[Simple Simon]

I spent a decade as a business traveller covering an ever wider area of the world.  I accumulated one and quarter million air miles and got really good at it.  The TV image of the business traveller is glamourous.  It isn't.  It's a rotten life, highly disruptive to both family and health.


The short-haul traveller gets up at four-something to beat the M25 and be at Heathrow for the earliest possible flight.  A later flight means much longer in traffic and less time doing business - or worse, a longer trip.  He/she returns early evening one or two days later ('cept for the poor sods who work abroad monday to friday) having entertained/been entertained/eaten alone while away.  Timing is always critical because missing a flight often has knock-on effects, so the traveller is generally stressed having not quite left enough time to be comfortable.  He/she also rarely sees much of the countries being visited.


The long-haul traveller generally takes things easier.  Check-in times are much longer for no reason I was ever able to observe so the E-class whisks you to the airport in comfort with plenty of time to enjoy some truly weird selections of lounge plastic food while you hang around.  Choose BA to get ratted on decent wine or Virgin for the food and a more comfortable enforced wait. 


The frequent flyer is a creature of habit who knows exactly how the airline does things.  He/she will have registered seat preferences with the airline, and tweaked them online well before the ordinary traveller.  I almost always had seat A17 on Virgin and K63 on BA 747s and was peeved if anyone else got there first.   I would be on the plane first, changing into my free tracksuit and setting-up laptop and stuff while others faffed around.  Being early means your suit is nearby, being near a loo means being ahead of the jam which always happens before landing when everyone is trying to freshen up at the same time.


Fine hotels at the company's expense sound great - except that being on your own in a very foreign city isn't nice.  Exploring by yourself can be dangerous and isn't much fun with no-one to share it.  You become conservative when eating after a few episodes of the trots.  Caesar salad and the club sandwich are universal business hotel fare.   It's also no fun to fall ill abroad.  Throwing up your guts for six hours in Shanghai's finest hotel is awful.  Seeing dawn at 0200 in Stockholm while doubled up from a gall bladder was special, as is seeing the Opera House through the stripes of a migraine.   So I had - still have - a very comprehensive medical kit full of heavy prescription stuff.


"Entertaining" has an altogether alien meaning in business travel to normal use. It does involve eating foods you can't fully identify, cooked in an unusual way and requiring confidence and ingenuity to eat.  In many cultures business entertaining involves colossal quantities of alcohol, much of it of unknown strength and doubtful taste.  I developed a patentable technique for winning the Moutai drinking contests in China.


The curse of the long haul traveller is jet lag.  I got used to it rather than immune to it.  It degrades our judgement.  I lived on sleeping tablets and caffeine - not at the same time, obviously, with industrial quantities of Resolve Extra.   Unwinding all this after I retired took about two years.


Favourite airport is Singapore.  No queues and big smiles.  But there's nothing to do there.
Worst is Schipol.  Bloody miles of taxying means you land on time but get off the plane late.


Most memorable landing was into Taipei during a typhoon.  "It's a bit rough down here but we'll give it a shot" was followed by a seriously rough descent and a brilliant very fast landing.


Favourite airline - BA for dull consistency and Virgin for brilliance
Least favourite - Air France-KLM/Lufthansa/Alitalia/Iberia (BA but ruder) and anything with China in it.  Budget airlines don't count.


Favourite European cities - Madrid and Stockholm
Least favourite city - Frankfurt
Favourite worldwide - Sydney.  HK comes close.


Best hotel - Mandarin Oriental, HK
Nicest hotel - The Establishment, Sydney

[Rosemary]

Love your post, Simple Simon 

[doganjo]

Love your post, Simple Simon 

Me too, brilliantly descriptive

[robert waddell]

sounds like a night in Glasgow  if you know the right places
as i said my 2 hours wait was educational      i can now relate to the huge log jambs that form if the weather throws snow at us timing is very critical at heathrow
the shear size of it  but then it would have to   to accommodate the delayed passengers
i could have been one of the geeks taking happy snaps when two jumbo jets were taxiying down the tarmac side by side
and the tarmac is actually concrete
Simon your description of world wide travel  only highlights the simplistic nature of smallholding/country life that you aspire to           you can take the man out of business but you cant take business out the man

[Bionic]

Simon,
Did you ever get to try the business class lounge at Seoul airport? That was an eye opener.
No alcohol is served and the only food is pot noodles (yes real pot noodles) and crackers.
 
I agree about the Mandarin Oriental in HK. The only problem was I couldn't find the toilet in my room and I was dying to go. It was so discreet I hadn't noticed it.
 
