Escape from the Philippines — Part 7 One Final Challenge
Tired, exhausted and with fourteen hours and twelve minutes to go, Muscat Airport was my new home. By this point, I had calculated, that I had been on the go for more than 48 hours, and probably only really managed 3 hours of sleep in that time. And that sleep was bolt upright in an Oman air economy class seat. So it wasn’t exactly a deep, resting experience.
Truthfully, sleep deprivation was really starting to become a problem now. I realised that if I sat down in any given place for more than an hour — I would start to nod off. This is something I decided to try and avoid doing. My flight would be leaving Oman at 1 am local time, touching down in London just shy of 7 am. If I could sleep on that flight — I might be able to reset my circadian rhythm. Which by this point was so far away from where it should be 12 pm could be 12 am for all my brain cared.
I decided I would try and eat at Oman local times, so have a late lunch around 3 pm and then a late dinner at 10 pm. From everything I had read online — this seemed the best way to keep my energy levels up and help my circadian rhythms adjust. Fortunately though, I never really have a big problem with jet lag, all I need is one good night sleep at my destination, and I am usually back on track.
Happily, the food offerings in Muscat Airport were much better than hell, I mean Manila Terminal 1. There were just three options, McDonald’s, an Indian buffet counter type and a café. All three would accept my vouchers, and craving energy and some familiarity, I plucked for a big mac.
Once I had devoured that, I spoke with my father for the fifteenth time to try and re-schedule my flight from London to Madrid. The 10 am flight had now been cancelled and Iberia had moved me onto the 12 pm flight. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but I was secluded to touch down at Heathrow at 6 am and the last thing I wanted to do on this trip was spend longer than I needed to in an airport.
Quick side note here, Skype and WhatsApp seemed to be banned in Oman, (that’s bloody ridiculous if you ask me) Facebook Messenger calling did work though. Or just use a VPN and then everything would work. No idea why this didn’t occur to me at the time.
After all that, it was time for another loop of this eerily quiet airport. Most flights apart from a couple to Europe, India and Pakistan were cancelled. To be honest I was expecting it to be a lot busier, with people rushing home around the world as fast as they could. Though it did occur to me a while later, a lot of people had decided to come home earlier — (I wish I had that foresight) been caught out by border closures, or just decided to stick it out wherever they were.
I then did some writing, tried to do some work, (that failed catastrophically) and decided if I wanted to avoid getting fired — trying to do complicated tasks in my sleep-deprived state wouldn’t be a good idea. So instead I tried to watch some TV, then a film — when you’re as tired as I was you need to watch something with a bit of a kick to it, less Call Me by Your Name and more any sort of Jason Statham flick — something with lots of shooting, shouting and a fast plot, simple enough that even a comatose baby could follow it.
Another loop around the airport followed — I started meeting the same old people. Nodding a hello — everyone seemed to have the same idea — shuffling around the terminal in order to stay awake. I started noticing everyone’s eyes were so bloodshot it seemed as if we were at the Middle East’s only convention for weed smokers.
This was basically my life for nine hours. Ingesting whatever chocolate bar and nasty energy drink I could get from WHSmiths whenever I felt my sugar rush was abating.
Soon enough the sun started to set — dinner was coming around and instead of going to the golden arches for a second time, I decided to try the Indian buffet. They happily accepted my vouchers, dished me up a wonderful chicken butter curry with rice — and I chomped away on it, already starting to feel sorry for the people who would now have to spend 6 hours with me stuck inside a metal tube.
More walking, more sitting, more eating followed. I swear in the end I must have done at least twenty laps of that airport. Finally, it was time to board, and it was like a grand reunion. Whether it was the people I had met shuffling around the terminal, the self-important lady who had secured me my meal vouchers or one or two hangers on I recognised all the way from Manila. We were all now gathered in the same place, with the same hungover look, horrendous smell, all waiting to just get this over with.
I don’t remember much about this flight, apart from the fact they left the cabin lights on for far too long and fed us another dinner and breakfast. I believe this was now the fifth Breakfast I had eaten since I’d woken up in El Nido. Also, only two people out of all two hundred and fifty-odd passengers were wearing a mask — something which seems ridiculous looking back.
We touched down at Heathrow Airport, forty-five minutes ahead of schedule. Great I thought, that means another forty-five minutes extra to kill. I breezed through the automatic gates at the border, bizarrely the only coronavirus controls I saw were a couple of posters scattered about. That seemed understatedly British at the time.
By this point, even though the whole of Europe was on lockdown, the United Kingdom was still resiting — it would be another five days until Boris announced it was their turn to enjoy the delights of being locked in their home. Saying that, Heathrow Airport was pretty quiet, a lot of shops we closed, including Starbucks, so still no hot chocolate for me.
It was a typical March day as well, and I was most certainly not dressed for this, my backpack consisted of clothing for thirty-five degrees and sunny — not British drizzle. I quickly decided it would be best to avoid going outside, so descended into the bowls of the Heathrow Express, printed off my free inter-terminal transfer ticket and annoyingly for someone who was eager for a bit of a delay — found a train waiting for me on the platform, ready to whisk me from Terminal 4 to Terminal 5.
Literally just thirty minutes after touchdown I was stood looking up at another departure board. My flight wasn’t for another six hours and even though I had done fourteen in Muscat and twelve in Manila — the thought of another six nearly pushed me over the edge.
I spied an earlier flight to Madrid, 08:40 with British Airways. My ticket was booked with Iberia — but they are basically the same company and as they had cancelled my flight — and we were at the start of a global pandemic (yes it was no time to pull that line out of the bag) How hard would it be just to go up to the counter and change flights? Especially as I knew there was room on that flight — I had tried to do a dummy booking earlier on my phone.
It turned out to be way harder than I had imagined it would be, but this time I would not be beaten…
