The fun of actually getting to your destination...

Hey guys! Phew, what a marathon of airplane hours! I’m in Amsterdam at the moment and I have to say this is the coolest airport I’ve been through so far. It’s taken 48 hours to get here (well, sort of…different time zones complicate it somewhat). 15 Euros just bought me a shower at the Mercure Hotel here and after being in the same clothes since 6am on Friday morning, I’m chuffed that I managed to throw in spare undies, deodorant and my toothbrush (sans toothpaste of course, the nothing-over-100-mls-in-your-hand-luggage thing makes it a bit hard but it is nice to have sort of clean teeth).

The flight to KL with Malaysian Airlines was quite good, but I did manage to make an enemy! Here I was being called up to check in when this pillock (you know the type, 60-ish, sporting designer threads, waxed grey hair with heavily framed glasses) pushes in and demands something from the check in girl. No acknowledgement that there was somebody else there first of course but anyway, it gets better. An hour later I settle myself into my seat, a lovely aisle seat, hooray, for the 8 hour trip to Kuala Lumper, when who should sit directly in front of me but the waxed pillock! Which wouldn’t have been so bad really, if he hadn’t gone and reclined his seat ALL THE WAY BACK for 8 hours! Ok fair play, 7 hours. He had to eat first. So here I am watching Marley and Me in Chinese until I worked out how to get it to play in English, with the 4 inch movie screen 3 inches from my face. Needless to say I was quite cross but hey, that’s cattle class for you :p

And why do I always get picked to be frisked at security? It’s supposed to be random but I must look suspicious because inevitably I hear the “excuse me madam, will you come and stand over here please while we search you?” I told the frisking lady this always seems to happen to me and she goes “ha ha, ha ha ha, it must be because you look nice.” Nice? Whatever.

Then it was onto Amsterdam, my god, if you’ve ever sat on a plane for 12 hours you’ll know it’s just the hugest laugh. Not. Your bum hurts, you can’t move, you watch the plane on your monitor creep over the Indian subcontinent absolutely unconvinced that its moving at all, you watch a movie or 10, fall asleep for 15 minutes, look at your watch and think “I could swear I just slept for 5 hours,” and do the whole thing again. Hooray! The thing was my travel agent booked my seats for me before I left, so I knew I had aisle seats the whole way. However, when I found my seat for the flight to Amsterdam, I quickly realised something was wrong. Somebody ELSE was in my seat! So I very politely say “uh, excuse me, I think this is my seat.” The lady goes “oh, what number/letter are you?”

Me: “19H.”

Her: “There is no 19H.”

Me: “Um, yes there is, its here.” (Fake polite smile plastered to face).

Her: “Oh, ok then, we’ll move along.”

Me: “Sigh, no its ok, I’ll just go over here. It’s fine.”

I didn’t push the subject like maybe I should have, because one of the passengers was an elderly lady and I felt bad. So it meant I had the window seat which is always wonderful because I drink lots of water and subsequently I’m up and down to the lavatory the whole time. Which made it rather difficult and needless to say I was pretty annoyed. Bloody Dutch people! But they were actually quite nice and we all ended up having a bit of a chat after a while.

So anyway I guess my next post will be from Accra. I just had issues logging onto my blog to post this cos I went to my site, and it was all in Dutch! OMG! But I managed to faff about with it and get it into English and post this thing ;) sigh, I'm sure this overseas/internet connection thing will become a little easier as I go along. Stu knows I'm not the most tech savvy person around but he believes I'll manage, which is nice :) bye for now, talk soon!