A wise man once said that individuals are smart, groups are stupid. This is never more apparent when groups are traveling. They're thrown in to unfamiliar surroundings, with language barriers, jetlag and excessive luggage all combining to make a perfect wave of potential stupidity.
I've been there myself, I've made stupid mistakes while on the move, but I like to think I've learned from them, and hopefully not repeated them unless drinking heavily.
One of the funnier ones I've seen was while trying to go through the X-ray and metal detector points at Dubai airport. Waiting patiently in the queue, with all my metallic items out and ready to go, there's a fairly animated discussion going on just ahead of me at the front of the queue. Looking up, I can see a couple clutching a plastic shopping bag - always the carry-on luggage of choice for the discerning traveler I think.
The security lackey wants them to put it through the X-ray machine, and they're not obliging, in fact, they won't let go of it. I find it hard to imagine that someone would try to smuggle explosives on to an aircraft in a plastic shopping bag, but then I have no idea what kind of a budget modern terrorists are on these days. Looking closer at the bag, it has a strange, sagging shape to it, as though it's filled with liquid.
Sure enough, it's a bag full of water, way above the 100ml limit obviously, but that isn't what has the security so concerned. It isn't just water in the bag, there are a couple of goldfish swimming around inside. The goldfish owners didn't want to set the bag down because the water would run out. They were seemingly oblivious to the restrictions on carrying fluids through, and were more concerned that they might try and pass their precious goldfish through the X-ray and fry/boil them. The bag is eventually taken away somewhere, I'm still not sure if they have found a foster home for the goldfish or they became lunch for the security team, but there was a great wailing and gnashing of teeth from the erstwhile owners who were unable to see why bringing a shopping bag full of live goldfish might be frowned upon by the powers that be.
While I have little confidence that airport security procedures are in any way effective, how can people be so blissfully unaware of what is allowed on board an aircraft? Just in case nobody has seen a TV in the last eight years, most airlines have restrictions printed on the tickets, their website as well as posters at check in counters, airport entrances, and beside the X-ray machines. Just how far do you have to have your head buried in the sand to avoid picking up on all of these handy hints? Sometimes you have to think the goldfish were the smartest players in that little drama.
Part of my job means that I get to travel a lot. Unfortunately, this is not an international jet-setter, James Bond-like, surrounded by silicon packed Bikinis and wearing Rohypnol eau-de-cologne type of travel.
It's more of a "Let's see what kind of an armpit of a country we can send that bastard to this week" kind of thing. In fact, I think my illustrious bosses are running some kind of 'Dead pool' lottery on me, trying to pick which nationality will finally be the one to feed me the local delicacy of death type cooking. (My money is on an American MacDonalds Happy meal).
This week, they sent me to the sunny shores of Sudan. My God, it's the Ibiza of Africa that place, I'm amazed they haven't opened up a Disneyworld there yet. They could make a fortune, however the Janjaweed singing "It's a small world after all" as they ethnically cleanse the Darfur region might send a mixed message.
So anyway, I'm finally getting out of the place, crawling my way through KRT airport - possibly the last known international airport not to have a computer in the place. Everything is done by hand, my hand written boarding pass gets a very authoritative sticker on it to show me how official it is. Unfortunately, the sun is about to go down, and the place just grinds to a halt. Time to break their fast. Never mind that there is an international flight that needs to depart with a few hundred people who may just have a schedule to try and keep. Everyone, and I mean EVERYONE just walks off. The ticket agent, the airline lackeys, the baggage handlers, even the airport security bozos. (You want to look terror in the eye? Imagine minimum wage airport security staff based in Khartoum.) Sadly, they lock the doors to prevent the cattle class passengers from escaping onto the taxiways.
We eventually get onto the aircraft, to everyone's relief, and thankfully my frequent flier status puts me into Business class. I get to sneer at the proletarian scum of my until-recently-fellow-travellers as the shuffle by my padded lay-z-boy type chair into their battery hen enclosures.
I've gleefully talked the young hostie into leaving a bottle of red at my seat even before the doors have closed and I'm getting stuck into that as the plane eventually takes off, rumbling down the runway that feels like it's been made out of cobblestones, or possibly the skulls of the genocide victims.
Just as the wheel leave the ground, I hear this POP-pop-pop-POP-BLWAAAAAARK!
Oh Christ I think to myself, some hijacker with a BB gun is shooting chickens. As I'm wondering if I will get another bottle of Red if I use this one to mallet the hijacker, I look around, to see the front few rows of economy passengers have all taken the yellow life jackets out, put them over their thick heads and inflated them. One fat cow who looks like she's eaten several inflated life jackets had the thing wrapped around her head, and the twin life jacket chambers made her look like Daisy Duck with Angelina Jolie sized collagen injections. For some reason I couldn't work out, if she why was trying to look like a duck, why the feck was she making chicken noises?
At this point in time I'm laughing so hard at the sight of this carnage that there's no possible way I could have ever held a camera steady, but I'm still gutted I didn't have a camera at the ready.
The ensuing chaos as the hosties - who apparently weren't hired for their crowd control capabilities - tried to restore order and deflate the life jackets lasted long enough for me to finish the bottle of Red from a front row view.
