To start it off, during my last day in India Felix and I went to Hotel Saravana Bhavan, the veg place we eat at literally everyday when we're at the school, for the last time and pigged it out. We got our chola poori, parota and side dish, and parota and mixed veg on and this time we did it high class, and by that i mean AC style. At HSB there's an AC and Non AC sect and the prices are inflated by 3-8 rupees per item if you opt for AC. It's never that hot in there so we normally don't do it but this time Non AC was full so we figured we'd step our game up and go for it. And honestly at the current exchange rate it cost us like 80 cents more. In retrospect this might have been worth doing every but w/e.
Afterwards we went to the tailor I dropped my fabric for the shirts to. (I'm not sure if i mentioned this in previous posts but I wanted to get some shirts done cause it's like a hot 5-6 bucks to get TAILOR MADE SONNNN) and as expected he wasn't done yet. That's pretty much how India rolls. He was done with two of them though so Felix said he'd pick up the other one the next day. I'll explain why that makes sense in a second. Anyways after that I put one of them on (they have inside breast pockets, it's awesome) and got in the cab to go to the airport. It was a fucking miserable ride with the Indian stop and go/weave as much as possible style of driving for 2 hours. I was quite distraught.
So now to explain the flight thing. When I was planning the trip Felix was like yo I'm leaving on the 1st, get your ticket for then. In a moment of awesome absentmindedness I booked my for like 12:10 AM and his was for like 11:00PM. So technically we're leaving on the same day but they're both redeye flights so here I am in Saigon a whole day ahead of him.
Back to the story. Chennai airport is rated the #4 worst airport in the world and for good reason. It's so fucking stupid. Let me count the ways it made me want to stab myself. First off, you need a ticket to get in. This doesn't makes sense in the world of E-Tickets. I buy shit on line then go to the airport to get my ticket. Instead Chennai wants me to argue with the guard until he lets me in. Next you have to get your checked bags pre-screened before you even go to the ticket counter. This is made even more awesome by each airline having their own damn machine, few of which are clearly labled. After that you have to find the line for your flight. Not just your airline but your specific flight. Next the person manning the computer apparently can only type with their thumbs and it takes a solid 25-30 more minutes to do something that every other airport I've been in accomplishes in about 10 minutes. When you finally get your shit sorted security makes you add tags to your carry on bags for some inane reason and makes a point of stamping the tag as well. I guess it never occurred to them that pre-stamped tags would be easy as shit to make. They also confused which bags they looked at in the x-ray and insisted I had a water bottle. I did not. Next toss in the fact that people in Chennai don't understand that I'm mixed and look at my Jewish name with a high degree of skepticism and make me repeat who I am. Then to make it more awesome they don't know which plane will be at which gate till about half an hour before your flight. So you just sort of sit and wait and when you do find out you get to have literally 5 separate people clear your boarding pass. Ahh what amazing repetition of labor. Then I got the extra special experience of being in gate 9 which isn't really a gate but a tunnel to the tarmac where you get a bus to your plane that's in the middle of fucking nowhere.
The extra awesome cherries on top were what really made this all shine. There was an incoming flight from Mumbai that was over an hour late with people who were slated to be on our plane. Instead of shifting them to a late flight my 12:10 flight took off at 1:34. We just sat in the plane for nearly an hour and a half. Amazing. Then on my flight I had the aisle/exit row seat which is basically the most leg room you can get in economy but the guy ac cross from me had insane burping issues and literally burped/grunted loudly about every 2-3 minutes. For the entire duration of the flight. I can't tell if I hated it or if that guy was awesome. In his defense, with the inflight meal he had some Hennessy which he poured his beer into, then pounded it, then promptly got his 2nd beer. Maybe he was just so full of win that he was super gassy. Needless to say I had myself a glass of scotch to quell the insanity. To add insult to injury the only movie in the on demand listing was Percy Jackson and the Lightening Thief...
Luckily things got way better in the layover at Kuala Lampur. That airport is amazing. It's mad baller/state of the art. We landed in the auxiliary terminal which was as nice as any airport I've ever been in (SFO, LAX, KIX, HKG) and then took a sweet train/subway thing to the main terminal which had baller as shit like a Herrods and a Cigar store. I bought some Cuban Cigarrillos, satin one of the reclining chairs, and enjoyed the free wifi on my ipod touch. It was way rad. The rest of the experience on Malaysia airlines was awesome. The food was great + it came with 3 Ferrero Rochers (one of my favorite candies) including even the fruitcake, the staff was super on their shit, and I was tired enough to sleep for most of it.
Anyways random observation on Malaysia from just the airport: most of the women wearing headscarfs had these cool hood ones and they were in all manner of colors to match whatever they were wearing for a pretty damn stylish accent.
I'm gonna make Saigon Day 1 it's own post because it's also long and deserves to be recognized on it's own.
No comments:
Post a Comment