before Caesar actually appeared on stage, I was somewhat convinced we were the only non-Filipinos in the entire establishment. That was extremely cool, however, as it made the experience feel even more unique to any other concert we had been to. It was also very interesting to see the huge rise in popularity Daniel Caesar had made, after really only arriving at a quite popular level only half a decade before. As a Canadien, mainly relevant in North America, he had at least 20,000 people flustered and agitated waiting for his arrival all the way across the Pacific Ocean from where he was best known. It started to put into perspective truly how popular he had become. In just 2017, I was able to see one of his first ever shows, with only about 500 people in attendance, and meet him with our impromptu purchase of a VIP Pass after the performance. Even by the second time I saw him perform in 2019, his venue was five times as large with five times as many people in attendance. His growth had gone past exponential.
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Caesar arrived on stage about 35 minutes after the opening act had finished, and the masses in the crowd were extremely psyched. I will spare you from too many details, as I’m sure this part of the concert is very similar to this part that anyone experiences at any concert. He sang songs live on stage for about an hour and fifteen minutes.
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There were a few highlights I do want to mention:
1. The first song he performed was the first from his most recent album, which is usually what happens to create a cannon environment for the album’s tour. The intro of this song, titled “Ochos Rios”, includes a portion where he repeats the word “grace” about a dozen times in reference to the religious phrase “saving grace.” My sister’s middle name being Grace, and everyone calling her Gracie for her entire life, naturally made for a pretty cool video and event for her.
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2. I tried to recreate the picture Daniel Caesar and I took together from 2017; and it was honestly pretty close.
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3. After Caesar teased the crowd by leaving a bit early from the stage and pretending that the concert had ended, it was an honor to be able to shout whatever we were shouting, which we assumed was the Filipino equivalent to “encore”. We had no clue what we were saying, but boy oh boy did we rip our little vocal cords to shreds and exhaust our lungs to near failure to be able to join them in their chant.
It was awesome.
The concert had officially come to a close after two more staple songs from his discography, and it was time to figure out how to get back to Hotel Celeste.
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The lack of internet connection really didn’t help our case in trying to get back when we were also competing with hundreds of other people attempting the same feat of leaving as us.
With grab- the southeast Asian equivalent to Uber- not available as an option, because you need internet to use the app, our next best bet was wandering out front where a few taxi drivers and taxi moped drivers were located. All the traditional taxis either already had other passengers in them or the drivers were on their way to pick up other passengers. However, two bright-eyed moped taxi drivers seemed to keep metaphorically lighting up like a beacon, as all other options other than these two were falling more and more apart. I was skeptical to even think about using this option at first because I knew that each moped could only hold one driver and one passenger. This meant my little sister, who I was in complete responsibility of, and I would be separated. Thankfully, we were only 8,300 miles away from home as well; so, the stakes were not high at all. After a few minutes of contemplation and communication with both drivers about where we were going and that we were a party of two, I agreed with their price. And just like that, two sets of moped tires swept away from The World Trade Center.
A couple of drivers and couple of kids who had no idea what they were doing: all on a brand-new mini adventure together.
Up to this point, I had been on moped rides in Nepal, Rwanda, and Thailand so this was not anything daunting. However, this was very much Gracie’s first go around with this activity. She absolutely loved it.
The first few minutes of the ride, I shall admit, left me needing a new pair of britches. This was due to Gracie’s driver being super-fast and evasive, while mine enjoyed a slower and steadier pace. My constant reminders that we needed to keep up with my sister’s driver and to try to find them again were only met with a response involving the most broken English version of “Don’t Worry”, if he even said that, that I have ever heard. He did not care. I was already thinking about how I would tell my parents I let Gracie get murdered in the Philippines because I allowed her to get on a motorcycle with some strange man, and I was not even talking about myself.
What felt like three hours without seeing Gracie or her moped was concluded with a huge sigh of relief when she and her driver somehow teleported right next to us. There was no time for questions and I accepted this new realization that she was alive without a blink of an eye.
Not only was she alive, but she was thriving. I’ve seen her smile a lot over the years; but when I tell you I did not know a human’s mouth could get that close to their ears I mean it. You would have thought she just got word that every puppy in the world was getting hand delivered to our house. At least someone was enjoying this ride.
Her enjoyment, however, quickly rubbed off onto me as it also seemed our drivers were now more in synch in staying together.
This ended up being extremely fun and such a huge highlight of the trip for the both of us. The two us of were blissfully zipping through traffic and smoothly fitting in between any two cars that were ahead of us. Although nerve wracking at times still, this truly did feel and look like physical poetry in motion. A beautifully choreographed dance was being performing across every inch of that Southeast Asian Tarmac.
It only took just under fifteen minutes in total to arrive back at the hotel, saving over half an hour from on the way there. It was later and wasn’t raining anymore, so of course the traffic wasn’t as bad anyway- but it definitely helped to be able to fit in between whatever vehicles were on that road on the way back.
We paid our 500 pesos each, and up the stairs we went, and into our room for the final time of this go around in the Philippines.
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We were prepared and already packed up. We did not miss a beat and headed off to the MNL Airport not even ten minutes after leaving our newly created moped taxi buddies.
The ride took about 25 minutes, and I may have snored once or twice; but no more than that.
As we arrived and got to the Cebu Pacific check-in counters, I remembered the terror from our original flight on our way to the Philippines. I slept awful on that first flight, but that was just for napping purposes. As the scheduled departure time for this flight was 2AM, this would be my actual sleeping time. This was actually the time where I needed rest and to recharge for the whole next day. To say I was nervous about this would be a bit of an understatement. Maybe the new neck cramps and muscle spasms I would get would just be one big test for what I could endure? Maybe if I could survive this night in the Cebu Pacific Seat 2F hotel I could survive anything? Or maybe I would simply break down and parish and nobody would ever have even known what happened to me? It was all a mystery at this stage!
We checked in, looked for a small bite, and camped out by the gate for about 30 minutes before it was time to board. It only felt like three seconds for me, however. Gracie was frantically waking me up from the slumber I accidentally fell into near a platform attached to the window, near the gate. As you can tell by now, I have narcoleptic tendencies in pretty much any place or position. We were happily the last to board and ever-so excited for the most comfortable sleeps of our lives.
I think because of how tired I was, this rest and Cebu Pacific experience was actually so much better than that first flight.
I woke up as our plane had just hit the Tarmac in Korea.
At this point I actually still thought we would be going through Budapest. This was before realizing I had the times wrong, and we would miss that LOT Polish flight entirely. Further, the alternative of Lufthansa and direct to Frankfurt with no dilly-dallying was much more efficient any way. We got to the international transfers section easier than easy, and we sat near the gate for our soon-to-be German bound flight. This would be the first time I ever flew on a double decker plane as well- One of 24 747-400s left flying in the entire world.
A proper ending place for now: I will catch up again and see you on the other side of our 13-hour sky-mission over currently blundered Russia and into Germany for our first visit in over four years, and our first ever trip to Frankfurt.
Until then, Auf wiedersehen.
