Heart Attack on Way to Hong Kong
The day started out quite nicely at the Mandarin Oriental Singapore, with room service delivering my breakfast at exactly 6:10am, as requested. The waiter poured my French pressed coffee into my cup and I caught up on the morning news via CNN.
Alert from my coffee and with a full belly I finalized my packing, grabbed a taxi and headed to the airport for my long day ahead. Indeed, my day will ultimately end twenty eight hours later, if all runs smoothly, I’ll walk through my front door to two sleepy Labradors that I haven’t seen in almost two weeks.
The Singapore airport is less than twenty minutes by taxi so before I knew it I was at the curb and grabbing one of those luggage carts for my bags. In the five seconds it took to pull the cart free and turn back to the taxi it happened; the car was gone. I mean it was literally one hundred yards away and getting further away by the seconds.
A full on panic set in as I thought, “are you f#@king kidding me? NO WAY this is happening right now.” Well, indeed it was happening much to my chagrin. Shouting was useless so I turned and ran up to the nearest counter inside. The British Airways agent pointed me towards the Information Desk in the center and I was off to the races.
I breathlessly explained, in rapid fire English, what happened. The representative understood the general idea and snapped into action when I handed her the receipt. Luckily, the receipt includes the drivers taxi number and the name fo the company he drives for. After the longest ten minutes of my life she made contact and told me the drive was on his way back.
It turns out that Mr. Chan, the driver, is a bit like the absent-minded professor. He has been known to drive off to places unknown in the past, but seemingly comes to his senses and ultimately returns. Lucky for me that the time lapse was limited to a total of thirty minutes and my return to the States wasn’t sidetracked hunting down my bags.
I’m not sure what the mandatory retirement age for taxi drivers are in Singapore, but Mr. Chan should think about taking up golf. First, he only has to take care of his own bag. Second, if the bag is attached to his cart he probably won’t risk losing it. That will save others and me the potential of a heart attack on their next visit to Singapore and beyond.
Alert from my coffee and with a full belly I finalized my packing, grabbed a taxi and headed to the airport for my long day ahead. Indeed, my day will ultimately end twenty eight hours later, if all runs smoothly, I’ll walk through my front door to two sleepy Labradors that I haven’t seen in almost two weeks.
The Singapore airport is less than twenty minutes by taxi so before I knew it I was at the curb and grabbing one of those luggage carts for my bags. In the five seconds it took to pull the cart free and turn back to the taxi it happened; the car was gone. I mean it was literally one hundred yards away and getting further away by the seconds.
A full on panic set in as I thought, “are you f#@king kidding me? NO WAY this is happening right now.” Well, indeed it was happening much to my chagrin. Shouting was useless so I turned and ran up to the nearest counter inside. The British Airways agent pointed me towards the Information Desk in the center and I was off to the races.
I breathlessly explained, in rapid fire English, what happened. The representative understood the general idea and snapped into action when I handed her the receipt. Luckily, the receipt includes the drivers taxi number and the name fo the company he drives for. After the longest ten minutes of my life she made contact and told me the drive was on his way back.
It turns out that Mr. Chan, the driver, is a bit like the absent-minded professor. He has been known to drive off to places unknown in the past, but seemingly comes to his senses and ultimately returns. Lucky for me that the time lapse was limited to a total of thirty minutes and my return to the States wasn’t sidetracked hunting down my bags.
I’m not sure what the mandatory retirement age for taxi drivers are in Singapore, but Mr. Chan should think about taking up golf. First, he only has to take care of his own bag. Second, if the bag is attached to his cart he probably won’t risk losing it. That will save others and me the potential of a heart attack on their next visit to Singapore and beyond.
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Travel Unscripted with me
Beyond the book, I travel quite often for work and for pleasure. Here I'll share the experiences I have while on the road - consider it an extended version of Travel Unscripted. A lot of it you will n
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