2018-12-22 Perth to Honolulu

Hawaii!

Week 1! Exciting stuff, we haven't travelled for a really long time

I was really excited about relaxing on the trip. Unfortunately it was the most stressful beginning of any trip we've had so far!

Original Plan

Board flight in Perth
Arrive in Melbourne
Board flight in Melbourne
Arrive in Honolulu

What actually happened

Went to wrong airport (Uber doesn't know about domestic - terminal)
Arrive on time but at the back of the queue
Turns out Jetstar decided to downgrade the flight to - Melbourne and they overbooked
Kicked us off to Qantas travelling to Sydney
Told us to take the Jetstar to Honolulu from Sydney
I just realised that USA requires ESTA approval before flying
Frantically do the giant ESTA application while Perth gates were making the final call
Arrive in Sydney, no booking code, no itinerary, nothing
Pick up luggage
Take shuttle bus to international airport. The bus driver was an ex-drifter I believe, because he was hooning around corners and our luggages kept turning into dangerous blunt projectiles, launching around the bus.
Trolley doesn't go straight, have to keep skidding it to point it forward
Dash to departure gates
Jetstar staff tell us they don't have us on the system, and that it's actually Qantas
Check-in at the Qantas area
ESTA got approved JUST in time!
Jump on plane to Hawaii

Stupid ESTA application servers also have a weird issue where NO emails are sent, ever. No confirmation email, no approval email, no rejection email, no payment receipts no signup emails. There was literally no way to get by my ID to sign-in. Steph told me to save the webpage off the cuff after signup, and I did. That was the only reason why we made it into the USA.

Hawaii is pretty cool! Unfortunately because of our ordeal earlier in the morning we were absolutely wrecked. Basically went to eat lunch, crashed into our bed at the AirBnB, woke up, had some Uber Eats.

... And here we are. We pulled it off!

On the bright side, if all that Jetstar kerfuffle didn't happen, we would've had more problems. I wouldn't have thought to look at my Jetstar itinerary which talks about the ESTA requirement, we would've arrived way too early for a reasonable check-in time, and we wouldn't have been 'sidegraded' to Qantas (so basically upgraded) all the way through.

Plane food!

Qantas gives you food! Wow! This is truly high end living!

Restaurant food!

Nearby shopping area called Kamehameha Shopping (yeah yeah I know). Traditional Hawaiian food. Fish is called Akule. A famous oxtail soup. For some reason all the food keeps coming with macaroni salad.