Am flying back to the London for Mike’s 40th birthday – leaving here Friday afternoon, arriving the same evening, partying the Saturday and then fly back here Sunday night! I must be mad – but I am sure it will win me lots of BFF points.
I am flying Air Asia, and it’s the first time I’ve flown them longer than 3 hours, and I am not really looking forward to it. I had signed up for this option to upgrade your flights to business class at a fraction of the cost, hoping that it would work out, but I got an email this morning saying I’d been unlucky. Bollocks: and I hoped it wasn’t an omen for the flight.
I don’t like LCCT at all – it needs to be knocked down and rebuilt. It’s such a contract to KLIA and if you were arriving into the terminal you’d think that Malaysia was pretty scuzzy. Anyway, on the up side, the check in and immigration etc was pretty smooth actually (better than KLIA to be honest) and it’s not long before I am ready to board. I’ve spotted at least 4 babies / very young children – and hoping very much that they are nowhere near me.
The flight is pretty packed and just as I get settled into my 2-seat at the back of the plane near the toilets, one of the young kids comes running down the aisle and sits right behind me, followed by his rather stressed mother. Fucking brilliant.
She did apologise to me, but gave me this look of "hey, what can I do about it?". The kid was virtually climbing the airplane cabin walls and ceilings it was so excited/hyperactive and I resigned myself to a flight that would be, well, a complete nightmare. As the plane filled up I was hoping that the seats near me wouldn’t be occupied so either she or I could move.
Also no (I sort of suspected as much when the baggage drop clerk confirmed to me that the flight was ‘pretty full’) but a ray of light chinked through the cabin as the guy who was supposed to be sitting next to me moved to what looked like one of the few empty seats nearby, leaving me with the luxury of 2 seats to myself! One of the airline cabin crew then asked if she could sit next to me and I was feeling rather relieved that she’d be spending most of her time working, leaving me with all the space in the world.
Alas not. As soon as the plane had taken off, she asked the guy who’d moved to go back to his seat next to me. Oh well, it was nice whilst it lasted. He was OK really, a 72-year old guy with a 22 year old girlfriend in Thailand, the dirty dog (if he was to be believed!) Actually I was initially fearful that he’d want to spend the entire flight talking to me, and though we did talk for a long time, he was very interesting and quite a character really - not letting the fact he was 72 stop him from doing things. I also learned that he takes 2 Viagra (well, Thai manufactured generic version) a day and had a young girlfriend in London too, he’s been married twice and has eight kids (that he knows of)!
There were probably huge pinches of salt to be taken with most of the conversation he was having, but it did while away the time quite nicely and took my mid off the fact the little horror behind me seemed to have a fascination with my head.
The flight is horrendous. The kid behind me is a nightmare and won’t settle at all, kicking and banging the seat virtually the whole journey and the mother does nothing much to stop him, apart from the occasional “oh now you’re really annoying me”.
Yes, well, now you are both really annoying me. Occasionally she reads to him in a mix of English and what I think is Mandarin, trying to get him to repeat Chinese words, all very good for learning, but he’s not even two and clearly not interested in that just at the moment.
What the hell planet am I on?
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