Planet Panic

by Pam Pastor

  No, he won’t.

  I walked back, marveling at my knack for finding myself in strange situations.

  I crossed the bridge and soon found myself back on High Street, walking past the post office that used to deliver 4,000 fan letters every week to Roald Dahl’s home. They say letters for him continue to arrive there.

  It started to drizzle. It was time to go.

  As the train pulled away from the station, I said goodbye to Great Missenden. I said thank you, too, for the chance to spend an afternoon in the company of Roald Dahl, one of my childhood heroes.

  June 6, 2014

  Belgo, the bar that could turn me alcoholic

  It was Giselle’s cherry beer craving that started it.

  “Belgo Central serves cherry beer,” I said, looking up from the screen of my phone.

  The people on this trip call me GQ—Google Queen. I’m not complaining because it’s true. I google and I google-maps everything.

  But Google power isn’t completely foolproof. It won’t prevent you from making everyone walk for six minutes when there’s actually a Belgo around the corner from your hotel, just two minutes away.

  We’ve made that Belgo our neighborhood bar, our favorite bar, our place, our final stop after working, just before going back to our rooms to sleep.

  We are a cast of constantly changing characters—there’s always someone who flakes out or who’s too tired or who’s gone off on some other adventure.

  But not me. I refuse to flake out on strawberry beer. We all have our Belgo favorites.

  The only problem with Belgo is it closes too early. Actually, it isn’t just Belgo—it’s London. Most pubs close at 11 p.m. Madness.

  On Sunday, because there wasn’t enough time, I only had half a pint of Fruli with my dinner—a platter of mussels with garlic butter, herbs and crumbs that paled in comparison to my killer baked mussels.

  On Monday, I thought I would make up for that by drinking two pints.

  Big mistake. Because the clock struck eleven and our waitress had to apologetically throw us out.

  Do you know what happens when your waitress tries to throw you out and you still have half a pint left? You chug it down.

  And do you know what happens when you chug down your beer in a small amount of time? You get tipsy, that’s what. And possibly drunk.

  We all went back to our rooms. I collapsed on my bed, and I realized that the room was spinning.

  “Uh-oh,” I thought. I was headed straight to hangoverville. I needed water. Pepper said the tap water is safe to drink but I wanted cold water.

  I put my cardigan back on, got into the elevator and went to the convenience store across the street.

  “Indonesian?”

  This was a game the convenience store cashiers liked playing with us.

  “No,” I said.

  “Where you from?”

  “The Philippines,” I said.

  “Oh, you’re one of the journalists?” he asked. I nodded.

  He started talking about how he met one of my colleagues and how he used to be a journalist in Afghanistan until he moved to the UK in 2001.

  He talked about war and conspiracy theories and the Red Cross, wiggling his eyebrows and saying “you understand?” every other sentence.

  I was too tipsy to understand. But I kept nodding anyway. Nodding and sucking on my bottle of water. Nod, drink, nod, drink, hoping each action would end the conversation.

  I’m sure it was all very interesting but I was buzzed and all I wanted to do was go back to my room, collapse on my bed, eat my cookie and watch The Mindy Project.

  When he finally let me go, I felt like pulling a Pepper and doing cartwheels.

  Tuesday, sadly, was No Belgo Day. It was closed by the time we finished our post-Miss Saigon dinner.

  I thought Wednesday would be No Belgo Day, too, but we did the smart thing: we grabbed half-pints before leaving for The Drowned Man.

  On our last night in London, after we ate fish and chips in an alcohol-free falafel restaurant and as we walked to Soho for an hour of karaoke, we talked about how much we were going to miss Belgo.

  “Let’s go tomorrow! Before we leave for the airport!”

  I’m not sure whose bright idea that was. Maybe mine.

  But that’s exactly what we did. After checking out of the hotel, we walked to Belgo and ordered beer. I drank a pint of Fruli again—yes, at one in the afternoon.

