JC in India

I climbed into the waiting Blu Smart taxi at 6.30am on Monday morning. Not too early, not too late, but early enough to have to set the alarm and be sure to set the back up one too. My newly discovered Blu Smart (e-taxi) pre-booking option gave extra peace of mind, so in terms of setting off on my business travels again, this was a relatively relaxed start compared to some trips.

The minions had texted me during the night so I had the number to call when I pulled up to the terminal 20 minutes later to have the guy meet me and ensure I queue jumped like an expert. As it happens that time of the day is busy for domestic departures but for international it is a quiet time, so I breezed through in no time, and it wasn’t long after 7am that I was sat in Starbucks with my morning coffee. As usual I was not bothered for the lounge as it would likely have been busier than the main terminal at that time of day. My flight was boarding on schedule at 9am and the Singapore Airlines B787 soon pushed back for the first leg of my mini Asian road trip this last week.

While the purpose of this blog is to provide insights into life in India, for me the travel that goes with the role is an integral part of my life there. Following the last update of a ‘normal day’, it is prime chance to provide a view of another part of this current lifestyle, a ‘normal’ business trip.

Transiting Singapore is never a chore. It is reputed as one of the best airports in the world for good reason, and it is a seamless connecting experience which this time required the transit between T3 and T2. This passes right past the waterfall in the Jewel – a unique location well famed for being a key feature of Singapore airport.

I was enroute to Medan in Indonesia, one of our airports, which is located in the North Western part of the expansive country in Sumatra, one of Indonesia’s main islands. Sumatra is home to around 60 million people out of Indonesia’s total of nearly 300 million. The company I work for acquired the concession to run the main airport there last year and this would be my second visit to connect again with the team and do ‘business stuff’ in person there.

I am personally a huge believer in face to face contact for really engaging properly. Teams and Zoom are all very good for updates and quick connections, but to truly spend quality time you cannot beat being in front of people. Hence my arrival later on Monday evening was designed to give me the full day Tuesday to spend with the team, and specifically one of the new team members who had started just a few weeks back to head up the aviation development for the airport, and whom I had not yet met in person. I think by the time I left him at the end of that day, his head was well and truly wrecked as I had held him to a pretty intensive review of all pertinent matters and pushed him a little to test his capabilities (being honest). However I came away pleased, and hopefully we have got a good new guy there who I can build a strong working relationship with now I have set the baseline with him from a good in person catch up.

I was also fresher on Tuesday for the day, because of the day flight means to get there. To get from Delhi to Medan there are basically two options, through the day or through the night. The Delhi to Singapore leg is only around a 5hr airborne time, so is not enough time to really get a good level of sleep if going overnight. Combined with the short one hour hop from Singapore to Medan means the overnight option ensures a jet lag day ahead, as that schedule lands at 8am into Medan. So for me landing at 8pm the night before was much more appealing. Admittedly it means a day in the air, which in some eyes is less productive but it is about balance. Travelling is part of the requirement to get there, and so if it can be done in a manner that causes less fatigue then that is the way I shall opt for. Plus it meant I had a very on point day Tuesday as I was rested and fresh. With a full day of meetings, followed by a team dinner with various senior team and needing to be ‘intelligent’ from dawn till dusk, a daytime transit Monday made it all the easier.

The last time I was in Medan I did not actually venture away from the airport, as I did indeed do that night travel and following the early morning arrival did a full day in the office and then got on a flight to Jakarta that same evening. So I had yet to actually visit the city, and this was also part of my planning to enable me to do so, by staying in a city centre hotel for the two nights – Monday and Tuesday – while there.

I had originally thought to get the train link from the airport to the city on arrival, then walk the 800m or so to the hotel. However, Kedar – the airport CCO – actually met me from the flight and gave me a lift. Turned out that was a good plan, as apparently walking the streets of Medan after dark is ‘not recommended’, and I was told that muggings were rife and that 6 people had been murdered the night prior during such robberies. So let’s just say the time in the city was translated as time in the hotel!

