I love Emirates airlines. Seriously, if you have the opportunity, you should experience a flight with them. I haven't lived in Arabia for two years but have had numerous layovers in Dubai due to my loyalty to the airline. I think it was the effort to make it look like stars above you with twinkling lights in the roof of the cabin that they put on while dimming all the other that first got me hooked. During On my way to Afghanistan I had the opportunity to be bumped up to business class and it was like a whole new world. The seats reclined into beds and even had massage control settings.
However, this is NOT how I traveled most recently on my journey to Sri Lanka. I was in coach, but it was still extremely comfortable. It was on this flight that I experienced my first flight emergency-not me, but some other man. For the life of me cannot tell you what happened. Gives you an idea of how big the places are-sometimes have a staircase. For the life of me I could not tell you what exactly happened. All the flight attendants were on opposite sides of a the five seat row looking really worried and an announcement was made that if there were any doctors on board to please let them know. I was neither a doctor but was extremely woozy after two sleeping pills and a bottle of wine so I chose to ignore the situation and go to sleep. All seemed fine when I woke up eight hours later.
I've flown the airline enough to be bumped up to their Silver status which allows me access into a lounge. This is not the business class lounge or first class lounge, so I thought it was just a lounge that maybe had some coffee in it. To my surprise it was this massive area with big comfy chairs, a restaurant area, four score meal buffet and open bar. I felt it necessary to celebrate with mimosas. It was bitter sweet in that I began to realize my days of backpacking and crashing on airport floors may very well be behind me...not entirely sure if that's a bad thing.
Sri Lanka requires all incoming flights to have the cabin of flights sprayed in order to comply with their health regulations. When this came over the announcement I thought they had said the outside of the flight until I saw the flight attendants walking briskly down the aisle with a spray canister in each hand that appeared to be erupting with some mysterious spray. I've flown into nearly forty countries now and never have I seen such an odd requirement.
And so I arrived in Colombo, Sri Lanka and was greeted at the airport by a driver who immediately had me on the road for the six hour journey north to Vavuniya...the northern city that served as the front line between during the 26 year Civil War which only ended in 2009.
