New Delta

It's been a long, lovely while since I've flown Delta. But here we go again. 

 I just did a ridiculously fast West Coast run for a study training. I left at 7:40am from New York, arrived in Seattle 11am had a meeting, wandered around, slept, and was back at the airport for a 7am flight back to New York. Quick trip with as many hours spent flying as being awake in my destination.  Anyway, I actually had the same flight crew on both flights (and oddly they didn't recognize me...). Not sure why this struck me as weird- but apparently I’m on the same schedule as Delta employees. It makes me feel like I should be able to monetize this somehow. Be a freelance flight attendant or something.

Whoa- new domestic safety video on Delta (or new to me). Lots of trying to be funny which I’m not sure I’m super into in a safety video (see TAP). Also, the real nerd in me recognizes the creepy red-headed woman from the old video in her cameo in the new one when she does the weird finger wagging about smoking (to a man who is smoking a comically large pipe). Put away your typewriter? Look at exits behind you, except man in neck brace? Triplets at the emergency exit row? I prefer my comedy after we are safely in flight.

Also why is turbulence now called “rough air”?

Breaking Dawn 2 in Myanmar

Extra day in Myanmar with nothing to do? Obvious choice is to see a teen vampire movie (or more accurately, the fourth in a series of teen vampire movies) in a grand theater. I love movie-going in different places!  Noah and I saw SkyFall in India and were struck by:

1.       The rigidly enforced assigned seating, despite being 2 of 10 people in a 200 person theater
2. The national anthem movie that played before the show- it took us a really long time to figure out that it was supposed to be a touching scene of deaf and mentally retarded kids at a school singing the national anthem.
3.   During every scene in which a character had a cigarette, a big warning on the bottom of the screen appeared, -- the hazards of tobacco.
4.  People not only do not silence their phones, they answer their phones and hold entire conversations on their phones during the movie.

In Myanmar the theater was this grand building with a heavy golden curtain that dramatically parted right before the projection. When everyone rose to sing the national anthem, several people rose right in front of the projection so you got to see the national flag as well as the silhouettes of several people’s heads.

The advertisements before the previews were literally on a Powerpoint presentation, complete with swipes in between each one. They were mostly written in Burmese which is a language that looks like curls going in many different directions. However, occasionally, they must have run into a word that doesn’t translate well so the ad looked like this “Curly curly curly vibration mode curly curly curly “ (guessing this was the ‘silence your phone’ message which was of course, totally disregarded). Another one read “curly curly curly, personal responsibility, curly curly curly”.

Can’t this place get a break?

I’m beginning to think there is a direct link between when I am supposed to go to Mali and when major conflict occurs. If you remember, I was holding a ticket to fly to Mali in March and 2 days before my flight, there was a coup d’etat and the government was overthrown.  We were doing the whole “watchful waiting” thing and were feeling pretty good about Mali so we bought tickets to go in January and low and behold, two days before I’m supposed to leave the Islamists advance and France starts to bomb. 

Poor Poor Mali. 

CDG Chairs

Why don’t airports want you to sleep? Charles du Gaulle has really outdone itself with designing the least comfortable chains in the world for sleeping in. I don’t understand the angle or the shape but it is not based on the human body. They are also super rigid with stiff armrests. Maybe they look “modern” but after a long flight and before another one, I can barely see let alone appreciate style.

I wonder if they think comfortable chairs to sleep in will cause people to miss their flights? If so, do they care if people miss their flights? They could make money overbooking, right?

Maybe they think if people are too comfortable they will start booking longer layovers to bask in the delight of sleeping in airport chairs? Not totally sure why this would be bad for them again…

The why is suspect but the effect is certain- the person who purchased these chairs did not want sleepers.

Talking to coseaters

I just don’t do it. Unless I’m on a flight to West Africa and want to practice my French, I’m a live and let live sort of person on a plane. I think it’s sort of weird to establish a bond with someone and then fall asleep right next to them. I’m also usually in the closest socially acceptable thing to pajamas while on a plane- it feels too intimate to make friends while in pajamas. I also don't want to be judged by someone I sort of know for the terrible movies I watch or for the way I explode the creamer all over myself multiple times in a flight. Anonymity is key.

Cameras on planes

I guess this is sort of nifty but it also frankly terrifies me. I like to put on my headphones and watch movies and pretend I’m NOT flying. Take off and landing are the worst parts- why would I want to see them?

Korean Air has mounted the camera below the plane and has some sort of zoom lens that makes everything below you as you land seem much closer than it is (hopefully). It felt like we were grazing the top of the cars on the highway in Long Island when we landed at JFK.

Air France has mounted the camera way up on the top of the tail so you can see the whole plane plus what is below. This was pretty disconcerting when we landed in Paris in a snowstorm and all that was visible was whiteness. If it weren’t for the camera I could have pretended that our captain could actually see what he was doing as he landed us.

January Insanity

Alright team, January is going to be intense.

I'm in Myanmar now, heading to Mali and Niger next week, and rounding out the month in Uganda. I'll try to be better about posting chronologically but my internet in West Africa is likely to be spotty.  On the plus side, toward the end of the month I'll be true to "laura in africa" and actually post about Africa.

Get ready. But for now I have to sleep. 12.5 hour time differences are just ridiculous.

