I must definitely choose to fly on Mondays more often. It would appear that not many people do and the absence of other human beings makes for a much more pleasant journey.
On arrival at Sydney airport I was greeted by short queues, little confusion and a general lack of teeming throng. I may have mentioned in the past that Sydney airport bears a strong resemblance to Limbo, the gloomy, featureless netherworld where the souls of the dead await their final destination. No longer was that true, now it looked like Limbo from which most of the souls had been removed. Even Hell is desirable if you have the place to yourself.
Smoothly I was whisked through baggage checks, smoothly I made my way to the departure gate and smoothly we boarded the plane as close to on time as makes no difference. Then of course the captain announced smoothly that something had fallen off the aircraft and there would be a delay while they nailed it back on. We were an hour late taking off but it was a smooth hour delay.
It was at least thirty seconds into the flight before the baby started crying which I thought showed genuine restraint. Despite the hour long delay we were assured that we would arrive in Jakarta on time which begs the question what the hell would we have been doing for that extra hour if the plane had left on time?
We were waylaid at Jakarta airport by a guy with a laminated sign who demanded that everyone flying to Istanbul had to accompany him. Such was the power of the sign that we all accepted this without question. He could have been literally anyone. Well anyone with access to a sign laminating machine. Never underestimate the power of lamination.
Having herded those who admitted to an Istanbul destination into a deserted niche he of the laminated sign then vanished for ten minutes or so which was just enough time for some of us to envision cavity searches in our immediate future. He reappeared with a couple of security guards (or cosplayers) and collectively they fired up a small X-ray machine and scanned both our hand luggage and ourselves. Then apparently satisfied they released us into the wild a few short minutes walk from our departure gate. At no point was it explained why we had been honoured in such a fashion.
Lest anyone think international travel is easy I should point out that I used my steak knife to butter my roll and was thus reduced to cutting my steak with a butter knife. Also the steward dropped a cherry tomato into my lap; the struggle is real people.
After the lamination induced excitement at Jakarta our arrival at Istanbul was pretty low key, possibly due to the fact that it was four in the morning. We appeared to be somewhat early which was handy as the airport was huge. Still I managed to get to where I needed to go which was quite an achievement as my sleep patterns were so messed up by this stage that I was relying on my passport to remind me of my own name. The picture in my passport was taken one day when I was quite unwell and it is pretty much perfect for identification at this stage of my journey. If I ever get enough sleep and a change of clothes I’ll probably be detained as an imposter.
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