Flying; worth the woes

The Nation

My issues with flying start when I start filling visa forms. I cannot fill out forms without making a mistake. My handwriting is terrible and I usually beg my mother to fill them for me. Many arguments follow, but my brother and mother make sure my passport has the visa stamped on it.

I then completely forget about my travel plans until 24 hours before I leave. If the flight is at night, I don’t start packing until that morning. It is something that I often regret, as I start remembering everything I forgot to bring along on my way to the airport. There’s also the added trouble of finding your traveling bags which seem to attract so much dust. And then looking for locks and keys for your bags.

The trip to the airport is one of the longest and boring trips I have ever been in. I live one hour away from Colombo, which means the trip to the airport takes one and a half hours. By the time I reach Ja-Ela I’m ready to go back home.

Anyway, getting to the airport is one thing, getting through it and out of the country is another story. If we are lucky to enjoy the lounge facilities, I make sure to have all the orange juice I can. For some reason, airport and airplane orange juice tastes better that what you buy from stores. However, airport security tires me out, having to take off your shoes and answer questions. The stern faces are incredibly intimidating and sometimes I would want to just sit down and cry. There are thousands of voices, unfamiliar words, people pushing into you and bags being rolled over your feet.

Airports abroad are even worse. When dealing with airport security and the various counters in a foreign land, your brain suddenly stops working. You have to handle immigration forms, boarding pass and passport, and also watch out for your bags. My brother believes his bag is cursed for it always manages to get lost or get late, one of the last to hit the belt.

I have never been on long-haul  flights, and I have never left Asia. However, I doubt I can survive a long flight, even more than five hours. The food is terrible, and even when it’s good, you just can’t enjoy airplane food. When I was small, I didn’t have the guts to tell the airhostess to not take away my half-eaten bowl of mixed nuts. I would eat my least favourite first, the almonds, then the peanuts and finally the cashews. However, before I could start on the cashews the bowl would be taken away.

Last December, I was on my way to Sri Lanka. The three hour flight from Thailand seemed to last an eternity because I wasn’t feeling too good. The food didn’t help and the only thing that seemed to work in my favour was the nearly deserted business class section. It was a morning flight, and the view was magnificent. Seated two rows ahead of me was a lady, who looked quite tired. She was traveling with her two sons, one approximately six years, the other three or four. They looked like angels, with their blond hair and fair skin. Except they weren’t angels! Throughout the flight, they would scream, give the passengers a few seconds of peace and then scream again. The mother’s warnings and threats went from, “Shh!” to plain old, “Shut up!”

The two boys then started running up and down, laughing and shouting. When the pilot announced they were preparing for landing, I was over the moon. For the next ten or more minutes, we listened to Sinhala songs while the pilot flew over the airport, the ocean and back over the airport, trying to land the plane.

However, no matter how many times I fly, I will never tire of it. It’s an amazing experience, no matter how much I complain about it. To go through the clouds or see land in the distant, is an opportunity anyone cannot say no to.