Murphy’s Law (Bloody Murphy!)

Murphy’s Law states: ‘Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.’

Everything that could have gone wrong, went wrong.

I approach the check-in desk at Auckland Airport with the battered, dusty bags of a seasoned pro and the passport stamps to prove my worth. I lay down my documents with confidence and smile at the woman behind the counter as I heave my big bag, to be checked, onto the scales. 17kg – not bad considering I am to be living out of it for two months and it feels like I’ve packed the kitchen sink.

‘Do you have any of the items on this list in your bag?’ the woman asks, pointing to a placard with a series of images on, the things I shouldn’t have packed in my checked luggage. I run a cursory eye over the pictures and groan inwardly – what an idiot!

‘My lighter is in my bag,’ I reply, rolling my eyes in L’s direction and humping my bag back off the scales, ‘Hang on, I’ll get it out.’

Cue minutes of rummaging until I retrieve the lighter from the depths of the bottom pocket of my bag and return it, waterproof cover now slipping and rumpled, back to the scales. The woman slips the tag through the bag handle and passes me my boarding pass and bag receipt.

‘You’ll need to check into each flight at each airport, but your bag will go all the way without you having to check it again,’ she intones, already moving onto the next person in line. I thank her and we go to get coffee and say our goodbyes. After eighteen months, I am leaving New Zealand. It feels a bit like a dream.

Fast forward four hours or so and brush past the epic sunset over Harbour Bridge and the Opera House that I witnessed as our plane descended into Sydney. Scoot past the minor mishap of my vegetarian meal being forgotten and the fact I had to eat two punnets of Kapiti ice cream instead (oh, the hardship).

I am now sitting in Sydney Airport, tapped into the free Wi-Fi and posting an image of the aforementioned sunset with a gleeful caption telling my Instagram followers that stage one of my journey is complete – a quick hop across the Tasman Sea and I am waiting for my next flight to Beijing. I’ve eaten a sandwich and some crisps since my meal was forgotten on the last flight but that was fine and this stopover is only a couple of hours. I’ll be on the next plane before I know it.

Above: that view over Sydney Harbour and the Opera House. Poor quality image of an excellent quality view!

As my flight number is called, I approach the gate and realise that every single person around me is already carrying their boarding pass with their passports. I clutch my passport and try to remember what the woman in Auckland told me – in Sydney, I would need to collect my boarding pass from the gate. So I’m fine, right? I’m not sure… I hold out my passport to the person on the gate and tell her, a little pathetically, that I don’t yet have my boarding pass.

‘Are you Bethen Hodges?’ she asks, looking grim-faced. I tell her I am. She gestures frantically for me to leave the queue and go immediately to the other desk, where a man is checking something on a computer screen.

‘Didn’t you hear me calling you? I’ve been calling you for the past half hour! Where were you?’

When I tell the guy I am Bethen Hodges and I don’t yet have my boarding pass, he looks irritated and launches into his ‘I’ve been calling you’ routine.

‘I was sat right over there,’ I point, ‘I didn’t have headphones in and I didn’t hear you call my name once!’

‘Well, I have been calling you,’ he grumbles, ‘You were supposed to check in half an hour ago. Your bag has been taken off the plane because we thought you weren’t coming.’

I splutter.

‘What?!’

He prints my boarding pass for me and repeats that my checked luggage has been taken off the plane.

‘Well, can’t you put it back on the flight?’ I ask, ‘Why did you take it off?!’

He explains, rather impatiently, that because I didn’t check in they thought that I wasn’t flying anymore and they took my bag off the plane. He asks if I want to take a different flight, which I decline, unsure as to how that will help my current situation. When I ask how long it would take for my bag to catch me up, he shrugs and tells me they will get it on another flight as soon as possible.

‘You’ll need to speak to the people in Mongolia,’ he says, ‘You’ll need to log it as a missing bag and they’ll sort it from their end.’

I want to ask more questions, or get angry, or make demands, or tell him that I think he is a bit of a prick, really, but I am already being ushered through the double doors and down the corridor onto the plane. Panic grips me and I bite back tears. Crying won’t help the situation. My bag will catch me up and I’ll make do until I get it back. Shit, my coat is in the bag and it is going to be really cold in Mongolia…

I’ll admit here and now, I did cry over my lost bag. It sounds pathetic, but I went into the toilets shortly after take off and cried for about ten minutes. It didn’t help the situation in the slightest, but it made me feel better (kind of) and I went back to my seat ready to face whatever was coming my way next. It turns out that what was coming next was another meaty meal… They’d not brought vegetarian food on this flight either!

