bugs travel

A weekly ode to the joys of moaning about your holiday, by

Tim Roxborogh doesn’t know if it’s OK to ask for two cookies on Air New Zealand domestic flights.

When there’s only liquid soap in the hotel bathroom . . .

I’m suspicious of liquid soap. The suspicions are, I’m sure, entirely unfounded, but liquid soap to me is a hand and body wash and never, under any circumstances, intended for the face. Every time I’m at a hotel with no bar of soap and I’m forced to put liquid soap on my delicate pores,

I get a sense of dread I’ll break out in pimples the next morning. Given this is yet to happen I should probably stop worrying about it. It also suggests my pores aren’t that delicate.

But still it bugs me any time I’m in a decent hotel that’s done away with a good, old-fashioned bar of soap for the bathroom. You can be at a fancy 5-star hotel, but if there’s no option for a bar of soap for your face, you might as well be back showering at the West Wave public pools in Henderson and making do with the liquid soap by the sink. Perhaps it’s because liquid soap always feels like you’re putting goo on your face, even if you’re only applying a small amount and you’ve converted it mostly to bubbles first. I’m anti-goo for the facial region. A bar of soap, on the other hand, has no goo factor and allows you to distribute exactly the lather quotient you desire, from modest all the way to flamboyant.

The best scenario is easy: hotels should provide body wash as well as an actual soap bar. Then weird folks like myself can cover the body in one set of bubbles and give the face a going over with a another set that are essentially exactly same but psychologically poles apart. Better living, everyone!

The second-cookie dilemma

There’s a bit of Larry David and George Costanza in all of us and life is all the more interesting for it. My inner Larry/George is never far from the surface and tends to emerge most frequently during matters involving food. I’ve written in the past about wondering whether it’s socially acceptable to ask for the uneaten food from the stranger sitting next to you on a plane. This is less about polishing off their remaining scrambled eggs and more about securing untouched muffins, unopened fruit pottles and, in particular, undisturbed icecream tubs.

I thought of this again while flying Air New Zealand last week but with a slightly different scenario. On domestic flights these days you get a choice between a complimentary chocolate cookie or a small packet of corn chips. I was in a cookie frame of mind and for not the first time, I almost asked the stewardess if I could have two.

“Almost,” being the key word as the well-behaved, adult version of me won out over the more juvenile, Larry/George version. I said nothing. But what would’ve happened if I’d actually asked the question? I was nervous the response might’ve been similar to what you’d tell a 5-year-old: “Just wait until everybody’s had one and then if there are any left and you’re well-behaved, you can have another one”.

Come to think of it, if that’s not the stock-standard reply Air New Zealand are giving to people who do ask for the two cookies, it should be. Unless, of course, I’m doing the asking, in which case, “Of course, young man!” will do nicely.