Laos Airlines

I arrived at the Hanoi airport early for my flight to Luang Phabang, Laos...too early. Laos Airlines only has 4 flights a day and one rotating check-in station. Nothing was posted. I became worried. I soon found the one screen that displayed the right information. Everything would be okay.

An hour and a half before the flight I got in line - a line of 2 other parties. I patiently waited, checked-in and proceeded to my assigned gate in the International terminal. No one was there. I became worried. About 25 minutes before the departure time an announcement was made and a small line appeared. Everything would be okay.

We filed through the gate onto a bus that would take us to the plane...all 14 of us. I hadn't taken any motion sickness medication. I became worried. We arrived at the plane (an ATR 72 for those aviation fanatics, an 80-passenger propeller plane for those not as versed in planes). Everything would be okay.

The 14 of us boarded and sat grouped together from rows 8 to 11 - very weird. No one else boarded and our plane scheduled for 6:25pm took off at 6:10.

The plastic interior of the plane shook a bit more than normal. I read the in-flight magazine to distract myself. The magazine was littered with blatantly improper and sometimes uninterpretable English such as, "Boat Racing Festival on the NamKhan River in the World Herritage City Luang Phabang on 11 Sep 2007. How to funny let' s go and touching yourself." I hoped that Laos Airlines employed better pilots than copy editors. I became worried...but laughed out loud.

The flight was an hour. Not very eventful other than a small meal - one of the only airplane meals my very forgiving palette has ever turned away (except for this strange little purple cake thing). The landing was dark and fast as we took a sharp dive to avoid the mountains, but make the landing strip. Everything was okay.