‘You needed to phone ahead and order it,’ the steward informs me, imperiously, when I ask for the vegetarian option, ‘We don’t carry spare meals.’

‘That’s ridiculous,’ I reply, ‘I chose a vegetarian meal when I booked the flight online and I have never, ever rung an airline before a flight to order my meal before. Why is it different this time?’

God, it feels good to get slightly passive aggressive, especially after my lack of self-defence over the checking in thing. She scurries away and returns five minutes later with a spare vegetarian meal they had left over in first class. I eat everything and settle down to sleep.

Twelve hours later. Early morning local time. My body clock telling me it could be any bloody time, I’m tired after not sleeping on the plane properly and I want to nap. I have to wait an hour before I can check in and go through to the transit lounge. I use the time to ask the women behind the check in desk if they know where my checked bag is – is it still in Sydney or has it, just maybe, come on the plane to Beijing with me? They try to help and are sympathetic but the reply comes back the same – I need to wait until Mongolia to sort out this problem.

The queue to go through the check-in gate is long and muddled, with no real strategy behind it. My attention is caught by a diminutive looking American woman who has shot me a filthy look when I manage to slip into a shorter queue and therefore jump ahead of her. I shrug and smile apologetically – surely she can see that there don’t seem to be any set rules for this? I escape her wrath but it is brought full force down on a young French couple when they try to sneak into a new line just ahead of her. Somehow, they cut into the middle of a family and the American woman is having none of it. She launches into a rant about queue jumpers and tells the couple, in no uncertain terms, exactly what she thinks of them and their new position in the line. The couple tell her not to be so rude, to not speak like that to them, but she’s on a role and there’s no stopping her. In the end, the couple move behind her (in front of me, I grimace/grin in solidarity at them as they step in) and peace reigns.

The lighter that has been in my hand luggage since I removed it from the checked bag in Auckland has to be thrown away as I pass through security in Beijing or I’ll get fined. The entire contents of my bag is upended into a grey tray because I have so many electronics that the officials want to see exactly what on earth I’m carrying in there. After forty minutes of queuing and wrathful Americans and over-zealous security procedures, I’m finally in the transit lounge. Three hours and counting before the next flight…

Or so I thought. At the time we are supposed to board the final two hour flight to Ulaan Baatar, we are instead informed that the weather conditions there have forced the airline to delay the flight by eight hours. A day of waiting suddenly opens up before me. My first thought is to let my hostel know that I’ll be late – they’re picking me up from the airport and I’d like to courteous and tell them that I won’t be there when I said.

I’m in China. Gmail doesn’t work and I didn’t download a VPN app because I thought I’d only be there for four hours. I approach the desk where the staff who were supposed to be boarding us are now fielding questions from harassed looking Mongolia goers. I ask if it is possible for me to borrow one of their phones so that I can send an email. After a ten minute wait, one of the staff takes pity on me and lends me their phone. We communicate through broken English – she will let me know when I come to board later if there’s been a response. I am immensely grateful for this small kindness. Throughout this entire journey from hell, it was the small generosities shown to me by people like this and brief friendships with strangers that kept me going. That and the fact I could chat to my Mum and P via WhatsApp to keep my spirits up!

I kill eight hours by going to Pizza Hut, where I meet a nice girl called Lauren who is on her way home after a few months in Australia. We swap travel stories and sit together for a while, until her flight is called and she departs with a cheery wave. I nap intermittently, watch Modern Family, message Mum and P some more and shop for a few essentials since everything I need / own is in that bag back in Sydney.

Finally, we are on the plane. Finally, we taxi to the runway. Finally, the engines roar and we take off into the gathering dusk. Once again, my vegetarian meal is forgotten but I strike lucky and the food is salad with cold meat, which I just remove before devouring the green stuff. I’m one of those weird people who actually quite likes plane food, even if it’s just a bit of limp lettuce!

I’m sat next to the physiotherapist for the Indian wrestling team and he informs me that there is a wrestling competition in Mongolia that weekend. All around me, there are big guys with cauliflower ears – teams on the flight include the Indians, the Azerbaijanis and the Colombians. They’re excitable and I wonder if any of them have ever really flown before. Certainly, they seem incapable of following the in-flight rules like keeping their phones switched off and remaining in their seats when the seatbelt sign glows.

