Traveled out to other countries recently or in the past? How was your experience?

Hear my story.

In the summer of 2009 I traveled to India. I was really excited and nervious at the same time! This was my first trip out of the United States!

My plane departed a fews minutes late from Malaysia and it landed at about 11:15pm to 11:20pm into Mumbai, India. The initial arrival time was supposed to be 10:50pm. I had a next flight going to Chennia at 1:15am. For some odd reason no passenger was leaving the plane. I waited patiently but the constant look at my cell phone timer started to make me feel uneasy as I start to fear that I might be late for my next flight. A lady came over on the intercom saying that they were having a situation with the portable exiting stair case and that they were trying to find an alternative one for us. It was 11:30pm and we were still in the plane! Oh my gosh I remember thinking to myself. What’s taking them so long? People on the plane were getting agitated. I was starting to lose my patient. At about 11:45pm we finally got a announcement saying that a stair was ready and passengers can start exiting.

As I got to the exit I noticed that the terminal’s alternative stair was a rusty old clinky metal barred stair. It squeeked with each steps I took. As I reached the ground I noticed how sticky and thick the air was. It was almost a dirty like sense of smell. It had just stopped raining there so the air was very moisty, but it has such a huge thick smell. Each breath I took I felt like I was going to suffocate. I quickly looked around my surrounding trying to figure out where to go. There was not ground crew to assit anyone so my best bet was to follow the last few passengers rushing towards an open door by the side of the building. From there everyone had to climb a few flight of stair case before getting to the main floor for immigration and security check – level one.

When I was finally on level one my next mission was to figure out how to get to a booking counter to get my ticket, since it was not provided for me when I left Los Angeles. (I was told by a man in Los Angeles that I have to pass custom check in Mumbi and then get my ticket there.) While trying to find the area where I needed to be at I noticed how sloppy and wearned out the interior of the international terminal was. This was the time where the swine flu was still an issue, so there was a lot of people in mask. I didn’t want to touch anything in the building. It took me a while to finally reach the security checkpoint. Unfortunately, I had no idea how long the line was. I recalled that it was already 12:00am. There was so many people waiting to go to the immigration check point that I had no idea whether if there was even a line or not. Through all my confusions all I know was that I had managed to cutted my way to the front of the line and was not even bothered by any security whom I passed by. (Maybe it was because I was a forigner?)