Start of my Journey..
June 10/11 2006
Mum and my sister were crying when I walked into customs to board my plane. I was stressing alot. By the time we landed a 3rd time in 25 hours, I felt like a long distance veteran.
Brunei airport was boring. I have a 4 hour stopover and some Brunei money, I am going to be buying some gold on the way home, and spending time in their “net cafe”. I might also get some lunch, they had this awesome chicken sandwich with creamcheese and aniseed.
I needed to get off and away from the drunk englishman sitting next to me, who from Brunei to london drank brandy from his coke bottle and popped sleeping pills. He did a great impression of a starfish when he was sleeping. I did not have alot of room.
Dubai was painful. Someone lost a tyre on the runway and we spent an hour circling the airport at night whilst they tried to start the machine that cleans the runway, and then clean the runway. When we landed, we skidded and none of us were allowed off the bloody plane. My nasal passages, were aching. Who knew that you can get some kind of sinusitus when stuck in a plane for nearly 10 hours flying. I was so thirsty, I wanted to drink water until there was no room left in my stomach for anything else.
I wanted to be poetic when I saw London as we were landing but there were other things more pressing on my mind.
My hair felt greasy, and sticky, and really dry. I felt so horrible, so when I woke up after my first 3 hours of solid sleep in nearly 36 hours of being awake, flying, stuck in international terminals - I found that brushing my teeth, and cleaning my face and putting moisturiser and some makeup on made me feel human.
The staff at Heathrow were unfriendly. I asked 2 simple questions.. “how do I get out of here and find where to be picked up”, and “where are the luggage storage facilities so that I can store it on my layover”. The man pointed right and said exit that way, and then pointed left and said luggage that way. When I asked for detail he said again: “exit that way” “luggage that way”. I was pointed in the wrong direction for the exit.