A
h, the magic of the open road! I LOVE reading
travel issues, which always make me want to
throw off my shackles and race to the airport.
And then I come to my senses and quickly
re-chain my ankle to the heavy wooden leg of my desk or
the receptionist (whose leg, for the record, is not wooden or
particularly heavy, but let’s not go there).
I travel a lot for work. Why travel for fun, too? In
Asia, the word “adventure” in the phrase “adventure
travel” is redundant. Your humble narrator has been on
aircraft where “flight safety” means putting another layer
of Sellotape over the fuselage cracks. I’ve known travellers
who have been told at check-in: “Sorry, the pilot has not
arrived. Can YOU fly a plane?”
I’d rather be chained
Frequent flier
Nury Vittachi
admits to being up in
the air over whether to travel for fun.
alert! Control tower staff snapped into action, dropping
their adobo breakfasts, after only a few more mouthfuls.
They ordered the plane to dump 50,000 kilos of fuel and
land at a remote airstrip.
Security forces led by a general whose first name was
Angel (only in the Philippines can tough guys bristling
with guns have names like “Angel”, “Innocent” and
“
Baby”) raced to the airfield. As the fearsome General
Angel leapt on board, weapons at the ready, the pilot
explained that there were no hijackers, he had just pressed
a button randomly. No doubt everyone laughed and went
back to work.
One friend was jealous that I spend my life in
airplanes. “It’s better than being stuck at a desk,” he said.
Actually, no. I told the desk jockey to compare his life to
mine. In your office cubicle you have 1.6 square metres
to yourself. In my economy class seat, I have 50 square
centimetres and half an armrest (which has to be fought
for). You have a computer on a desk. I balance a laptop on
a rickety tray the size of my forearm. In your office, folk
move freely. If a child makes the slightest movement, my
coffee flies over my lap and laptop. You can take a break
and walk around the park. In my cabin, the only door leads
to instant death.
If you want fresh air, you open a window. The only
thing we get to breathe are the recycled gaseous emissions
of 160 strangers. At night, you get two pillows, a duvet and
a full-size bed. I get a cushion smaller than my head, a
blanket so thin you can see through it and a seat that barely
tilts. Every time I travel with my kids, one of them falls
asleep sideways, cutting my seat width to six inches. In the
morning, you are gently woken by bird song. I am woken
in the middle of the night by flight attendants frying my
retinas by switching all the cabin lights on.
So now you know the real reason I love the travel issue:
nothing beats armchair travelling.
Nury Vittachi writes a regular humour column at
www.mrjam.org
.
In your office, folk move
freely. If my child makes the
slightest movement, my coffee
flies over my lap and laptop.
You can take a break and
walk around the park. In my
cabin, the only door leads to
instant death.
I once flew over Indo-China in a plane which landed
so abruptly the pilot must have learned his skills watching
Wile E Coyote (of the Roadrunner cartoon) running off
cliffs. He apparently switched everything off in mid-air,
causing a moment’s pause and then an immediate descent,
3,000
metres straight down. Wheeeee!
On an early-morning flight over the Philippines,
an enterprising captain on Qatar Airways found an
unlabelled button on the flight deck and pressed it.
Nothing happened. On the plane. But a silent signal was
sent to the nearest airport saying it had been hijacked. Red
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