“I judge a man by what he eats.”
I was travelling from Heathrow to Oslo and connecting with a Thai flight to Bangkok. Not only did the weather turn sour but my Thai pre-flight check was vastly different to the other passengers. Now I know it’s not a logical routing but it had a lot to do with cost. So my day began early at my mid-November hotel in London. If fact so early that breakfast was not an option. Besides I’m a Qantas Club member so I can breakfast in the British Airways lounge at Heathrow. Which I did, helping myself to the British ‘fry up’ on offer with the mandatory HP sauce.
I sleep on aircraft quite well and the 2hr 15 min flight started off in a sleepy fashion. However midway through the flight I started feeling a little strange and uncomfortable. Hmmm a long way to my next hotel. Just hope that the Thai flight is on-time. On arrival into Oslo I was to be greeted by a white landscape as it was snowing. The vision from my window seat was of my Thai flight dressed in snowflakes, and that means de-icing or if it’s snowing too heavily a delay. During my two hour transit time I am feeling decidedly nauseous and airport public toilets are not a great domain at the best of times.
Come on, come on board the bloody plane. Please no delays! The saving grace is that I am in business class on a Thai Boeing 777 200 series to be precise. I boarded early and sat in my seat eagerly awaiting clearance for take-off but feeling awful and continuing to go downhill. I’m thinking if I throw up, then they will offload me, take me to hospital and who knows what after that. Captain makes an announcement that due to the snow we will have to go through the de-icing procedure and that will slow down our departure and there is a number of aircraft ahead of us. The door closes and the safety procedures commence. Shit I feel terrible. The crew get busy and I seize my chance of getting to the bathroom unnoticed. I made it, locked the door, fall onto my hands and knees and have the inevitable conversation with God.
Instead of feeling better I break-out in a cold sweat and feel myself losing consciousness. I have enough instinct left to know I have to get water splashed in my face and the sink was within reach. I instinctively reached up and pressed the tap on and managed from my kneeling position to wet my face and back of the neck and bring myself back from fainting. I was expecting a knock on the door from the crew but fortunately didn’t happen. Even though I looked like a ghost in the mirror, I reassured myself I could walk back to my seat. So I cleaned myself and my surrounding and did make it back. Buckled my seat belt as my 777 was backing away from the terminal.
We took what felt like forever to de-ice, taxi and take off. As soon as the seat belt sign turned off, I put my seat in the fully reclined position, covered my shaking body with a blanket, asked not to be disturbed, adapted the foetal position and somehow went to sleep. It was 10 hours later that I really became aware of where I was, and that was just as we started our descent into Bangkok. I got up went to the bathroom, checked to see if I was still alive, which I was, and noted I felt a whole lot better than when we took off. The reality was, that would not have been hard. Anyway I made my way back to my aisle seat in the middle of a two, two, two configuration. On returning to my seat I noticed an elegant, dark skinned lady with a naturally happy face, who must have been sitting next to me the entire flight. In fact she was the only passenger I remember seeing. On sitting down I turned to her and said “I’m awfully sorry but I do not usually ignore people I sit next to, please accept my apologies”. To which she responded “I judge a man by what he eats and you have eaten nothing”. Her tone had a warmth to it, so we struck up a conversation, discovered we both had daughters’ with the same name, even though we live at opposite ends of the world. All too soon we were on the final approach. “Tomorrow night I am going to a friend of mine in Bangkok for dinner and wondered if you would like to join me?” I was startled when she said “If you think your friend won’t mind then I would love to”.
What a funny night it was to. She was the only women there as my friends are gay, very Christian and they also have some gay friends over. My new found friend broke every rule in her religious book and loved all my friends so much she went to Bangkok every Christmas to help them celebrate. We have kept in touch and caught up occasionally for a meal so I guess she finally made a better judgement of me.
What made me sick I have no idea but I am sure it had nothing to do with the food I had in the lounge before departing London. Travel and illness are a bad combination and often it is out of your control. Had I been off-loaded I would have rung my lifeline, being my wife, my travel agent (Hawthorn Travel) and travel insurance for sure.
Safe travels.