  I’m really going to miss Belgo. But maybe it’s good to say goodbye for now—I have a feeling that place has the power to turn me alcoholic.

  Damn it, I want strawberry beer.

  June 7, 2014

  Detour

  As we traveled from Santa Maria to LA, we were forced to take a detour because the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department closed off Highway 101 in both directions.

  “Was there an accident?” Lala asked one of the highway patrolmen.

  “Yup,” he said.

  The detour took us to the side of a mountain, with pretty but winding roads that made us dizzy, and cost us two extra hours of travel.

  As we traversed that mountainside, Lala’s ten-year-old daughter Chloe woke up from her nap, disoriented. “Where are we?” she asked. “How long ’til we get to LA?”

  “Two more hours? But you said two hours before I slept! You mean I slept for nothing?”

  We laughed and told her to sleep some more.

  Later that night, we discovered the real reason for the closure: a day-long standoff in Los Alamos between Sheriff’s deputies and a possibly armed man who had barricaded himself inside his home after threatening his sister.

  According to the news reports, “Highway 101 was shut down so no drivers would be in danger, since the home is close to the roadway.”

  The SWAT team had to use tear gas to finally arrest him and charge him with making criminal threats, resisting arrest and possession of illegal weapons.

  Sheriff’s deputies found three handguns, two shotguns, three rifles, thousands of rounds of ammunition, seven swords and two fighting knives in the man’s home.

  Crazy.

  March 25, 2015

  Postcards from New Orleans

  I didn’t know getting there would be this hard.

  This has been the craziest trip and it’s barely even started. We were supposed to fly from Manila to Narita to Los Angeles to New Orleans. But the typhoon in Japan delayed our Delta flight for five hours, making us miss our connecting flight to LA. The ground staff wanted to get us seats on the PAL flight from Manila to LA tonight but that would mean waiting at the airport for another nine hours.

  When we heard that there was a JFK-bound Delta plane leaving from Narita, we said, “Why not fly us to New York and then get us a connecting flight to New Orleans?”

  Okay, they said. They rebooked our flights, they said. So we boarded the Delta flight to Narita.

  When we landed, we discovered that they had changed our booking. We had been transferred to an American Airlines flight, and we are going to Dallas instead of New York and then New Orleans.

  We are now at the Narita Airport, waiting to board our flight. I’m tired but my stress level? Zero. It’s still a little funny. It’s still kind of an adventure. Besides, I have never been to Dallas.

  Wait, didn’t they just find the first US case of Ebola in Dallas?

  “Ice cream, cheese or fruits?”

  “Ice cream, please.”

  “Hot fudge, berry compote or butterscotch?”

  “Hot fudge.”

  “Nuts? Whipped cream?”

  “Yes. Yes.”

  A hot fudge sundae 29,000 feet in the air. Thank you, American Airlines, you’ve been a great foster airline.

  TripAdvisor and Lonely Planet both warned me that our hotel is the most haunted hotel in New Orleans. And because of flight delays, we were no longer checking into Hotel Monteleone at 5 p.m., we were arriving at a hotel full of ghosts at 2 a.m.

  Yes, I’m scared.


  New Orleans decided to welcome me with a marathon of The Office. I love you already.

  The first thing I did in New Orleans (please, let’s not count being scared of ghosts and going to AT&T to buy a SIM card) was walk to Café Du Monde with the soundtrack of Chef blasting in my ears and then ordering beignets and coffee. Beignets, the sugar-covered French donuts that will make you look like the most satisfied cocaine addict in the world.

  It’s so hot in New Orleans today. I thought I was going to melt as I walked back to the hotel. I went straight to the restaurant where we had breakfast and asked if I could have some water. I was so surprised when the girl handed me a magical mix of water, ice, lime, strawberries and kindness.

  As I exited the elevator, I heard a woman sob. But there was no one else there—I was completely alone.

  How to deal with creepy ghosts in your hotel #1: wear your earphones and have music blasting when riding elevators and moving through the halls. Ghosts are less scary when they’re on mute.

