Up and away, heading east into the clouds above New York
City. The shimmering lights that outline the Atlantic coastline fade behind us
and with that our trip to the US is over. Barbara and I are feeling a little
bummed, a little drained and just a little….wait…what was I thinking again?
Little Power Chunda Ranger
We both passed out, mid sentence, within the first 15 minutes
of the flight. I woke up to a Jurassic World replay on my screen during that
part when the Velociraptors are attacking the old building….again. I hear them
shriek and squeal and make all of those terrifying little Spielberg sounds when
I realise that my headphones aren’t actually on my head. Hmm…that’s weird?
This little baby is across the aisle from me. Cute little
guy with a huge head. Like a watermelon on a toothpick. Anyways, this little
guy is giving it serious gears. Full blown, gut wrenching and brain swelling
madness. Screaming off the top of his head. You get three types of people on
flight during this situation:
1) The all experienced mother who dishes out all
kinds of advice and stuffs cotton wool in the guy’s ears.
2) The frustrated older passenger who is huffing and puffing and saying this under his breath like “just
give him some whiskey”.
3) Every passenger that is within puking distance of
this volatile little time bomb.
Here we are finding renewed faith and praying
to the heavens that this little guy does chundah onto….oh dear. He did. He just
cotched up all over the old lady next to him. Filled up her lap and her
in-flight blanket with watery puke.
Dammit that is siff. Then, in a moment of crescendo the
little dude turns and looks at me with his little face losing colour and
JHAAAAA!. Who feeds a 1 year old that much spaghetti? Seriously now, he chucked
up a family sized portion of noodles onto the aisle between him and I. I caught
a sprinkle of flashback as this lump hit the deck but came out relativity
unscathed. The hostesses were frantically trying to scoop up the viscous
noodles and clean off the poor old lady and so on, and so on. I turned my head
left and fell back asleep.
There was a moment where a T-Rex mauled apart a flock of Pterodactyls
but then the little dude, eventually, passed out. So did I.
Crusty the Sock
An hour or so later I woke up and felt something pretty odd.
I had taken my shoes off as we got on board so my feet were chilling there in
their socks right. Well, this little dude's puke fluid, thanks to the pilot or
something, ran off across the aisle and soaked into my socks. This must have
happened a while back as the fluid is already pretty dry and crusty. I stood up
with the snap, crackle and pop sounds as I headed to the bathroom to take these
siff socks off.
The smell was shocking. It actually smelt better with the
siff socks on so I had to keep them on.
We landed in Hong Kong, met up with Ryan and I disposed of
those socks in his rubbish bin. Looking back, it should have gone to a hazmat
site. Some poor little Chinese guy is going to lose his vision if those socks
are exposed to sunlight.
Oh yes! So we are in Hong Kong. Barbara planned a long
layover here so we could head out and meet up with old friends of ours there.
Hong Kong was pretty awesome. Look: Barbara and I aren’t big on big cities and
Hong Kong is the King Kong of big cities. However, it was a good little
cultural experience. Ryan and Fallon, old friends of ours, took us to a local market where they sell
all sorts of riff raff, collectibles, clothes and nik naks…maybe a small child
if you ask the right person as well.
From there we headed out to the up market side of the bay
with houses selling for two hundred million rand where we settled in for a few
bevvies. I know they told us that the drink prices are relative but I think
they were just saying that so we didn’t feel bad. A beer was well over a
hundred rand and the food ran into the thousands. Yes, okay, location location
location with an incredible view of the bay. I mean incredible. That city is so
dense and so massive it is something you cannot explain really. Take the four
blocks that make up the Carlton centre in Johannesburg CBD and times that by a
thousand. Seriously. It is something special to see from that outlook point.
We headed back to their place, cracked open a few beers,
chilled in the pool and just as we started to catch up properly we had to head
back to the train and back to the airport.
The airport is well managed and laid out, making the last leg
back to South Africa pretty simple. The last little bit of our journey.
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