The Indian Airport Chronicles – Jaipur Edition
Scene: Terminal 2 – Dubai Airport
Some people might wonder why this terminal is so far away from terminal 1 and 3. They may also wonder why this is the only terminal without a metro station. Terminal 2 is designed to prepare you for the destination you are about to face. Most flights departing from this terminal are bound for former Soviet nations, Iraq, Afghanistan, and of course India. Queues are optional. Bathrooms are anything but clean. Staff do not talk to you.,they grunt or yell. And yes, duty free prices are higher than at other terminals.
Waiting for my flight, I discovered that a lovely terminal 2 staff member had given me a boarding pass for a middle seat rather than the aisle seat I booked online. 45 minutes later when I boarded the flight I noted that there were a lot of empty aisle seats but somehow I had been assigned a seat between 2 other passengers. On the bright side the people on either side of me fit into their seats and did not want to talk to me about failed marriages.
That being said, I was seated behind a baby who repeated the phrase “Wanna go home” for 4 hours straight and in front of a drunkard who had decided to consume a litre of his own liquor despite repeated warnings from the crew. I was convinced it couldn’t get worse. How foolish I was. The real icing on the cake was when the wheels touched the ground at landing. While the plane is rushing at a high speed, half the passengers decide to stand up, open overhead compartments and walk ahead. Sorry, did I say walk? I mean stumble and fall on seated passengers.
Scene: Jaipur Airport (picture a hole in the wall if you’ve not been there)
I did mention earlier that terminal 2 in Dubai was preparation for my destination. Queues were optional in Dubai. They were not an option in Jaipur. After I found myself moving further and further away from the immigration desk, I realized leaving 20cm between myself and the person in front of me was the same as saying “Hey stand in front of me!” Of course the lesson was unlearned by the time the conveyer belt with baggage came around. Bathrooms floors were just as wet as Dubai and staff was rude in an alternate language. And duty free? It was locked with the lights off.
On the bright side, it was not half as bad as my encounters at Delhi Airport
“I noted that there were a lot of empty aisle seats but somehow I had been assigned a seat between 2 other passengers.” So I hope you did the reasonable thing and removed yourself from between the 2 other passengers and situated yourself in one of the empty aisle seats. Yes?
Do I honestly strike you as a reasonable person?
Good point! 😉
The image is clever but it would have been a lot funnier if the cut and pasted people were proportional to the plane. It just looks like someone raided a acromegaly convention.
Latvian customer service goes global 😉
🙂 Latvian customer service is quite popular in the UAE, India, Egypt, the Philippines, Ecuador and Hong Kong
That’s quite a few places scratched off my wish list 😉
I think you may want to visit these places if you ever run out of material for your blog 🙂
The strangest experience I had was in Japan where a street vendor outright refused to sell me these custard waffles he was making. I thought I misunderstood him and stayed there thinking he would sell me one. Then he asked me to go away.
Ha ha! How humiliating! Did he just not like the look of you or something?!
I swear I took a shower on that day!
On hindsight I finally get why this one was one vendor with no queue of tourists.