SEA2014: Day 19-20: Asia to Europe: Homecoming

The end of #SEA2014. Going back home is always a two-sided medal. In a way, you want to go back home, but on the other side, being gone is the thing that makes you love home the most. 

On Monday, I mainly recovered from the weekend, had a quick haircut at a local spot and headed for the airport as my flight to Bangkok was this day. Arriving at Bangkok, I had to switch airports to catch my flight to Istanbul/Brussels the next day. When I wanted to check in around 10PM to hand in my luggage, I was refused to check in. My flight was at 10AM the next day, but Turkish Airlines simply refused to accept my luggage already. I somehow understand that this was impossible, but the way the passenger service dealt with me, not offering any help nor assistance was what annoyed me the most. Worst service ever. The fact that I couldn’t check in made that I was going to be stuck in the terminal all night, instead of inside the airport itself where way less people would be able to botter me and I would surely find a quite spot to crash for a couple of hours. As this was thus impossible, and I didn’t feel like crashing in the airport departure zone (there were at least 5000people here), I was kind of forced to book a hotel for one night closely to the airport. So be it. Luckily I had a good night’s sleep and caught my flight to Istanbul the next day.

After about five hours through the flight, I found out that my neighbour was actually Belgian as well and that he and his friends were drinking all the free booze they could get. I had some vodka-cokes as well, but the moment my neightbour started getting too drunk, I quickly decided to calm down too. As our flight reached its destination, his friends and (mainly) me had to use multiple ‘vomit’-bags to support the dude. He was going down pretty hard and had some vomit-outbursts in and outside of the bags. Luckily I didn’t get hit and at least now you will not feel that the text you have been reading has been a complete waste of time. (He’s a walloon with Dutch roots, now laugh even harder!). We arrived at Istanbul 1,10hours late and I merely made it on time to my transfer flight. I literally walked from my seat in one plane, across the airport, to the other plane without stopping once and headed straight for my seat in merely 12mins. Arriving in Brussels, I was awaited by my dad (thanks!) and headed back home.

Three weeks of SEA2014 have come to an end. Three weeks of letting everything from home go; have come to an end. I feel like I am reborn, ready to get to work and get sh*t done. Let the future begin, now!

safe travels_

  

Bangkok Airport