  One of my favorite things about New Orleans is the abundance of good street musicians. I can spend days just wandering the streets and being blown away by their music.

  One more way New Orleans has charmed me: the bars that have entire rows of slushie machines ready to dispense frozen alcoholic drinks. Because Lala had suggested it, I got a Hurricane, a drink that tasted like red Icee but with a kick strong enough to give you a pounding headache the next day.

  How to deal with creepy ghosts in your hotel #2: when you hear glass breaking outside your door, do not look through the peephole. Think of everything a character in a scary movie would do and do the opposite.

  I woke up in the middle of the night to the strange feeling that there was someone else in the room with me. It was a friendly presence, almost comforting. When I opened my eyes, there was no one there.

  How to deal with creepy ghosts in your hotel #3: try to get as tipsy as you can before heading back to your room. Ghosts are less scary when you’re drunk.

  Hearing us talk about the hotel ghosts over breakfast, our waitress said, “Our ghosts are friendly. Here in New Orleans, you should be scared of the living.”

  We had a few hours to kill so I decided to claim a bench and just stare at the Mississippi River as I baked under the New Orleans sun.

  At one point, a creepy guy started talking to the couple sitting on the other bench. “I’m Dan-Dan the Shoe Shine Man,” he said. “I bet I can tell you where you got your shoes.”

  “You can?” the woman replied.

  Uh-oh, I thought. This sounds like a scam.

  “Yes, ma’am. If I tell you where you got your shoes and I’m right, will you be honest?”

  She laughed nervously. “Yes?”

  I could tell her husband was getting nervous too. But Dan-Dan spoke again. “You got your shoes on the bottom of your feet on a street in New Orleans!”

  He laughed and the couple chuckled politely. Within seconds, I’m still not sure how, Dan-Dan had gotten ten dollars from the couple.

  As he started walking again, I started chanting in my head, “Please skip me, please skip me, please skip me.”

  He passed by me and said, “Nice shoes!”

  “Thanks!” I replied.

  I sighed in relief when he kept walking. I said goodbye to my bench and went off in search of creamy praline samples.

  In New Orleans, when they say “tour,” they usually mean you’re visiting a graveyard. Or a haunted house. Or voodoo hotspots.

  At one of the cemeteries, I saw the pyramid where Nicholas Cage will be buried when he dies.

  Sometimes you’ll wonder, “Is it Halloween or is it New Orleans?”

  It was fascinating to see a gallery filled with original Dr. Seuss artworks. Most of them cost at least $2,000, some as high as $3,500. So it was even more fascinating to see a man go, “I’d like to buy this and this and this,” as if he were me at freaking Krispy Kreme. And because we didn’t have that kind of cash to burn, we settled for free postcards instead.

  The hotel doorman heard us trying to figure out which way to go so he asked, “May I help you?” We said we wanted to go to Armstrong Park. His eyes twinkled and he said, before giving us directions, “That’s a very good idea.” And it was a great idea. We spent our last sunset in New Orleans at Jazz in the Park, lemonade vodka in hand, dancing to the music of Jon Cleary & The Absolute Monster Gentlemen, with the statue of Louis Armstrong watching over us and the rest of the happy people.

  I watched other people dance as I danced, especially entertained by a young guy who had the eyes of Leo DiCaprio and the dance moves of Conan O’Brien.

  By the time Jon Cleary’s set was over, I was so exhausted that I was sitting on the ground.

  Before leaving for the airport, Scott, Oliver and I got into the elevator to visit the most haunted floors of our hotel. We stood outside Room 1462, which is said to be haunted by the ghost of Maurice, a young boy who once stayed at the hotel with his parents.

  We froze when the knob started turning and the door slowly opened. Two elderly ladies walked out of the room and walked down the hall. We started laughing and we couldn’t stop. There was plenty to laugh about—the absence of Maurice, the end of our fears and the fact that we just survived five days in New Orleans’ most haunted hotel.

