The Alcudia Barfly

Well, the holiday is over. But rather than bore you all into a numb state of awareness about how great Thailand is, I thought I would do a piece on what not only was the worse part of our vacation, but probably my worst holiday experience ever.

During our lord of the rings-style epic journey across the globe we had to make a stop over at Mumbai airport. After leaving the aircraft, the passengers who were boarding a connecting flight were guided down to another security point which avoided immigration so to remain in the transfer area. There were only a handful of passengers who had to go through this checkpoint, however it was plain to see that things weren’t quite as they should be. Men and women are segregated into two separate lines with an armed guard in the centre. When I say armed, I’m not referring to a pistol and a baton, I mean a fully automatic rifle. I couldn’t for the life of me tell you the model of the rifle as I didn’t quite want to get close enough to check, but it really isn’t important.

Once in our separate queues we got through quite quickly to the security check where our hand luggage was kindly flung slam-dunk style onto the conveyor belt and we were ushered through the metal detector to then face, whether we beeped or not, another guard who searched us. God forbid you carry a lighter on these flights because, as we learned the hard way, they are strictly forbidden.

So having traversed the hitleresque security we were left in the terminal area which resembled a scene out of Resident Evil with designer shops. While wandering this derelict wasteland of Armani and Ralph Lauren we got approached by a little Indian man who possessed the same demeanour as a crack dealer offering to take us to a “smokers lounge” (read tiny, poorly ventilated room full of smoke) for a tip. We complied, had a cig and drink and we were boarding ready to go board.

After two weeks of paradise we expected that our return journey via Mumbai would have been more of the same. How wrong we were. What we experienced made us wish for that outbound journey, as, at my best guess there were about five-hundred  people all wanted to go through the exact same security check as us. Now I wanted to use “chaos” to describe the situation, however I do believe that “chaos” falls short at becoming an appropriate descriptive noun in this context. The sheer uselessness of the staff to get people organized was astounding, and I’ve been in Alcudia’s post office during the Christmas season. For the men it wasn’t that bad, having eight scanners and designating three of them to us made the queue move along relatively swiftly. However, for the women out of the five remaining scanners, only one was operational. So by the time I reached the front of the queue my other half was way down at the back. I had no choice but to wait, alongside other disgruntled male passengers all waiting for our partners to get through, whilst behind us a screen bearing our flight with red flashing letters beside it stating that the Jet Airways to Heathrow was now boarding. It was at this point this smug little shit, dressed in a suit that was clearly to big for him came and told us that we had to hurry to board our flight.

There are certain things in life that you just don’t do. For example, you must never poke a bear, you should never wear a Man Utd top in Leeds and you must never, never ever tell a group of blokes who are waiting for their respective partners to get through YOUR stupid security checkpoint to hurry up. I can’t really mention on this platform what was said, but I can guarantee that it wasn’t pleasant.

I would attempt to offer the account of the events from my better half’s point of view, however I do believe that unless heard from her, the story would be downplayed quite a bit. As she is the only one who was actually in that queue. Suffice to say that it is a story that contains pushing, shoving, a whole lot of rebellion, a mouthy woman who I could see was going to end up getting shot by a bloke with a moustache and an automatic rifle. But most importantly, a ballsy but decisive Thai girl, who must have thought the Thai equivalent to “fuck this”, grabbed hold of my girlfriends arm and dragged her through the queue with other passengers getting flung left and right, followed by the mouthy cow from before and other female passengers from our flight. All in all I waited about fifteen minutes for the rag tag band of pissed off women to reach the front. This compared to over forty-five minutes that one poor sod from London had to wait for his missus. Like I said before, I couldn’t tell you in detail what exactly happened, I have merely outlined the situation for you.

We were through, and after promising to kick the smug little shit if he even uttered the words hurry up to me, we were racing through Mumbai airport to our departure gate. Finally it was all over, or so we thought. Just before departure, there was, of all things, another fucking security check. This time a quick once over with those hand held scanner things and away we were again, heading down the jet-way where we were stopped once again by, you guessed it, another security check, this time in the form of a hand luggage scanner. The bags practically thrown through we were on the move again, with me trying to make light of a stressful situation, by joking that there was probably another security check round the corner. I wish I had kept my mouth shut. As if someone upstairs were torturing me just for kicks there was another security check, a quick frisk before boarding. After that, this story ends, with boarding the plane and finally setting off to a more civilised airport in the form of Heathrow.

In a previous post, I praised Jet Airways. Not only for their facilities and comfort, but also for their impeccable service. I do not wish to retract any previous statement regarding them, however, let it be said that as long as jet airways makes obligatory stops in that hell hole called Mumbai airport, I will never travel with them again.

It’s good to be back, but missing Koh Samui,

Slainte,

Barfly.