I arrived at the airport with the usual ball of excitement, fear, and tension churning in the pit of my stomach. I know that for most people, this is an enjoyable part of the trip. Personally, this is the precise moment when my ticket starts to look more like a betting slip, guaranteeing only the possibility of travel. What if I were to trip up the curb as I left the taxi and break my leg? What if some hitherto unidentified computer glitch erroneously assigned me to the no fly list? A veritable buffet of potential pitfalls could see me standing shell-shocked in a departure lounge, wondering why I'd bet 30,000 THB on such a perilous hand.
As I got in line for the check-in desk, this panic was instantly displaced by elation. This itself in turn instantaneously gave way to peevish irritation. As huge influx of Korean tourists entered the terminal and immediately made their presence known. A dozen or so decided to cut across the line in front of me, as though they were an unstoppable river and I were an intransigent boulder. I helplessly watched as a steady stream of golf visors and hairsprayed perms coursed in front of me. The majority of the group were congregating behind me however; a fact I became aware of as soon as the lady behind me rammed my calves with her case. 'An innocent accident', I thought, only to have the experience repeated a further three times. Constrained by my English timidity as I was, I opted to avoid direct confrontation (usually good course of action when imminently about to pass through airport security) and settled on a subtly sideways, crab-like walking method which seemed to alert the lady in question to the fact that I was, indeed, a sentient creature with tender calves. As I was about to check in, an assistant for the airline asked the Thai martial of the group how many people were checking in. You know, 2,4,5 people at a time.
"41."
"...forty..."
"41", the leader said with a look as though she knew that booking in 41 people with 41 passports and goodness knows how many bags in one shot during a busy evening flight was a *bit* of a dick move.
Free of the check-in desk (and after two minutes of panic where their appeared to be a semi-serious computer error showing me as residing in a different country), I headed upstairs for a traditional pre-flight Burger King. I don't know what it is, but something about flying makes me yearn to insert hot junk food in my face. I'd barely felt hungry all evening, yet here I was quite happily placing an order for a crispy chicken sandwich meal. Louis CK was right: "Well, of course I have to eat. I'm about to fly. I could be stuck in the sky forever."
After a pleasant but unremarkable stopover in Seoul, we descended into Los Angeles. I watched on the downward camera as we flew in over vast spaghetti highways and a seemingly endless grid of replicated suburban homes. As we finally touched down on the runway, I felt a surge of excitement: I was back again! Back in America, back in Los Angeles. It felt tremendously warm, like a homecoming of sorts.
This initial swelling of joy was soon dissipated after I entered LAX. At first it seemed to be remarkably straightforward; after a short ten minute queue, I scanned my documents into an oddly Orwellian device (complete with automatically adjusting face scanner) and received a scanned print-out of my passport. Alas, this is where the problems began; my print-out was replete with a giant X across the front and I was instructed to join a sizeable queue to see an immigration official in person. By my count, there were around 50 people in front of me and a swiftly increasing number behind; indeed, it seemed that everybody was now getting bounced directly from the machines to the line. Oh dear.
This would not have been a problem, were it not for the fact that our queue was served by a total of two immigration officials. Progress was painfully slow: in an hour, I'd moved forward a total of about ten meters. A palpable sense of tension and frustration filled the air, not aided by the fact that for some unbeknown reason an officer would pluck a certain flight out of the line and put them straight into the front of the queue ("Air China flight from Beijing, come to the front!"). This was all rather too much to take for some, as I heard a yelling from another line just out of my line of sight: "WE'VE BEEN HERE AN HOUR!", followed by the sounds of aggressive fighting. Now reader, you may not be aware of this, but immigration officials take a dim view of this behaviour. Within seconds, half a dozen officers were sprinting over to his location with their hands hovering ominously around their waists. Whilst undoubtedly dramatic, I was almost beyond caring. By this point it was around 24 hours since I'd left Chiang Mai, and I was just wearily praying for the ordeal to end. I felt a kind of affinity for stupid angry man.
Just as I was contemplating the etiquette for upright sleeping whilst leaning on the person in front, my flight was called. Myself and around 30 other Koreans were shepherded forwards, and after some perfunctory questioning I was collecting my bags and heading for the exi-
OH NO I WASN'T. For some unfathomable reason, there was a new layer of security marked "Exit Control". I wondered aloud what the fuck this was. It turned out to be another 15 minute line whereby our passports were checked again (for a third time!), and the piece of paper we'd just been given was confiscated. To this day, I'm not entirely sure what this process was for; was it to ensure that we hadn't fiendishly changed identities at baggage reclaim? To test our will to enter the country with one final administrative hurdle? An innovative job creation scheme for immigration officials? Who can say. I eventually emerged into the arrivals hall a full two and a half hours after my first queue, with a desperate desire to avoid the inside of an airport for at least the next three weeks.
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