LAX has a familiar, if not always fond, place in the heart of Australians.Credit: iStock
A 13-hour stopover in Los Angeles – it should be so glamorous. Cocktails in Santa Monica, star-watching in Beverly Hills: a fitting end to my two-year stay in the US before I catch an evening flight home to Australia.
The City of Angels has other ideas and this becomes clear when my overnight bus from Las Vegas splutters into a seedy neighbourhood on a scorching summer's morning. I know not a soul in this brute of a city and have no place to stash my luggage: a laptop, a briefcase, a big backpack, a small backpack and a suitcase that might as well contain nine dozen bricks.
The day ahead looms ominously. Checking into a hotel feels wasteful. The only other option is to head to the airport and, because there are no lockers, wait with my luggage.
I offset my Olympian load and collapse into a cab. "You need airport? I take you," the driver urges but, this being Los Angeles, a trip to faraway LAX is out of the question. It's only a $US8 ($8.80) cab fare to Union Station, plus another $US7 for the FlyAway bus shuttle. Miffed, the driver leaves me some distance from the shuttle stop, claiming the police will ticket him if he parks any closer.
The shuttle is a surreal experience. The city's freeways spiral into the sky and we are tossed over the city by our cackling madwoman driver like spaghetti in a strainer. I disembark at the Air New Zealand terminal (I'm flying to Sydney via Auckland), decide against a $US4 trolley and stagger inside.
LAX – a nine-terminal city within a city – has a familiar, if not always fond, place in the heart of Australians. It is our main gateway in and out of the US and there is a moment every morning (as the trans-Pacific flights arrive) and every night (as they leave) when Australian business people, backpackers and families on holiday fill its tattered halls, the way Britons overrun Malaga in summer.
For Qantas passengers, this means an unavoidable tangle with Tom Bradley International Terminal, named after the former African-American mayor of Los Angeles. In politics, the "Bradley effect" is the phenomenon where voters, not wanting to appear racist, exaggerate their support for a black candidate when talking to pollsters. In aviation, the "Bradley effect" is more prosaic: planeloads of grumpy transit passengers who vow never to return after their introduction to the world's superpower. This usually involves being led to a basement for fingerprint and passport checks in queues swelled by five jumbos arriving at once, then dragging one's bags through a parking lot for rechecking, with no signage and little explanation and only a smattering of greasy-spoon food options.
Tom Bradley is the focus of a $1.3 billion airport renovation due for completion by 2013. Hopefully they don't forget Terminal 2, the site of my vigil today. It's depressingly sparse at 11am: no food, no shops, no seats, virtually no people – just a bleak row of check-in desks that won't open for hours. It's time to settle in, somehow. But first I really need to use the bathroom, lugging my five bags along because it's unsafe to leave them unattended. With no other choice, I barricade myself in the big disabled toilet. Another traveller gives me a pitying glance as I shave over the wash basin, as if to ask: "Surely you don't live here?"
Over the next few hours I perch uncomfortably on a window sill, nibbling my last muesli bar and reading a dog-eared copy of Jack Kerouac's On the Road. There are three of us sitting on this sill – and the other two are kissing. A cleaner zooms by on his trolley every few hours. The couple, eventually exhausting themselves, huddle over an iPhone to watch a movie.
When the Air New Zealand desk opens, I make a break for it as if it's the Boxing Day sales. In exchange for a boarding pass I offload two bags and retain three – an outrageous breach of the airline's single hand-luggage policy. Then I settle outside Gate 23 for the final three-hour slog. It's not exactly Fifth Avenue but at least there's a bookshop and a Starbucks.
There is a certain poignancy about a departure lounge – surrounded by people we don't know, each preoccupied with their thoughts and preparing for whatever lies ahead somewhere far away. How many times in life are we truly placeless? Not just in the literal sense – forbidden from entering the aircraft yet also from going back through the security check – but in the purgatory between past and future. We've left a known world and are yet to enter the next.
At Singapore's Changi Airport or Amsterdam's Schiphol, there are masses of distractions – sumptuous shopping, free internet, pedicures and chair massages. At LAX, by contrast, there is nothing to do except avert one's eyes and reflect.
Finally, we prepare to board – one Australian surrounded by the reassuring chirp of Kiwi accents. As we rise above this chaotic city and its shambolic airport, a galaxy of lights fading from view, I recall Kerouac's description of LA as the "end of the continent" – a strange jungle of people with postponed dreams who have nowhere further west to go. Unless they're flying home.
Lockers have been banished from LAX for security reasons but an off-site option is LAX Luggage Storage; see laxluggagestorage.com. A representative will meet you kerbside to receive and return your luggage ($US7 a day for a suitcase). Nearby accommodation includes the Crowne Plaza Hotel, Century Boulevard and Travelodge. Free shuttles operate between the hotels and the airport.
How to enjoy a stopover
Heathrow Airport, London
I have 10 hours to kill between flights and an ambitious idea to visit the British Museum. Sure. I find I have neither the energy to take a train into London nor the budget for a room in an airport hotel. That's when I stumble on Yotel, a supremely well-designed version of a capsule hotel, right in Terminal 4. Within an hour of arrival I've showered, eaten a room-service snack and I'm tucked up in a large single bed with good linen and the alarm clock set. And it's well-priced: a minimum four-hour booking costs from £25 ($45) and £6.50 an hour thereafter. Also at Gatwick and Amsterdam's Schiphol. See yotel.com.
- Helen Anderson
Changi Airport, Singapore
Children will love the roof-top swimming pool at Terminal 1; $S13.91 ($10.80) entry includes towels and drinks. With at least five hours in transit you can join a free tour of Singapore without clearing customs. Two choices: a colonial history tour or a cultural tour of the city's ethnic districts. Register at one of two desks in terminals 2 and 3, open 7am-3.30pm. See changiairport.com.
Narita Airport, Tokyo
Hands up for a manicure (Nail Quick) or breathe deep at Oxygen Lounge JUKO, both in Terminal 1. Passengers can inhale flavoured oxygen, said to reduce jet lag. A 10-minute session is ¥600 ($7.20), 20 minutes is ¥1200.
Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok
Bangkok's $US3 billion airport was opened in 2006 and the ultra-modern terminal building (one of the biggest in the world) is packed with shops, restaurants and bars. City tours are available for transit passengers (go to ATTA desk in transit area). But to really relax, the four-star Novotel Suvarnabhumi Airport Hotel is a few minutes' drive by free shuttle bus from the airport. Rooms are available on an hourly basis — a two-hour minimum stay costs 2000 baht ($66) and 500 baht an hour thereafter. The hotel has massage (including a jet lag treatment) and a pool in a jungle-garden setting with waiter service. See novotelsuvarnabhumi.com.
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