We made it to the airport

After a mad rush to hail a ride and get out the door we made it to the airport at 10:10pm. We had 2 hours and 20 minutes before our flight departed. it seemed like we skidded in by the skin of our teeth but had a chance to make the flight. It would prove that getting on the flight would be like swimming up stream in a snow storm backwards.

First Challenge
When we got out The driver did not speak English, we are in a foreign country, we expect this. The hard part is that despite saying "Korea, Seoul", he took us to the domestic terminal. We found a kind English speaking lady who directed us to a shuttle bus to get to the international terminal. At this point, Steve and I were a little frazzled from the last couple of hours. We were carting 4 suitcases, 4 stuffed backpacks, 3 personal items, a tired 3 year old in a stroller who would whine and cry off and on. We made it to the shuttle pick up area...it was a ghost town. There weren't many people and no sign of a shuttle. Then a man yelled "electric cart to international terminal". I ran up, and negotiated a price for the ride. It was $6.00 USD for us and all of our stuff. I looked in my wallet....I only had large bills. I gave him my smallest bill $20USD and I said "go fast!". He smiled and showed his partner and were were off in the oversized gold cart. Our family is amazing together in times of stress. Second Challenge
We needed to check in for our flight and drop our luggage. The line up was about 150 people long. These were not all people for our flight, these were the people checking in for many flights....some of which didn't leave until 2am. There was no option with this crowd to plead our case and ask to move up in the line with the language barrier and palpable tension in the crowd. It was like a cage of rats, everyone calm enough by so careful to keep their space. Security was managing line jumpers.

After about 40 minutes in the line, you could see how hard it was on Natalie. She was thirsty and tired. She had carried her heavy back pack and personal item and helped in they ways she could. Piper was mad- she wanted to be at home still asleep. She started melting down. Think of a mad, raging,screaming child (she has an amazing set of lungs) that won't be comforted and fights against any one holding her. She just wanted to scream and run. Steve stepped away from the counter with her and held her so tight and rocked her quickly back and forth as Natalie and I finished up at the counter where they scrutinized our paperwork, at first told us we needed online health declarations completed for everyone. When we were in the line, we looked online for the requirements for health declaration but found nothing. Thankfully, after a few moments, she confirmed with her colleague that we didn't need them. Our bags were checked, the weights were just perfectly under the required amount. We were off to security. We didn't have much time but they said we would make it.

Third Challenge
We first had to have our visas,boarding passes and passports checked but the Vietnamese police before we could go through security. We presented our paperwork. We had the visa's with the correct exit date but had put away the first set of visas as instructed by the lady at the Vietnam Embassy in Vancouver. We actually lost track of them but presumed they were in the luggage somewhere. The police officer asked for our other visas that were stamped. We were asked to go to a separate kiosk to the side. We pulled apart all of our carry ons looking for the visas, no luck. We told the officer that we thought they must be in the checked luggage. The officer here said that we would need to go back to the counter (the one with the crazy long line) and get our luggage back and get the visas, then come back. Our flight was about 30 minutes from boarding. I told him that we would miss out flight and he apologized and said that there was nothing he could do about that. He then told us to wait. He got on the phone with someone. By this time, Natalie was done. She was sobbing uncontrollably. She just wanted to go home. Piper had settled by this point and was hugging Natalie trying to comfort her. All of our stuff was strewn about, we had not put our bags back together. It was looking like there was no way we were flying tonight. I remember thinking...should I quickly get online and cancel the flights so that we can get a refund.

About 15 minutes later, a couple of other officers were at the kiosk. I said to one of them. It looks like we won't make our flight. Should we continue to wait or arrange a ride home and find the visas? He told me to wait, we still had 10 minutes to get on the plane. This is when I realized that they were in communication with the plane and they had not instructed the airline to remove our luggage. In fact, it seemed like they were trying to work on the airlines timeline to find a resolution. At this point I said to the family, pack up everything, if it works out for us to take this flight, we are going to have to run if we get the "ok". We packed and were like sprinters at the start line.

A few minutes later, they passed us our paperwork and said "You can go".

Security screening staff expedited us through, on the other side of security was "Gate 30", our gate. The airline staff was waiting to check us in to the flight. We took our seats and we were off to South Korea.

I was numb, I didn't want to speak in case it would jinx it. I was overjoyed for Natalie. It would have been so hard for her to have to leave the airport. I was thankful beyond words. Thankful for the multitude of things that had to go right, and did. We had our 2 daughters and were headed home to Canada.