Battle of the bottles

By Netnet Camomot

THE hardest part of travel is the packing and unpacking. And please don’t pronounce that as “f” and change a to u. Besides, there’s no such thing as unf***ing.

Travel has been made affordable by airline promo rates, that is, if you have the patience to wait amidst the slow internet connection and the airline’s busy website with all others also trying to avail of discounted fares.

I’m old school. I go to the airline’s office and hope there’s a promo. If there’s none, I’ll close my eyes, buy that ticket, and wish for selective amnesia to delete the fare’s total cost from my minute brain.

I tend to buy additional prepaid baggage—my fats mean bigger clothes which are of course heavier than that of a size zero. A slim friend can travel with all her clothes in a backpack. I can also travel with a backpack, provided the size of the back is Incredible Hulk’s.

The wise traveller travels light. If I were to travel light, I won’t have clothes to wear for the rest of the vacation unless the attire I wore inside the plane can have a side B, side C, side D and all the rest of the alphabet—to Z and beyond.

In our last travel, the shaker for the protein shake had tears pouring down its plastic side as I took it out of the suitcase, afraid it would break to pieces while squeezed in between the extension cord and the bag of toiletries that contained bottles of shampoo, conditioner, lotion, mist, perfume, anti-frizz serum and acetone.

Yes, bottles. Once upon a time, I did use sachets but the struggle to open them, arrange them upright on a hotel bathroom ledge shelf to avoid spillage, and deciding whether to bring home the remaining one-half of its contents were too stressful for my senior-moment coping mechanism, thus, the bottles. But along with that comes the battle of the bottles once I have to pay excess baggage fees, which always makes me vow again to switch back to sachets next time. Or pay for more prepaid baggage.

Travelling often is possible, thanks to promo fares and hotel promo rates, but then, there’s the pocket money which should fill up the pocket of Incredible Hulk. P1.5 million in P1,000 bills is as small as a small plastic shopping bag, try calculating how much Hulk’s pocket can take and there you have the ideal pocket money.

The non-ideal pocket money, however, is way much less to not alert customs. There’s always this suspicion that any unexplained bank deposit has a dubious source, thus, bringing around P1.5 million for travel may alert authorities you’re not merely buying magnets at your vacation destination.

The best way to travel is to focus on the sights and the view rather than the shopping. Savor the ambience and the food. Have fun! Enjoy! And it’s advisable to visit one place once rather than spend hard-earned pesos on that same place again and again unless it has already become your second home. Well, adopt the place as your second home if you keep going back for more.

What welcomes you at the airport? Momoland’s “Bboom Bboom,” of course. If it’s 6:30 am and you can barely open your eyes, that’s the song to dance to as you join the long and winding line at the check-in counter after the web check-in keeps prompting you’re unable to check-in.

There’s no line for the “Online Check-in Bag Drop”—so, you were not the only one, this airline is fair to all.

The nice thing about early flights is airport breakfast. At Laguindingan, if you’re lucky, you can sit by the window and have your own niche with a view while having breakfast. Then, you can stare at green trees, hills, paved roads, parked cars, cars rushing in and out of the airport’s gate, and birds. Birds flying inside the terminal. Birds flying outside to emphasize the meaning of free as a bird. How about the bird flying inside, is it also free?

We can also fly, thanks to airplanes that soar and zoom from home to anywhere in the world. Which supposedly has made the world smaller. If only smaller could also mean peace in that world. Oh, well.