Seat 31D
I was assigned Seat 31D on my flight from Phnom Penh to KL. Last row. Aisle. Directly in front of the toilets. Not ideal, but not a big deal. Usually.
There was a group of about 10 first-time female flyers on the flight, sitting about mid-cabin. I’m guessing they were students traveling on a school-related trip, and from the style of their clothes it would seem that they come from a rural and conservative Cham (Muslim minority group) community in Cambodia.
We ran into some respectable turbulence about 30 minutes into the flight. One young lady came rushing to the back of the plane, with a look of panic on her face. The Air Asia flight attendant politely asked her to return to her seat until the captain removed the seatbelt sign. The Cham women did not speak English, but her predicament became clear when she pointed to her mouth and started to gag. The flight attendant helped her into the bathroom, and the next thing I heard was “toilet, toilet! not sink. toilet!. Ayeyayae.
The scene repeated itself about 5 more times in the following 15 minutes. Luckily nobody was sitting in the middle seat so I could lean hard right whenever someone new came down the aisle with a “dear in the headlights” expression on her face. I’m just grateful that they staggered their nausea so that there was always a vacant toilet awaiting. Otherwise things could have gotten messy.
Can you imagine never having been on an airplane before? It is easy to forget (unless you are sitting in seat 31D) that the vast majority of people in the world have never set foot on a plane before
