Roaming II

Ah the story about roaming, or rather not roaming and the kindness of strangers. My guardian angels. In the UAE I relied on WIFI because the one time I needed to connect to roaming it didn't work. Luckily my driver's phone did and lost turned into better directions. I should have taken more notice of this detail before I headed to Australia. Luckily I had taken a pic of the directions to the Newcastle train at Sydney Central so I made the later one as my plane was late. Luckily I chose the carriage I did, luckily I asked a young couple if I was on the right train. We had a laugh about that, they were heading home after a Valentines dinner out. 

 As the plane was late, I didn't hang around the airport and use the WIFI as I'd intended to. I'll have roaming, I thought so I'll do it on the train. The late train was very late in to Newcastle and the next one was in the morning. okay, get comfy and turn on roaming. No go, oh no! I hadn't taken a screen shot of the Airbnb host's details, including the address. Tired, a bit hungry and very thirsty after my long plane ride I took some time to think of something, finally asking a couple seated in front of me if I could hot spot off one of them to at least get the address of where I was going. They were lovely, had not long ago been in the UK so we had a travel chat while I took a quick shot of the address and let the host know my ETA. Then no internet for the rest of the trip. And no book, and I was a scared to sleep in case I missed my stop. 

Towards the end of the journey the young man behind me and his girl came over and asked if I was okay, asked if I needed a ride to my Airbnb or if someone was picking me up. I had no idea, if there was no waiting taxi I'd have to walk rather a distance, in the rain with my bag. They offered to take me, I'd need to get off at the next stop with them as that's where there car was. So I jumped at the offer, so much better than my plan. What a lovely young couple. they went 20 minutes out of their way to make sure I was where I needed to be. I had no way to pay them, just thank them for their kindness. I didn't get their details, a major oversight, but I'm hoping they will experience such kindness one day in their lives. 

It got me thinking about how we managed travel back in the days of paper maps and aerograms. I know I did have issues to manage at times, and those might just fill a whole post one day. All's well that ends well, and as a friend commented when I shared this, you would have done exactly the same thing. And I have done many times. I feel very grateful for these angels who come along when I need them, very thankful I wasn't left standing outside a deserted station in the middle of the night, in the rain a long way from where I needed to be.