We circle Ulaan Baatar. The plane rocks in the wind and I try to ignore it and close my eyes, wishing the experience to be over as soon as possible. I hate landing in planes. Especially when it’s windy. But the circling continues and after an hour, we are informed that we are going to have to return to China to refuel before making a second attempt. A collective groan fills the cabin. At this moment, I give up.

Everything that can go wrong, has gone wrong. It is all out of my control now. I can’t contact the hostel to say I’ll be even later. I can’t chat with my Mum or P to lift my spirits. There is, in fact, nothing I can do except finally give into my immense exhaustion, accept the relaxing hand massage that is offered to me by the Indian physio and then go to sleep.

We sit on a runway in China for about an hour whilst the plane is refuelled. We fly back to Mongolia and this time, with a heavy thump, we manage to land safely. I wake up as the wheels bounce onto the tarmac with a screech and the whole plane judders as we come, at last, to a halt. I say goodbye to my new Indian friends, wish them well in their Olympic qualifying competition, and disembark.

I’m in a better frame of mind after my nap. I feel ready to tackle the next challenges head on. The challenges are: telling the right people that my bag got left in Sydney and I need to get it back and finding a taxi to take me to my hostel (whilst trying to avoid getting ripped off).

At the baggage carousel, I approach a young woman who is dressed in a smart uniform and a pair of black high heels. It’s 2am in the morning but she looks immaculate and luckily, she speaks enough English to understand my request for help. She guides me to a group of men at a counter and I tell them that my bag got left in Sydney.

‘Have you checked to see if it is here?’ one of the men asks.

‘No. I got told it was taken off the plane and that I needed to log it as missing when I arrived here,’ I answer, a seed of hope suddenly planted inside me, ‘But do you think I should look?’

‘Just check,’ the man nods, ‘If it isn’t there, we will fill out a form.’

I clutch my baggage receipt tightly in my hand as I approach the carousel, willing my bag to appear. I stand and watch as others retrieve their luggage, loading it onto trolleys and disappearing. The pool of bags is getting smaller, thinner… And suddenly, miraculously, I spot it. My bag. My battered, dusty grey rucksack. It appears through the plastic flaps, the last bag off the plane. My heart leaps and I have to stop myself running forward to grab it – I force myself to stay cool, no one needs to know I could almost have hugged my bag right at that moment!!

The man reappears at my elbow.

‘You have your bag!’ he grins, pleased for me. I babble a reply, too relieved to make much sense. My coat… My clothes… My toiletries… All here, safe. After all that worrying and confusion. I want to kick the man in Sydney who told me that my bag was taken off the plane. The man here, now, in Mongolia, is talking again.

‘Do you need a taxi?’ he asks.

‘Yes. Yes, I do. I’m staying at Zaya Hostel.’

‘It’ll be ten dollars,’ he replies, ‘My friend can take you. He knows where the hostel is.’

Ten dollars is five dollars less than I was going to pay the hostel to collect me. It is 2.30am when we step out into the arrivals lounge, me following the man who will take me to my hostel. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot a tall man waiting, carrying a sign that reads Zaya Hostel.


I’m not ashamed to admit that I did hug the guy that turned up at 2.30am to collect me. I think it was mainly out of relief that the journey from hell was finally over. My bag was there and I could pull out my coat and put it on against the biting cold night. And this guy returned to fetch me at that hour of the morning and take me safely to my hostel. He looked surprised by the hug, but after a brief conversation with my almost taxi driver in rapid Mongolian, he laughed and nodded understandingly and commented that my journey must have been long. An understatement. But I was there. Mongolia. Finally.

Above: what I came to Mongolia for and endured that journey from hell for – horse riding in the steppe!!

NB: I booked to stay at Zaya Hostel through Booking.com. I am an affiliate of Booking.com and cannot recommend their services highly enough. If you book accommodation through the Booking.com link on my page, I will get a little bit of money from the booking you’ve made, at no extra cost to you. Through Booking.com, I have found some truly wonderful places to stay in the past and it is through them that I found Zaya Hostel.


If you are ever in Ulaan Baatar, I would suggest a stay at Zaya Hostel. The owners are friendly, speak impeccable English and cannot do enough for you. The rooms are comfortable and the breakfast is good. The whole hostel is clean and warm and it is in an excellent central location. I reviewed this hostel as a 10/10 and would have gone higher if it were allowed! Please Note: This is a completely independent review – the hostel has not compensated me in any way for my endorsement.