I think I told many people we had specially chosen the two seats in the second last row of the plane for our trip to London, and were delighted when we settled in 69J & K last night - the roominess, the seeming privacy, we thought our flight to London would be bliss.
Sadly, as the last passengers began to fill the plane, a bloke came strutting down the aisle to sit in row 70, one back and across from us. There is only one word to describe that bloke - putrid. He was wearing black pants, a black shirt, a black t-shirt, black baseball hat and smelled like he'd been in a nightclub for the past week and had failed to go home and wash. His personal odour was incredibly pungent - so much so it permeated throughout the cabin to at least three rows in either direction. In Mark's opinion, he had the appearance of a junky.
Maybe I could have handled the stench. The problem was, the stench was AN EXACT REPLICA of the stench sported by a guy I lived with in Hong Kong in the early nineties. My days with that guy were not happy ones, and a lot of difficulty I had with myself when I left HK was because of that guy. Suffice to say I suffered a lot of psychological trauma at the hands of that guy. With the stench of Passenger 70G ripping through my nostrils, all my nightmares of that period in my life seemed like they'd become real. So much so, I kept having to check to make sure it wasn't the actual guy I'd lived with - but it wasn't. It was just a carbon replica.
Mark asked how a person gets to smell like that and I explained it to him in simple terms: firstly, you become utterly careless about your personal higene, washing infrequently, but always sweating profusely. Then you fail to wash your clothes, but keep wearing them, oblivious to the developing funk. You go nightclubbing in places where people smoke freely and they use a fog machine to create false ambience. Then you drink a lot, and maybe spill a fair bit of your drink on your already oversoiled clothes. And to enhance the stench, you eat bad food consistently, to the point where your kidneys and liver are on the edge of failure. The perspiration that makes it out through your pores is entirely toxic, leaving your skin sallow and pale.
I took out the lemon grass essential oil I'd purchased duty free and began to wipe drops of it on me, Mark and our seats, hoping to come to terms with the personal affront to my olfactory senses. But then Passenger 70G took his shoes off and I was over whelmed. The wave of stench was tidal, washing over me, reaching Mark by the window, and sending the poor Japanese couple in 70 D & E scrambling. I covered my nose with my hands and began to cry. Mark got out of his seat, leaned right over the guy and told him to put his shoes back on because the smell was making his wife sick. Sadly, when Mark attempted to slide back into his seat, he knocked his JD & coke all over himself and his seat. He snapped with fury.
So I went to the cabin manager and told him in no uncertain terms that we had to be moved. It took a full five minutes - maybe more - of me explaining in great detail exactly why we were not able to remain where we were. There were six empty seats opposite the galley midway up the plane which obviously the crew were retaining to help them handle the service of food - they were already covered with food service trays and empty cups. But I was told they were for "sick" passengers. I offered to vomit on one of those seats to demonstrate that I was sick enough to be seated there. Can I vomit on cue? I honestly believe the stench of Passenger 70G could have driven me to it.
Needless to say the cabin manager finally relented and reseated us, but told us they were bad seats because of the galley. No seat could have been worse than the ones near Passenger 70G. It is a wonder the enitre rear of the plane didn't mutiny. While we were very grateful to be moved, I do feel we were treated with a definite lack of sympathy for the rest of the flight. Mark said he had a feeling we were regarded as being "difficult" passengers. Which is not appropriate. We worked really hard to get our heads back in a good place so that our trip wasn't ruined. I feel the least Thai's flight staff could have done was apologise for the inconvenience.
We never saw Passenger 70G get off the plane. But I do think he's the type that gets strip searched at Heathrow. Whatever his fate was, I pray to God that we never cross paths with him again.
No comments:
Post a Comment