How about toilets in Japan, assuming the mens is the same as the ladies. You press a button for a sound, such as a flush or a watefall, so that no one can actually hear what you are really doing.
Sally

[robert waddell]

i had heard the arabs have stones in a can     that you rattle      so nobody knows what you are doing

[Simple Simon]

Never went to Korea despite people trying to cajole me.  I really didn't fancy their culinary delicacies having been perilously close in a Beijing restaurant once.  Had a Korean massage in Dalian though that was memorably brutal.


I once arrived at the Mandarin in HK to be told I'd been upgraded to a suite so large that it took me some time to find my luggage.  Unhappily I had arrived at midnight and departed just after six the next morning.


The Japanese loos are awesome, converting a quick wee into a 10 minute pervert's paradise with jets of warm water and blasts of hot air.  There was a sign in the Four Seasons reading "do not be frightened of our toilet!"


A colleague told a cautionary tale of arriving jet lagged into Tokyo on his first visit.  Waking up very early and feeling like shite he thought he'd go jogging to clear his head.  He proceeded to get lost, couldn't remember the name of his hotel and had no money or phone.  Eventually he got a couple of school kids to explain his predicament to a policeman who got him back to the hotel in time to miss his first two meetings.

[MAK]

Well put Simon - others think frequent trips are fun but it is just more of the same and very lonely. I was Ok flying east ( Japan etc) but hated that first night in the States - eating when you should be sleeping then up with indigestion then walking the downtown streets with the low life as they finish their night shifts or formed a line for their drugs. Having breakfast at 05:00 in New Orleans with working girls and market traders was fun !
Flying with El Al is great - especially the interviews with security and the music they played on landing.
Worst airport was Prestwick followed by Glasgow but sorry Simon the best is Schipoll if you have time to kill.
I only have the odd Ryan Air flight (home to see the family) to look forwad to now. 

[MAK]

Simon - Did you ever eat in the Hilton in downtown Tokyo ? Our UK host dragged us around the 4-5 resturants in the hotel becuase he was too cautious to venture out. He bucked at the prices in 3 of the resturants so suggested that we choose a dish each in the chinese resturant that we had huddled outside of . The crispy duck for 6 cost £150 ( and I had the skin) and the full meal cost a fortune. He then made us have a drink in the hotel loby rather than pay the £10 a person cover charge in the "English" bar. He was "moved on" and I believe that he is no longer in a position to entertain.
At a dinner the next night all the hotels resturants provided a buffet style dinner. No one ate the chinese and i reckon each tray of chinese food left was valued at about 2.5 k each  ( based on their resturant prices).
Great trip despite that and I too had . My son had challenged me to find the Planet Ape shop ( miles from my hotel by train) and buy him a T shirt . I did it and only needed one teenager to walk me the last 400 yards  to the shop door. Memories  heh!

[Simple Simon]

I always stayed close to the office in Maranouchi: we tended to eat in Roppongi (which is now mainstream respectable) or Omotesando where some of the ex-pats lived.  Was the Hilton that ghastly mausoleum near the US Embassy with multiple lobbies where you could fail to find people? 


I never paid the bill but the only occasion price was mentioned was by our host from a major Japanese corporation who assured us that we couldn't afford to return the favour.


Tokyo is safe so I did a fair bit of wandering around at weekends including the much-hyped but disappointing Akihabara electronics district.  I once was in town for the blossoming of the Cherry trees which is an astonishing cultural event as well as being colourful.  It is tricky getting around a country where 99.6% of the population is Japanese so you get stared at a lot but not approached.  Our office was in the very new Shin Maranouchi centre, not so close to the Maranouchi centre which was all the taxi drivers knew about.  Learning some Japanese was a necessity to get around.


Did you ever see the Prada store in Omotosando? http://www.galinsky.com/buildings/pradatokyo/index.htm

[Sylvia]

Oh my,Oh my!!! And I get homesick if I go to market

[tizaala]

i had heard the arabs have stones in a can     that you rattle      so nobody knows what you are doing

No Robert, That is the toilet.!

[Bionic]

Simon,
In Tokyo myself and a colleague ended up playing 'charades' in a taxi. The driver couldn't understand where we wanted to go and we were trying to mime it. It was near the train station and the post office so we were making chew chew noises (like a train) and trying to mime posting a letter. 
In the end we got to somewhere we recognised, cut our losses, got out and walked the rest of the way. 
Sally

[MAK]

 No Simon - I don't recall the hotel loby being ghastley. I think it was near Shinjuku railway station. My brother was living in Tokyo then but we failed to meet up becuase of his schedule.
we had to wait 18 months before we met on a trip we both did to Tel Aviv ! Now we see each other every few months if the Ryan Air ticket is less than £14.99