Pinoy Kasi -- Travel in a time of war (July 24, 2003)

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22 July 2003

Travel in a time of war

THE LAST two weeks I have been living out of a suitcase, covering five cities across 24 time zones, so you can imagine that this is not the best of times to think up a column. So I thought, why not share some survival tips from this last trip? After all, I realized this was my first overseas trip in six months, the long break due to SARS and the invasion of Iraq.

I intentionally used the term "survival tips" because overseas travel always heightens this awareness of a global conflict in which we are all trapped. Modern wars, after all, involve much more now than being in a battlefield with bullets and bombs. Our modern wars are fought in all fronts, and the whole landscape of travel has itself been converted into one global arena.

The tensions take many forms. Ask your travel agent and they will explain that there are new charges attached in your ticket, to cover added security. At airports you get a sense that there are fewer people traveling, but eventually, you find people converging in areas with long queues for security checks, which have become more and more stringent, more so than right after Sept. 11, 2001.

This leads me to my most important survival tip, especially for the Filipino traveler who wait for the last-minute to check in and board the plane: Give enough time to run the whole gauntlet of security checks.

The toughest security precautions apply to flights going to the United States. In Amsterdam, this includes a very thorough manual search of your luggage even before it is checked in.

After check-in, be prepared for another round of checks for your hand-carried stuff, which can be quite time-consuming in American airports. In San Francisco, be prepared to quickly transfer your hand-carried stuff into several trays for X-ray checks. One tray takes items from your pockets, including cell phones, wallets and keys. Some passengers decide to surrender their belts as well because the metal buckles sometimes set off the alarm.

If you have a coat or jacket on, that goes into another tray. The American airport security will ask you to take off your shoes as well, despite newspaper reports that such checks would no longer be obligatory. (If some readers are wondering, this shoe-phobia began when one passenger on a British plane was caught trying to detonate explosives hidden in his shoe!)

If you have a computer, you have to take it out of its bag and put it on the tray. In some airports, they will ask you to turn the unit on, to make sure your laptop is actually a computer. The final tray takes what's left of your hand-carried possessions.

Be prepared for a manual search of hand-carried stuff even after they've gone through the machines. This is supposed to be conducted randomly but Lester, an Indian friend of mine, insists the checks aren't that random, considering how he's always checked -- a function, he insists, of his dark skin color and his moustache.

After the bag inspections, there's a body search. The one at Manila's international airport is a farce, conducted by bored guards looking for nail cutters to confiscate. Western airports now allow you to take nail cutters, but pocketknives are still forbidden. Indian airports are quite thorough, with passengers herded into "frisking booths" where they truly frisk you, through the body's every nook and cranny. (My women Indian friends say it can be a real experience being frisked while wearing a full sari, yard by yard, layer by layer.)

In Amsterdam's airport, right before boarding flights headed for the United States, they will interview you about your itinerary, where you came from, where you're headed, how long you've been on the road. On this last trip, my "interrogator" noticed my airline frequent-flier card and kept referring back to it. I thought, initially, that it was a good sign, figuring that they wouldn't be too worried if they saw all the arrival and departure stamps on my passport.

Wrong hunch. I was told later frequent travelers are the objects of more suspicions. Security officials will look through all your destinations, trying to determine if there is a pattern suggesting links to terrorist groups or "rogue states." They also get suspicious if you frequently visit the United States. (Not that the United States is a rogue state. Smile.)

The most distressing new development with security measures is that US airports now require that you keep checked baggage unlocked. Yes, you read right: you are not supposed to lock your bags. Some airports carry signs instructing passengers to keep the checked bags unlocked; others don't.

And that was where I got into trouble. At Detroit's airport, I did ask a baggage handler if he wanted me to unlock my bag and he said, "No, later." Off the luggage went on a plane to Washington, and somewhere along the line, it was forced open. Unfortunately, the lock was built into the luggage, so security officials literally sawed through the lock's casing to get into the bag, and then delivered the damaged bag held together by duct tape! There was a note inside the bag apologizing for what happened, but pointing out this was done for security reasons. Obviously, you can't claim for damages.

I kept my checked bags unlocked for the rest of my trip, but also learned you can use plastic cable ties, the ones you use to tie electric cables together, or, in gardening, to hold up a sagging plant. You can purchase these ties at computer and hardware shops and use them as a temporary lock. If the security officials decide they need to check your bag, they will just cut through the plastic tie, inspect your bag, and then put in a new one to replace the one they cut.

I have ambivalent feelings about having to go through all this trouble. Sometimes I feel safer about flying, seeing all the security measures. Other times, as I watch giant TV screens in the airport showing CNN newscasts with Blair and Bush and other politicians boasting about how they're bringing peace to the world, I realize, sadly, how in this early 21st century, we now live in a global state of siege.