Everyone knows that sometimes things just don’t go as planned. My wife and I just experienced one of those things on our recent trip to Angeles City. I’d like to tell you some things about it. Most likely these things will not happen to you, but I need to do a blog post and it does have some interesting twists and turns.
First off the whole trip was going to be for only 4 days, 5 Nov to 9 Nov. The main purpose of the trip was to go to the US Embassy in Manila to get our military ID cards updated. Hers because it has expired and mine because they have come out with new ID cards and want everyone to get those instead of the old ones we got when we retired. There are some Space-A locations that require you to have the new ID cards to travel on Space-A. I don’t like complications so I was just going to get mine updated.
Since neither of us like staying in Manila any longer than we have to, the plan was to spend the night in Angeles on the 5th, go to our appointment on the 6th at the Embassy, then spend the next 3 nights back in Angeles, just enjoying being around more of the western-style food places. Plus have water that flowed in the shower instead of having to use a bucket to take a bath. They can’t see to get the water system back to normal here in Calbayog.
Everything was going almost as planned, except we had a little bit less money than we anticipated. Then the airline tickets turned out to be a little bit more than normal because we bought them so late and the price had gone up a few hundred pesos per person each way. All in all, it ended up being about P1000 more pesos just for the tickets. Then someone that Lita borrowed money from before needed their money now instead of when we normally would have paid them back. It was important, so she paid them back. To sum it up, by the time we paid everything we needed/had to, we realized that it would be too tight to try to make this trip.
I had just purchased the tickets 4 days ago, but I needed to cancel. I called Philippine Air Lines back up, the same place I bought the tickets and asked them how much I would lose. The ladies told me it would cost me P2500. We would be getting back P15k, so I decided it was our best option. I called the appointment center and canceled our appointment at the Embassy and headed downtown to get my refund. I have never canceled airline tickets before but when I got there, it turned out that we’d be losing much more than P2500. They then said that it would be about P10k that we’d be losing, only getting back 7k of the 17k. I don’t think so.
Luckily, when I purchased the tickets I sensed that we would be running short of money and I only bought tickets for a 2-day stay instead of a 4-day stay. My choices at this time were to either lose the 10k or just go on the trip and use whatever money that we had. We didn’t make the wisest of choices up to this point, at least not fast enough.
What would you do in this situation? Would you eat the P10k or use your remaining money on the trip? I’ll let you know our decision in the next post, next week.
Salamat Y’all
UJ
I was wondering if Calbayog invested in fixing their water problem because you had not complained about in a while. But you answered my question I guess you where not complaining because now you have figured out how to take bath in bucket just like locals. If it was me I would just take the Trip instead of loosing the 10000. Even if it was just for a change of scenery for a couple of days. The question I have is after canceling your appointment at Embassy do they allow walk-in to renew ID. Even Military Base wants you to make an appointment now to get ID renewed which can take 2weeks to month. But still takes walk-in with no guaranty what time or if they will get to you. They also have changed rules to get ID renewed. You have to show 2 picture IDs not expired from either state or Government before they will renew ID. They will not except IDs which are expired. The wife ID had expired 2 weeks before we got appointment and they would not accept it as ID so she tried to use her driver license and her picture Id for being member of local Cosco and they would not except it so had to go to house and get Passport for ID before they would renew her Expired ID. When the women Marine was renewing the wife ID I asked her why they would not issue ID that did not expire like mine so we did not have to remember or put up with hassle to renewing every 4 years seeing as how we had been married for over 50 years. She said that they do when the wife turns 75. I guess I should of kept my mouth shut because she only issued ID which expires in 2 years instead of 4.
UJ
I forgot I had another question to ask you. Did you check with PAL web site or call to see if this 10000 was normal fee they charge for canceling flights. I assume you do know that Jay Anthony has a Monopoly being the only Booking Agent in Calbayog for PAL.
No, I did not think about calling PAL to ask. I guess I could still call to ask anyway. The problem was that I was trying to cancel 5 hours before the flight. The cancellation fee was that P2500 they told me about, plus they had like P3800 for each ticket I would lose. One lady at the ticketing office told me that if I wanted much longer the P3800 would be higher. Since the next time we will be buying airline tickets should not be until April, we will have the money to buy at least a month in advance and we should not have any of the money issues as long as we don’t go crazy with the new social security money.
No, they have not fixed the water problem yet. I assumed it was because we have not had enough rain. We’ve had quite a bit of rain recently. I don’t know, maybe it’s still not enough and more rain is needed.
Yeah, I should not have gotten into the situation but once we were, taking the trip seemed like the best choice. As you say, for a change of scenery for a couple of days. It’s all done and over with now, no turning back so I’ll just move on and learn from it.
I don’t believe that you can walk-in to get your ID card renewed. I was told you could walk-in for your social security benefits, but not ID cards. We are not using our military ID anyway. We plan to make another trip up to Angeles/Manila in April for our 40th wedding anniversary. We’ll take care of that then. According to what you say about the spouse ID cards, Lita gets one more for the full 4 years and then one for 1 year before she can get the lifetime one. It seems dumb to even have to have other IDs to get a new military ID. Do they do that on-base also? I don’t think Lita has 2 IDs that are not expired. Her passport she has, but I’ll have to check on that to see if we can come up with anything else. Isn’t a passport supposed to count as 2 IDs?
I would think the Embassy would have to follow the same rules as the military when issuing IDs but I would check what the Embassy requires to renew Expired Ids before making trip. Its not like you can just go back to house and get what you need. Even getting state driver licenses are getting to be a pain in the butt with this so called Real ID which all states are suppose to follow now because they started issuing licenses to anyone that applied I guess to make more money. By 2020 you will need so called Real ID before TSA will allow you to board a Domestic Flight. What the real IDs is when going to DMV you are require to prove you are US Citizen now. They will be issuing 2 different Driver Licenses now Real ID for US Citizen and one for all others who are not which will not be allowed to Board Planes by TSA.
I miss spoke UJ the New Real ID is to prove you was Born in the Country or you are here Legally. And the non Real ID license for all others which cannot prove they are in the country Legally will be issued to them and they will not be allowed to Baard Flights according to new rule of TSA.
I looked up the ID requirements. Here is the link https://ph.usembassy.gov/embassy/manila/sections-offices/dod-id-cards/. It looks like we should do it by mail because we do not have all the IDs they require to do it in person. We have or can get the mail-in requirements. That will save us a trip to Manila also. Anytime we can avoid a trip to that place is good for us.
We went to Guam 4 years ago to renew her ID and it was expired at the time. They just renewed it, no issues. Maybe things have changed now. She doesn’t have any non-expired IDs, except her passport, which we just recently renewed. I’ll have to see exactly what the new policy is these days. I’m sure it’s on-line somewhere. I’ll look for it now.