Not Just Another Pretty Face: I've got the travel blues!

Monday, August 13, 2007

I've got the travel blues!

Bangkok's swanky new Suvarnabhumi Airport which has fantastic duty free shops, which will knock the socks off any shopaholic!

I don’t know when exactly traveling started becoming a chore for me.

I have always loved flying and airports for as long as I can remember. As a kid, I was enchanted with the sleek steel structures of airports, all spiffed up to give travelers a good first impression of a country. As I grew older, I loved observing travellers in airports- people of different nationalities going off on exciting holidays, high-powered business meetings,to visit loved ones. I dreamed of staying in posh hotels and revelled in exploring new places, trying local cuisine, listening to local languages and observing how people live and go about their lives in foreign countries.

Increasingly though, the downside of traveling (for work) is getting to me. The crappy taxi drivers (who knows you’re not local but yet, asks you to direct them to your hotel!), the hours spent waiting for flights and more time whiled away waiting for your delayed flight! And yet, even more time spent WAITING for taxis.

Often, traveling results in irregular hours and evokes the despairing feeling that you don’t know what you should eat for dinner, because you just don’t know what and where to go to get the grub that will just hit the spot of your finicky appetite. At home, you’ll know exactly where to go, and what to order (after you’ve changed your mind a dozen times).

But in a foreign place? Food that looks good is often deceiving and disappoints the palette and contains wayyyyyy too much garlic for your liking.

And when you decide to go out and try to immerse yourself in the crowd of the city, you are soon engulfed in a sea of strangers on a family outing, a romantic date, rushing home from the office. And you truly understand what it means and how it feels to be “lonely in a crowd.” So many people, but not even one is a familiar face, and not one will care what becomes of you or will miss you if you happen to be mugged and not make it home that night.

Perhaps, it’s the traveling alone that makes me feel isolated. An island, people have forgotten. An old toy that has been left to gather dust.

And you suddenly gain omnipotent insight as to why the guy in the seat in the far right corner of the airport waiting lounge, with the weary face, (probably been holed up in stressful meetings the whole day) his fingers dancing nimbly over his mobile phone’s keypad in the fashion of a seasoned SMS-er, visibly brightens up after his mobile blips in the typical Nokia ringtone.

Ah! A reply to the SMS he sent. And he smiles a genuine smile that reaches the depths of his warm, brown eyes…

Because he exists after all.

But in your cynical mood you ponder, is going through your life merely existing, enough?

I wrote this in sheer boredom, while waiting for my delayed SG-KL flight at Changi last month.

Labels: Me, myself and I, Travel