Indonesia is a little like India in so far it is a developing nation, and is a real blend of modernity and poverty. There are street vendors all around, with shacks for homes, and the clatter of rickshaws and street dogs as seen in India. Cleanliness was also evidently lacking in some areas. The roads were better constructed than some in India, and the traffic more orderly, although ‘more orderly’ does not mean it is particularly orderly overall. Some fairly nonsensical junctions existed for crossing traffic, and ‘smoke boys’ would do their best to hold onwards traffic to enable cars to join. Their name commonly given, referring to the fact they do so to get tips which goes towards buying cigarettes – something particularly prevalent among the lesser well off of Indonesia.

The hotel itself was nice in fairness, although as the premier hotel of Medan I would not have expected otherwise.

I was in my room by 9pm, thanks to the lift from Kedar and stayed there.

Last weekend had been a rough one. On the Friday night (30^th June) I had been violently ill all night. It wasn’t pretty and I do not know what caused it but the night was spent balancing which part of me was buried into the toilet bowl, and I was particularly wiped out for the entire Saturday. So much so that to get from the bedroom to the kitchen pretty much involved crawling as I had zero strength and energy. It was particularly frustrating as there was a plan to celebrate the technically half way (at least) point of my contract that night with a pizza and beers with the guys, but sadly that had to be cancelled. Probably fitting that my half way weekend was spent savouring the best of Delhi Belly.

So when I was travelling on Monday, I was better but still felt jaded and as a result I had zero interest in visiting the hotel bar on arrival, and made the most of an early night. Another factor in feeling on point for Tuesday. At least the hotel provided a variety of reading material to choose from…

So, the working day was positive and some good discussions had and plans made, followed by a nice dinner in a local up market restaurant complex. I felt a bit ‘executive’ though as we all arrived in 3 darkened windowed SUV’s in convoy, had dinner, then left again in similar fashion.

The tale of the previous nights murders were at the back of my mind, but hopeful that holding up such a convoy would not feature in the modus operandi of such criminals. It reminded me of a time when I was on a business trip to a conference in Durban, South Africa a few years back. People there were getting held up left right and centre, so much so that we were all advised to go the conference dinner without any possessions and leave everything locked in the hotel. I felt for Durban as a location, as they had put a lot into hosting this route development event, with an aspiration to promote themselves as a destination to the global airline community. However everyone I knew left Durban vowing never to return – myself included.

In keeping with the daytime flight theme of this particular trip, Wednesday was simply a day for travelling between Medan and Cebu in the Philippines, involving again transiting Singapore.

The Singapore to Cebu flight actually stops in Davao (southern Philippines) enroute to Cebu and all passengers transiting to Cebu have to disembark for a brief spell, to simply get back on again into the same seat twenty or so minutes later. I was cutting it fine to catch this Singapore departure though, as the flight from Medan ended up leaving 40 minutes late, and with only a 1h25m transit in Singapore this meant for a tight connection to say the least. However fortune was shining and it turned out I arrived into one gate, and the neighbouring aircraft on the gate next door was the one I was connecting onto. Singapore Airlines mobile alerts meant that I knew this as soon as I landed in Singapore so when the cabin crew member actually came to say they knew I had a tight connection and did I want to disembark first, I simply pointed at the neighbouring aircraft and told him I was fine I did not have far to go! And once I disembarked, there was actually a ground representative there to take me to the gate too. Fair play to Singapore Airlines – their reputation as a leading global airline was well justified this trip.

I landed in Cebu, the second city of the Philippines located in the central Visayas region of the country, and very much the gateway to the leisure and beach region. While the city itself is nothing to get excited about, the surrounding region has some spectacular scenery and is well located for access to some pretty beautiful beaches. The airport itself is also well renowned as a great facility and has won awards for its design and operations. I have been a couple of times before so landing here a few days back was not unfamiliar and I quickly cleared immigration and hopped into a taxi to bring me to the Sheraton resort hotel some 15km from the airport, and one of the nicer hotels in the region. Although the trip took a while due to the traffic which as in most Asian cities can be quite heavy…

For stays in Cebu on an airport business purpose the choice is either an airport hotel (no), one in the city (no – did that last time), or one by the beach (yes). Staying in this hotel meant I was very much the exception to the norm as the hotel is pretty much full of SE Asians on their holidays, predominantly Korean, although once connectivity to China resumes to pre-pandemic levels by later this year it will also see a fair share of Chinese visitors too. As a businessman, going to and from the airport in work clothes on Thursday and Friday this week has been a novelty for the staff who are all brilliantly friendly but also curiously inquisitive when they have the chance to enquire. So after three days here (I write this on Saturday from the hotel pool / lobby area), they are all quite familiar with me and very friendly in their approach. I’m presenting them a bit of variety in their customer base!

I chose to add a day on here at my own expense given all I would have done otherwise would have been to fly back to Delhi today (Saturday) and then see out the weekend back there. So I am flying tomorrow instead and making the most therefore of a day by the pool and being a vacationer for a day. One of the perks of the job, as it is zero impact for the company and I may as well make the most of it. I shall be back in the office in Delhi on Monday regardless.

Thursday was pretty much a carbon copy of my Tuesday in Medan, just repeated with various different focus points but in Cebu instead. Then yesterday, Friday, myself and some of the team flew up to Manila for the day to meet with some airlines there – as that is where the headquarters of the Filipino based airlines are. That required a 7.15am flight, which meant a 5am alarm (2.30am in Delhi). I am not the best sleeper as I have said before, so even though I was in bed by 10pm Thursday evening I did not sleep a huge amount and thus yesterday was an ‘adrenaline day’, i.e. where I practice peaking in alertness when I need to be on point, and then calming off to recover between. I was pretty shattered by the time I got back to the hotel (to the chorus of welcome backs from the staff) at around 9pm last night.

I had also never been outside the airport in Manila, only ever having been transiting there before. So even though I did not go downtown and into the melee that Manila is reputed for, it was good to have the chance to drive around some of the suburbs and entertain one of the airline leadership teams for lunch in a pretty fancy Italian restaurant in a relatively up market area of suburban Manila.

One of the Manila airline meetings was with the airline we flew up there with (about an hours flight north of Cebu). It is a low cost airline, and I had a real catch 22 nightmare trying to check in. I had tried to purchase exit row seats for the extra legroom (grand total of about £5 each way equivalent so not a major investment for extra comfort), but as I concluded the transaction the site failed and pushed me back to the homepage. Then when I tried again, it would not let me check in as I had an outstanding balance to pay. It then turned out I could not then log in to manage my booking as to do so required clicking a link in an email sent to verify the email address, but this email address was that of our travel team as they had made the booking. And there was no functionality to add the booking without doing this, hence it made it impossible for me to online check in and/or pay for the seats. This meant I was slightly concerned of possible issues at the airport in case they would be a-la-Ryanair in their approach. Given the morning peak time departure I was also worried in case there would be some hefty queuing required. Thankfully though, all fears were unwarranted as there was no queue, a cashier gladly took my cash (the credit card payment machine apparently didn’t wake up until 6am, and given it was 5.45am I could either wait 15 minutes or pay cash… Who knows?!). Not the finest airline website experience, but I refrained from mentioning that to their CEO when I was meeting with him on Friday!

And so today is Saturday and I am making the most of being here in this holiday focused hotel. Tomorrow morning I shall set off back to Delhi at a nicely social departure time of 11am, and by 9pm tomorrow following a 4hr flight to Singapore, 2 hours there, and 6 hrs to Delhi – all being well – I will be back ‘home’ and set for Monday morning back in the office.

Where it will likely be another normal day.

Oh, and the reason this is the Last of Us tour… Well, I have so far watched the first 8 episodes of that series on the flights of this journey, and I will watch the finale tomorrow. The series is set in a post pandemic world, and with a degree of synergy, Asia is the last region on the globe to truly emerge from the pandemic. Facemasks are still fairly prevalent although they were pre-pandemic here also. Yesterday’s domestic flights actually required the wearing of one while onboard, something I have not experienced in a while. Although apparently the Philippine government is expected to drop this ruling any time now. Once done, they will be declaring the pandemic officially over.

This has been a good tour round, and from a work perspective delivered what was hoped. It is certainly not the last tour I shall be doing of course – similar will actually be happening in two weeks time setting off in a different direction. But, this has been for sure, the Last of Us tour.