Airports

Airports are disconcerting places. Everyone in them is uncomfortable, and only those who can make your life miserable are certain about what they should be doing. The international terminal in Bangkok is a disorientingly long mall, a little bit of 5th Avenue that repeats every hundred yards. I had to walk the length of the place to get from my arrival gate to my departure gate. All along the way Clive Owen and that guy from Lost stared out at me from huge posters, willing me to buy their colone line.

The worst was Delhi. No one around seemed to be able to help me, and a man who grabbed my bag demanded larger tip than what I reluctantly offered. Have these touts no shame? In the domestic terminal, my baggage was screened half a doezen times at half a dozen points. Apparently x-ray machines are cheaper than channelling foottraffic more efficiently. This would have only have been a minor annoyance, had I not had my two bags of film, which the security staff became more and more reluctant to check by hand the closer I got to the airplane. In the end, though, I managed to make it through the whole ordeal without exposing my precious picture tape to image killing radiation. A precious victory.