Magic Show

The hotel in Matheran was very family-oriented and consequently had a schedule of fun events for every day. Since dinner was served super late, we decided to check out the magic show in order to keep ourselves awake until we could eat. The show was in Hindi, clearly, but I assumed the tricks would translate. However there were a lot of jokes between tricks which were lost on us entirely. I did learn that “abracadabra” in Hindi (at least in this show) was “poo poo”. The magician was really into audience participation which included Noah who he often asked things of (in Hindi). The first couple we could figure out, like “touch this handkerchief and nod in agreement that the ring is still under it” or “nod vigorously in agreement that this knot is tight” but it got a little more complicated from there.  The total failure was when he asked “name a flower”—there was no way we were getting that from context. Thankfully the guy next to us whispered a translation. Poo poo!

Continental food

We were the only foreign tourists at the hotel which was otherwise populated by families from Mumbai. They tried really hard to make us feel really welcome, or me rather because people seemed to think Noah was Indian. All our meals were included in the price of lodging so we were well fed. The first night, they set up this amazing Indian buffet which I was excited to dig into but as I was getting my plate the head waiter informed me that they had prepared for me a special Continental meal. I think they assumed the continent I was from was Europe, but no matter.  He presented a “lasagna”. Take a second and imagine the key features of lasagna… pasta? Tomato sauce? Layers? Rectangular? It was none of these things. It was a bowl of vegetable stew with a weird bread crust on top. And it was made especially for me!  Joy.

Points

So the big thing to do in Matheran, aside from buying leather sandals, is to go visit all the sight-seeing points. Armed with a map Noah and I hit a fair number of them.  The hikes were fun, but for the one we always heard as “garbage point” it was a little intense. It ended up being a two hour hike and was pretty unpopular (understandably).  On the way back we timed it so it was right after “spider web-making hour” and essentially just walked through spider web upon giant spider web. Not super pleasant. We invented a special hands in front zombie walk so we hit the webs with our hands and not our faces. Anyway, beautiful views and nice walks. The points.

Matheran

We couldn't get tickets all the way back to Mumbai but managed to get two hours outside to Panvel. So I opened trusty guidebook and tried to figure out what might be interesting around there. I came across Matheran, a hill station outside of Neral. We did the beach, so doing the mountains seemed perfect.

Ah to breathe clean air. While it took a lot of 4am local train transfers and a really precarious taxi ride wherein Noah and I both sat in the front seat and the driver shifted between Noah’s spread-eagle legs—Matheran is a bastion of peace.  No cars are allowed up so porters and horses await the decrepit taxis at the entrance. I always feel conflicted about porters, especially having ones that are twice my age and half my height lug my bags for me, but he seemed really eager and I guess it’s good honest work. Noah and I realized that we are too chicken shit to really enjoy riding the horses up. At first I expected some sort of safety lesson or “do’s and don’ts” for the ride but the guy just hoisted me up and that was the end of our communication. I kept worrying that the monkeys would spook the horse and I felt really bad for it every time the wrangler hit him on the haunches.

1AC is the place to be!

Having traveled in 3AC on the way to Goa (link) we were thrilled to get 1AC tickets on the way back to Mumbai.  Here are some features of 1AC:

•   Adequate water bottle holders
•   Two-person compartments
•   Doors that close AND LOCK
•   Both beds can be down and you can still sit up
•   End tables
•   Fans we can control (that don’t just blow dust and mold smell on you)
•  Adequate lighting which we control
•  Hand towels!
•  Freshly laundered sheets (as evidenced by the paper they come in)
•  A Western toilet (albeit one that I would never dream of touching with my bare skin) complete with toilet paper and soap!
•   A full-length mirror (?)

Cows on the Beach

Beaches are great, so why wouldn’t cows like them? I’m not sure why this was so off-putting to me—oh yeah, the cow shit. Nothing worse then a giant cow patty on the beach.  The relative proliferation of cows was another downside of Anjuna but Palolem had them too. At least the ones in Palolem tended to stick to one area of the beach so you knew when to watch where you walked.

My Ayurvedic Head Massage

Another “thing to do” in Palolem is to get a massage. I had a fantastic Thai head massage once and have been chasing that feeling since. I did not find it here. There were a couple movements that were soothing but by and large, I couldn’t wait for it to be done. I’m not sure how professional the lady I got the massage from was or how well it represents “ayurvedic massage’, but the unpleasant maneuvers included 1) eyebrow pinching 2) eyelid massage 3 )hair pulling. The hair pulling was particularly extensive and purposeful. Pretty much the opposite of relaxing.

Activities List

It’s funny in tourist areas how there is just this set list of things that you’re supposed to do. In Palolem this includes 

1) renting a tandem kayak and 

2) taking a boat ride out to first look at dolphins, then go to Butterfly Island and then go to Honeymoon Beach.  

Even if you don’t want to do these things, you pretty much have to because every person you pass offers them to you and eventually you need to be able to say “already did it, thanks”.  But renting tandem kayaks is sort of awesome, so no problems there. And while seeing an occasional dolphin fin isn’t that exciting to me, and Butterfly Island only actually has butterflies at a different time of year, and at high tide Honeymoon Beach is basically just a rock--- going on a boat ride is always nice.