Between Planes
July 11th 2007 07:50
Hong Kong
Is there anything worse than those bad connections, the really long ones? You’ve come halfway round the world but you’re only half way home. You’ve zipped from day to day; night and sleep have vanished between time-zones, it’s too late to check into a hotel but too early to hit the town and anyway, you’re down to your last dollars and reeling with fatigue. You’re suspended in airport purgatory and deliverance via your onward flight is an infinity of empty hours away.
For half an hour I luxuriated in front of the mirror in the restrooms (alone, but for a solitary, hovering cleaner, masked and gloved like a surgeon) then meandered down to Starbucks for a lingering, double expresso macchiato
Back upstairs, at 7 a.m the Travelex Currency Exchange was a blaze of lights and a young woman with morning-fresh make-up beamed at me over the counter.
“How much money would one need for a day at the airport?” I asked.
My words hung foolishly in a long silence as she stared at me, inscrutable.
“Well, that depends,” she said seriously “on what you want to do”
(Meet new friends, have adventures, fall in love and build a monument) “Er - breakfast, a bit of shopping, sleep, explore” I gestured vaguely from one end of the airport to the other.
I passed over my last euros and she peeled colourful dollar bills back into my hand.
Behind us the shutters had rattled up on the bookshop. Good! Nothing like a browse in a bookshop to kill a bit of time! I wandered for an hour from shelf to rack, dipping into novels and scanning blurbs and headlines. Then, with a Marie Claire zipped into my bulging computer bag, I headed for the mezzanine café where I sipped a slow latte with an extra shot. A circle of unfolding newspapers and opening laptops grew around me, while below, the benches at the departure gates filled with people and queues snaked backwards from the desks; the trickle on the people movers swelled to a stream and buggy-loads of uniforms zoomed to and fro. It was nine o’clock and the airport was wide awake and buzzing.
I on the other hand, was ready for sleep. I set off in the direction of a cluster of comfy chaises longues I’d spotted earlier. Gone! As miffed as Baby Bear, I took in the blissfully slumbering forms of a bunch of backpackers. Now like goldilocks, I zig-zagged up the airport, trying chair after chair; first the red and yellow tubs near the couches - Backs too low!; next the leather bucket jobs by the TV screen - Seats too highI I passed lines of blue benches all with jutting arm rests between them – enemies of sleep! But then, there, after row after blurred blue row, an aberration, a barrier-free duo! I ran gratefully towards it, rolled myself into a ball, closed my eyes, summoned sleep – but no! Too narrow! Finally, I fell upon the long loungers in the ‘resting area’ overlooking the tarmac, somewhere near Gate sixty-something – not bad! I lay back behind a potted palm, closed my eyes again and began to drift. But not so fast! The headrest! In quite the wrong spot and so unyielding! And the shape! Those sharp angles! After a painful hour of persistence my spine was curled like question mark - Too hard! I gave up.
I hauled my bags towards the distant duty free shops. The computer, the discman, the cds the notebook, the magazine, the novel and all the things I’d brought to fill the long wait were dead weight now. What if I had to walk all day to stay awake? An orchestra and chorus struck up in my head “On and on I walk at day break, I can not touch the green, green grass of home” they screeched. By now I had boat legs - What twenty four hour sleep-deprived traveler doesn’t know them? - the ground rocks gently underfoot and the horizon, if you can find it, tilts slowly to and fro. Like a mirage, ahead, on a poster, a woman smiled into the spray of a shower - Travelers’ Lounge, Gate 35, Departure Level - it directed with a bold red arrow. My feet took charge and carried my failing body and stingy spirit there. Through a glass partition I glimpsed an oasis of warmly glowing lamps and deep armchairs, where people dozed, curled up in stockinged feet. Beyond them a dish of apples glowed red and green and beyond that more people browsed at a buffet. I limped to the desk and for K$310, bought ten hours worth of buffet, internet, leather armchairs, a shower and a 2 hour sleep!
At 11.am I was smiling, like the woman in the poster, into a cascade of warm water and at midday I drew the curtain on my four by eight foot sleeping compartment, took off my shoes, jacket and jeans, pulled up the cover and clicked off the light. Sleep! At last! But cut off in the cold dark, silent, save for the whisper of the air conditioning, I floated, sleepless, in strange, timeless space. After what felt like three days, certain that the world had ended without me and that outside the terminal’s glass window the whole of Hong Kong lay up-ended in a sea of sand, I gave up. But no, behind the curtain, beyond the sliding door, at the end of the corridor, airport life continued and it was only 1.00!
After a hearty buffet lunch of tempura vegetables, fried-rice, saffron rice and pork balls, I sank into the depths of a soft leather armchair with a high back and a seat that moulded itself around me. Sleep fell swiftly.
My ten hours is up now. My flight is moving quickly up the Departures Screen, and it’s time to go. I’ve survived my 18 hours thanks to the Travelers’ Lounge. And my advice to any other tortured souls who happen to find themselves trapped in the purgatory between planes, is, don’t suffer – buy your way into heaven!
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