The Big Day...The Arrival of My Boat Shipment!

Finally, the day I had been waiting for...the arrival of my 20' container with all of my stuff. As I posted earlier, the original plan was that they would deliver my boat shipment on the same day as the air shipment, but that didn't work out. Next they decided they were going to deliver the night of Saturday, 10/27, but I had the Service Anniversary Dinner, so I arranged with them that they would deliver it on Sunday, 10/28. Here's where the story begins..

I asked the moving company that if they were in fact going to deliver the shipment on Sunday, that they would need to call me ahead of time, so that I could leave the hotel and be at the apartment of the time of their arrival. Saturday afternoon..no call. Saturday night..no call. When I woke up on Sunday, there are no missed calls. At this point, I assumed they weren't coming, but this is the Philippines, and things are different here, so I start calling around to see if I could find out anything. Around 11am, I finally was able to get a status when I called my new apartment building.

Are you ready for this? Turns out, the movers arrived at my building at 12:00am on Sunday, 10/28. By that time, they had just been sitting there for 11 hours, hoping that I might show up. I couldn't believe it. In the US, I don't think movers would wait even 30 minutes without calling anyone. The best part was that these guys didn't think about calling me. They were lucky, because since it was already lunch time, I had almost assumed they weren't coming. Nevertheless, despite how the day began, it was such a nice feeling when they opened the doors of my container, and I saw my stuff. Despite that everything was in boxes, it was just comforting to know it had arrived.

First Glance at the Inside of the Container

Apparently, the Philippines Customs Department didn't care about how my things were loaded or about my new TV (you can see it in the back underneath everything), because this is how they loaded the container after they went through everything!

In LA, it took the movers 5 hours to pack my shipment, and it took about the same amount of time to unload it in Baguio. Overall, it went much smoother than I had anticipated, and the guys were great. The only thing that was physically broken was 1 vase, so I lucked out there.

Now on to the fun part...unpacking!