Getting there is only half the battle

Something I tell my new students, the ones I haven’t met before (which at this stage is all of them), is that I’ve never previously been overseas. That’s right, never even been to Australia. So bear that in mind as you read these pages; there’s going to be a lot of “gosh golly gee-whiz wow” about things that you might well think are old hat. Just bear with me on that. This, as the title suggests, is about the travels of a monkeyman. Monkey see, monkey report.

Takeoff is my favourite part of flying. The way the acceleration mashes you back in your seat, that feeling of being subject to extraordinary forces…I have to remember to relax and just let the hand of physics have its way. If I resist the effect is spoiled. Unfortunately it would seem that the larger the plane, the more this feeling is diminished. A 747 is so monstrous that you’re barely aware you’re accelerating at all. So my departure from familiar shores was not with a bang and a rush, but with a whisper. I would have liked a little more drama.

Flying internationally is, essentially, just like staying on the ground. You’re trapped in a noisy room with a whole load of other people for half a day, people with whom it’s quite hard to talk. You watch your plane magically traverse the face of the world on the big screen at the front of the cabin (at some point, after some brief geometry, I had the “Sam Gamgee in the cornfield” moment) . The giveaway that you’re actually flying is that at the end of the half day you step out and you’re somewhere else on the planet.

The single coolest thing about big international airports is the travelators. These are horizontal escalators; moving footpaths if you will. You walk on these as they themselves propel you forward; your velocity relative to the scenery is thus greatly increased. It must have been a kilometre or so from the exit gate at Changi to the main terminal, but my fellow passengers and I traversed this distance in just a few minutes. I wanted to go back and ride them again…and given that I had an extra hour to kill, thanks to a delay, I probably could have had I been thinking clearly.
I never had the impression, in Singapore, that I was in a place far distant from New Zealand. It was dark; the lights outside could have been any city. The terminal’s population was very diverse; I passed people from all over the world. I’d never seen anything like it except on TV, so since I was seeing it with my own eyes for the first time, I still couldn’t see it as proof that I was in Singapore.
The shops were all the same as in Auckland. I paid for things with dollars. The beer was familiar (even if the extortionate price was not). I would have to wait for dawn to get a sense of being somewhere else.

The approach to Japan could have been an approach to New Zealand, albeit from an odd angle. Volcanic peak with snow-capped mountains in the distance…hmmm, I find this strangely familiar. It wasn’t until I got closer that things began to look different, in a “gigantic neverending city with lots of air-pollution” kind of way. That was just a brief interlude however. Huge topiary bushes saying “Narita” notwithstanding, the place looked like the land around Taupo. Minus lake, of course. So that’s it, huh? Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived.