Traveller's Tales
 

This happened.

A man called Mr Gay decided to use his air-miles with Ansett New Zealand for a flight. On the plane, he found someone else in his seat but as there were other empty seats, he sat in one of them. More passengers got on and a stewardess too. The plane was overbooked so she had to tell the passengers flying on air-miles to get a later flight. She looked around and went to the seat Mr Gay was supposed to be occupying and asked the young man sitting there; "Are you Gay?"

The young man went a bit red and admitted he was.

"You'll have to get off the plane," she told him.

Mr Gay guessed what had happened and jumped up from his seat nearby, telling the stewardess; "I'm Gay!"


At that point, the man behind Mr Gay jumped up and said; "I'm gay too. If we all stick together, they can't chuck us all off."

kaneda, don't give up your day job!

I had had a long hot day wandering around Hyderabad, India and was now heading back to the train station, as soon as I could find it. There were some policemen on traffic duty so I decided to ask one of them.

Most people in India understand English but I seemed to have found one who didn't, so he took me over to the officer in charge nearby and left me with him. I repeated a number of times that I wanted the railway station and he eventually got the message, pointing me to a large building in the distance.

He then said; "you speak bad English as though you have learned it from some poor Hollywood films. Where do you come from?"

I told him. "London, England."

Exit one red Indian.

Lake Toba is a fairly remote resort area in northern Sumatra. There are few buses out of there back to civilisation. I went to the bus station, actually a few shops where buses stopped to book a ticket out next day and coming out of the small office saw a man run after a bus which he missed.

He told me he had been talking to the driver and had told him he would get his case and then get on the bus. He picked up his case and turned to see the bus pulling away, and lost it meaning a 24 hour wait for the next one.

From past experience, I think the driver was just nodding where he thought he should and understood very little of the man's conversation.

At an exchange booth on Nathan Road (Hong Kong), a young Chinese girl counted the hundreds out; "five, six, seven, nine, eight..."

I told her; "eight nine."

She said; "No! Nine eight."