As it turned out several hundred people decided to fly to Dubai from Bangkok in the middle of the night – not one seat was empty, despite the fact that one hour later another 777 was leaving for the same destination.
Landing in Dubai is delayed. We have to make a big circle over the city when another airplane is not vacating the runway in time for us. A go-around in a 777 takes a lot longer than one in a Piper. The last minutes of long flights like this are already tedious and endless, and now the go-around extends the agony by some 15 minutes.
It’s a long walk from terminal 3 to terminal 1 but it feels good to stretch my legs. I pass several smoking lounges which look like holding pens with people crammed into small spaces that are opaque with smoke; if you enter in one of those places you will get first, second and third hand smoke all at once; as a passerby I get a few whiffs myself since not everyone smokes inside the pens. I am glad I abandoned the habit long ago.
And now I am in the KLM lounge waiting for the next leg of my trip and am treated to a Larry King interview with the ex-governor of Illinois who is still in la-la-land (“I hope to wake up one morning and everyone realizes it was one big misunderstanding.”)
This is the schizophrenia of my life when traveling: from the poverty of Cambodia to the obscene luxury at Dubai airport where all the information counters are about ‘enhancing your shopping experience,’ rather than telling you where you can get your next boarding pass; from the warm fuzzy feeling that comes from working with people who fight against poverty to the disgust of seeing or hearing about people whose brittle egos need power or money or both.
I am told the flight is not full. I asked for an empty seat next to me but that has never worked and so I prepare for the worst.
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