Missbeachykeen’s True Travel Confession

So I have a confession…

Okay.. I was naughty I admit it.. Want to know why? Whenever I tell this story to anyone, I always receive a wide-eyed, open mouth expression! Most people are stunned with disbelief on how I managed to hook up with a boy I had never met before, on a plane… That’s right I said it! When I was 19, I met this guy who was on my flight from Vancouver to Hong Kong. Pretty much, I got a smooch from this cutie!

How did this happen?

I had about 30 minutes before my flight boarded, so I decided to sit down at the gate and pull out my laptop and see if I could get some Wi-Fi signals… Around 5 minutes later, I notice a young boy around my age, sitting on the opposite side of me. I looked up and spontaneously made awkward eye contact with him. With embarrassment of being caught staring at him, I quickly looked back down at my laptop screen. For a while, I then realized after failed attempts, that I could not connect to any Wi-Fi signals and became frustrated…. “ I needed to look busy on my laptop. Hello…. Wi-Fi?” After multiple tries, I decided to be bold and ask the beautiful stranger, if his Wi-Fi was working. I looked up, swallowed, took a deep breath and asked, “Hey, is your Wi-Fi working?”

When did the sparks ignite?

He replied with confidence “Hey, no I can’t connect, I was just about to you ask you actually”. He smiled flirtatiously. He closed his laptop immediately and asked me, “What flight are you on?” I thought to myself, “holy shit he’s talking to you, don’t say anything stupid!” I pulled out my boarding pass and stated my flight number and destination. He widened his eyes and replied with a big energetic, “ME TOO, that’s awesome!” I smiled and replied with an “oh cool!” (as in I’m trying to act cool). He started asking me million questions at once like, “Where are you from?”, “Why are you going to Sydney?” and so on. I started to answer his questions simultaneously and bounce those questions back to him. I could feel my palms sweating and my face blushing.  I pause the awkwardly happy question-and-answer session and told him my name, “Oh, by the way, my name is Dana.” He chuckled and replied, “Nice to meet you Dana, my name is Michael.” It turns out that we have the same age. He was going to Sydney for a year of backpacking around Australia. I could tell that he was very interested and super excited about his adventure. He was humble and down to earth enough, and seemed to have the same craving for travel as I did. We started talking, more comfortably, and I told him about my first year at University and gave him a little rundown on what Australia is like, where to visit and what to do in Sydney.

Then we boarded the plane…

While waiting in line, “together”, we constantly are talking each other’s ears off. One of us stopped and asked “Hey, what’s your seat number?” It turns out we were four rows apart from each other as we mentally calculated. He gave me a sad puppy face, displaying his sadness for the fact that we were seated so far from each other. We still had so much to talk about! Once we got on the plane, I sat at my seat, and I waved goodbye saying, “I’ll see you in Hong Kong.” I sat smiling to myself like a little schoolgirl with a crush. Three minutes later the beautiful boy appeared in the aisle with a random middle-aged woman beside him. He looked happily at me and said, “Hey, this nice lady is happy to switch seats with you, so we can sit together”… I looked at the lady and she replied, “Yea, not a problem, I’m happy to make the switch”. My heart melted….

Then the 14 hours in a cramped plane began…

I switched to my new seat, beside him, and our conversation started again! We talked about everything from high school, to our friends, and even to our past relationships. We watched movies together on one TV screen, and we laughed a lot. After about 6 hours of talking and laughing, it was time to have a little snooze as they dimmed the light and everyone around us was sleeping. Obviously it would have been rude to keep talking while everyone was in his or her sleep mode. As we position ourselves to sleep, we leaned against each other and shared the given blanket. After the awkward leaning position, for little a while, he reached out for my hand under the blanket. We fell asleep together, hand in hand. After around three hours of solid sleep and I repositioned my body… he woke up, from my movement and smiled at me. I asked him “Are you comfortable?” he replied… “Very much, thanks” … Then he .. leaned in for a kiss… My 19-year-old self was on cloud 9!!!!! I remembered that the kiss was just perfect. There may or may not have been a little groping under the blanket too… 😉

Arriving in Hong Kong.

We assumed that if we started on the same flight, we would also be on the same flight for our flight to Sydney too. However, his flight was different than mine. I was leaving in 2 hours and his flight to Sydney was another 6 hours after mine. He said he wanted to hang out with me while I waited for my flight so he convinced the airline employee to check in early so he could hang with me before I boarded the flight. We had dinner together and laughed some more. As we waited for my flight to board, we shared one more passionate kiss as we sat in a room with 100s of other strangers. He lined up with me until he could not anymore; we kissed goodbye, and I walked away onto the plane. That was it…

I never saw him again; we spoke on Facebook, but we never got a chance to see each other in Australia.

I am a lot older now but I remember everything about that flight like it was just yesterday. I still remember how awesome he was and how nervous I felt to just be around him. It was such a good experience and had shown me that a simple hello can go a long way..

Do you have your own version of travel confession or a similar story?

Have you met someone awesome at an airport or on a flight?

Let’s hear it! Share it!

Missbeachykeen