  October 15, 2014

  Notes from an accidental translator

  I was waiting to board our flight from New Orleans to Los Angeles when a small Asian woman sat down next to me. She spent a lot of time digging through her things. Then she tapped me on the arm and showed me a piece of paper. “Help me come to Taiwan,” someone had scrawled in big red letters. She started speaking but I couldn’t understand what she was saying. She looked scared and lost.

  I took the note from her and motioned for her to wait. I approached the ground staff and asked if they could help her. “Do you speak Vietnamese?” one of the stern women said to me.

  “No,” I said. “And I think she’s Taiwanese.”

  I turned to the woman and asked, “Taiwan?”

  She nodded but then she said, “Vietnam.”

  Another impatient airline attendant showed up and told her to wait. “Waiiiit,” he repeated. Dude, you can enunciate all you want but if the woman doesn’t speak your language, she’s still not going to understand.

  I realized I needed to take matters into my own hands. I whipped out my phone and googled “Vietnamese translation.” A window popped up, I typed the words “wait a minute” and Vietnamese words appeared instantly. I showed them to the woman. Her eyes lit up with recognition. She nodded, smiling.

  And because we weren’t boarding yet and she continued to stand in front of the counter, I typed again, “You can sit down.” She read the translation and followed me back to our empty seats. Then she squeezed my arm and said “thank you,” her voice hesitant and her accent thick.

  I thought I was going to start bawling.

  She was holding another piece of paper and it had the number 2 on it and the same red scrawling: “Help me come to Vietnam.”

  I was confused—was she going to Taiwan or Vietnam?

  I looked through the papers she was holding—her passport and boarding pass for the Los Angeles flight were there but I didn’t see any tickets or a boarding pass for a connecting flight.

  Soon it was time to board so I typed, “You can go inside the airplane now.”

  She shuffled to the door. There were a few people between us in the line.

  Inside the plane, as we tried to make our way to our seats, a flight attendant said, “Everyone, turn around and walk forward.”

  He was trying to get us to move back so he could find more storage space for people’s carry-on bags.

  But a loud blonde woman tried to squeeze past all of us. “Oh no, I’m not doing that, I’m going to sit down.”

  The girl in front of me looked at me, and we rolled our eyes in shared disgust.

  The loud lady stopped right behind the Vietnamese woma
n who still looked confused. “Someone help this poor woman!” she said.

  “I was trying to translate for her,” I whispered.

  The girl in front of me hollered, “This girl has been translating for her!”

  People turned to look at me. The flight attendant, a Tim Gunn look-alike, commanded, “Tell her I need to take her bag to the front and she can get it from me later.” But my 4G had stopped working inside the plane and I couldn’t translate without the Internet.

  Fake Tim Gunn grabbed the woman’s bag. Scott helped her find her seat and, because she still looked confused, I flashed her a translation I had prepared as we were boarding: “This is your seat.”

  Then I found my own seat and was surprised to discover that I had tears in my eyes.

  Years ago, a woman approached me at a pay phone at an airport and started speaking in rapid Spanish. I couldn’t understand her. My Spanish is very limited (who are we kidding, it’s nonexistent). I’m pretty sure I passed my basic Spanish class only because I promised the professor I would sing a Spanish song.

  I didn’t have a smartphone then, and I had no mobile Internet capabilities so the best I could do was help her dial a phone number which she dictated to me in Spanish (I said a silent thank you to our colonizers for my ability to count in Spanish).

  She grabbed my hands and, I assume, thanked me profusely in Spanish. “De nada,” I said, and I walked away, thinking: fuck flying and being invisible and having super strength. If I were to be given a super power, I want the ability to speak all languages.

  I still have no super powers, but this time I had Internet access. My 4G started working again when we landed so I typed, “Your bag is in front.” I stood up and the girl who had hollered about me translating hollered once again, “There you are! I was looking for you.”