The Port of Air
by MrsPartyGirl
Doesn't it make you crazy knowing that there is a beautiful, sprawling, state-of-the-art, $500 million Airport in the heart of Manila that's just sitting there???
S-I-T-T-I-N-G (space) T-H-E-R-E!!!
Haay.
I'd rather go to the zoo to find elephants. Especially white ones.
Haay ulit.
As a traveller, I hate airports that have icky carpets that smell of decades old cigarette butts, peeling wallpaper on water-damaged wood walls, uncomfortable comfort rooms, airconditioning that does not condition, waiting areas with seats that you'll need anti-tetanus shots for, electronic bulletin boards that are kept together by packaging tape, and parking spaces that you have to risk your life getting to (that is if your car is still there). I could forgive this if it were in a far away, poor, provincial city, but never in a major city - like Manila, with it's sorry excuse of an international airport.
An airport is supposed to be a solace. A place where your feet thankfully kiss land after being cooped up in a cramped airbus for hours on end. A place that welcomes you hello, or back, or home. A reflection of what's outside, as well as a gateway to a different world. A sliver of hope, perhaps, for those travellers desperate to leave or to return.
It's not supposed to be a reminder of how a group of corrupt people disadvantaged the government, or how a government can be so embarrasingly indecisive when dealing with overt corruption issues, or a (concrete and steel) symbol of how we do business around here. I'm sure prospective investors are very excited to use that airport in order to ship out and carry their enterprise somewhere else.
Like HongKong. Where a very new and modern International Airport beckons in Lantau Island.
Or Singapore. Whose Changi Airport has been consistently voted Best Airport by several different magazines.
Or Kuala Lumpur. Whose airport is both the epitome of serenity and high-technology.
Or Bangkok. From what I hear they're gearing up for a new airport in 2006. I'm glad PIATCO's not there to ruin everything.
And, don't get me started on the airports here in the US. Our small city of Louisville has a compact International Airport. Yup, comparable to Newark or Midtown even.
I'm not surprised no one wants to come back after they leave. The carpeted floors are greener over some other flying machines' pasture.
I'm going home for a vacation in March. It will drive me crazy, I know, to come home to an old, tired airport when I know in my heart that we can do so much better than that. I know, sadly, the guy who was assisinated there believed it, too.
