With a mountain of luggage and Jack Kerouac as company, Alan
Mascarenhas endures a day at LAX. A 13-hour stopover in Los Angeles, it
should be so glamorous. Cocktails in Santa Monica, star-watching in
Beverly Hills: a fitting end to my two-year stay in the US before I
catch an evening flight home to Australia.
The City of Angels
has other ideas and this becomes clear when my overnight bus from Las
Vegas splutters into a seedy neighbourhood on a scorching summer's
morning. I know not a soul in this brute of a city and have no place to
stash my luggage: a laptop, a briefcase, a big backpack, a small
backpack and a suitcase that might as well contain nine dozen bricks.
The
day ahead looms ominously. Checking into a hotel feels wasteful. The
only other option is to head to the airport and, because there are no
lockers, wait with my luggage.
I offset my Olympian load and
collapse into a cab. "You need airport? I take you," the driver urges
but, this being Los Angeles, a trip to faraway LAX is out of the
question. It's only a $US8 ($8.80) cab fare to Union Station, plus
another $US7 for the FlyAway bus shuttle. Miffed, the driver leaves me
some distance from the shuttle stop, claiming the police will ticket
him if he parks any closer.
The shuttle is a surreal experience.
The city's freeways spiral into the sky and we are tossed over the city
by our cackling madwoman driver like spaghetti in a strainer. I
disembark at the Air New Zealand terminal (I'm flying to Sydney via
Auckland), decide against a $US4 trolley and stagger inside.
LAX,
a nine-terminal city within a city, has a familiar, if not always fond,
place in the heart of Australians. It is our main gateway in and out of
the US and there is a moment every morning (as the trans-Pacific
flights arrive) and every night (as they leave) when Australian
business people, backpackers and families on holiday fill its tattered
halls, the way Britons overrun Malaga in summer.
For Qantas
passengers, this means an unavoidable tangle with Tom Bradley
International Terminal, named after the former African-American mayor
of Los Angeles. In politics, the "Bradley effect" is the phenomenon
where voters, not wanting to appear racist, exaggerate their support
for a black candidate when talking to pollsters.
In aviation, the
"Bradley effect" is more prosaic: planeloads of grumpy transit
passengers who vow never to return after their introduction to the
world's superpower. This usually involves being led to a basement for
fingerprint and passport checks in queues swelled by five jumbos
arriving at once, then dragging one's bags through a parking lot for
rechecking, with no signage and little explanation and only a
smattering of greasy-spoon food options.
Tom Bradley is the
focus of a $1.3 billion airport renovation due for completion by 2013.
Hopefully they don't forget Terminal 2, the site of my vigil today.
It's depressingly sparse at 11am: no food, no shops, no seats,
virtually no people, just a bleak row of check-in desks that won't open
for hours.
It's time to settle in, somehow. But first I really
need to use the bathroom, lugging my five bags along because it's
unsafe to leave them unattended. With no other choice, I barricade
myself in the big disabled toilet. Another traveller gives me a pitying
glance as I shave over the wash basin, as if to ask: "Surely you don't
live here?"
Over the next few hours I perch uncomfortably on a
window sill, nibbling my last muesli bar and reading a dog-eared copy
of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. There are three of us sitting on this
sill, and the other two are kissing. A cleaner zooms by on his trolley
every few hours. The couple, eventually exhausting themselves, huddle
over an iPhone to watch a movie.
When the Air New Zealand desk
opens, I make a break for it as if it's the Boxing Day sales. In
exchange for a boarding pass I offload two bags and retain three, an
outrageous breach of the airline's single hand-luggage policy. Then I
settle outside Gate 23 for the final three-hour slog. It's not exactly
Fifth Avenue but at least there's a bookshop and a Starbucks.
There
is a certain poignancy about a departure lounge – surrounded by people
we don't know, each preoccupied with their thoughts and preparing for
whatever lies ahead somewhere far away. How many times in life are we
truly placeless? Not just in the literal sense, forbidden from entering
the aircraft yet also from going back through the security check, but
in the purgatory between past and future. We've left a known world and
are yet to enter the next.
At Singapore's Changi Airport or
Amsterdam's Schiphol, there are masses of distractions, sumptuous
shopping, free internet, pedicures and chair massages. At LAX, by
contrast, there is nothing to do except avert one's eyes and reflect.
Finally,
we prepare to board, one Australian surrounded by the reassuring chirp
of Kiwi accents. As we rise above this chaotic city and its shambolic
airport, a galaxy of lights fading from view, I recall Kerouac's
description of LA as the "end of the continent," a strange jungle of
people with postponed dreams who have nowhere further west to go.
Unless they're flying home.
Lockers have been banished from LAX
for security reasons but an off-site option is LAX Luggage Storage; see
laxluggagestorage.com. A representative will meet you kerbside to
receive and return your luggage ($US7 a day for a suitcase). Nearby
accommodation includes the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Century Boulevard and
Travelodge. Free shuttles operate between the hotels and the airport.
How to enjoy a stopover
Heathrow Airport, London
I
have 10 hours to kill between flights and an ambitious idea to visit
the British Museum. Sure. I find I have neither the energy to take a
train into London nor the budget for a room in an airport hotel. That's
when I stumble on Yotel, a supremely well-designed version of a capsule
hotel, right in Terminal 4. Within an hour of arrival I've showered,
eaten a room-service snack and I'm tucked up in a large single bed with
good linen and the alarm clock set. And it's well-priced: a minimum
four-hour booking costs from £25 ($45) and £6.50 an hour thereafter.
Also at Gatwick and Amsterdam's Schiphol. See yotel.com.
- Helen Anderson
Changi Airport, Singapore
Children
will love the roof-top swimming pool at Terminal 1; $S13.91 ($10.80)
entry includes towels and drinks. With at least five hours in transit
you can join a free tour of Singapore without clearing customs. Two
choices: a colonial history tour or a cultural tour of the city's
ethnic districts. Register at one of two desks in terminals 2 and 3,
open 7am-3.30pm. See changiairport.com.
Narita Airport, Tokyo
Hands
up for a manicure (Nail Quick) or breathe deep at Oxygen Lounge JUKO,
both in Terminal 1. Passengers can inhale flavoured oxygen, said to
reduce jet lag. A 10-minute session is ¥600 ($7.20), 20 minutes is
¥1200.
Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok
Bangkok's
$US3 billion airport was opened in 2006 and the ultra-modern terminal
building (one of the biggest in the world) is packed with shops,
restaurants and bars. City tours are available for transit passengers
(go to ATTA desk in transit area). But to really relax, the four-star
Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport Hotel is a few minutes' drive by free
shuttle bus from the airport. Rooms are available on an hourly basis, a
two-hour minimum stay costs 2000 baht ($66) and 500 baht an hour
thereafter. The hotel has massage (including a jet lag treatment) and a
pool in a jungle-garden setting with waiter service. See
novotelsuvarnabhumi.com.
Editor: jimbon
Source : Sydney Morning Herald
