Flights of fancy from the Internet - The Joys of Budget Airlines

I remember in the good old days you could fly from Minsk to Pinsk for only 6 roubles. Calling up the foreign airline to ask if you could book your flights over the Internet were slightly more problemous. Always there would be a long pause and then the question...

Airline: "Can you repeat that please?"

Customer: "I said can you book your flights over the Internet?"

Airline: ".....................what's the Internet?"

Yes those were the good old days alright. Of course now you can fly to almost anywhere in the world as long as the country is big enough to have a landing strip. Take Thailand for example, you arrive onto a small island and step off the plain into a tarmac hole in the trees and get served coconut milk whilst you wait for your luggage. This provided refreshment is probably because the mini luggage belt is propelled by a wind up lever as big as the ones on the back of a jack-in-the box. You can see your luggage in a pile behind the two men arduously throwing the bulging bags onto the moving conveyor, but that's not the point, so you wait like everyone else.

Obviously the Internet has made budget airlines a complete success. It is a fascinating prospect to know that you can fly to another country for a week or even a weekend for the price of a pair of shoes. I am not talking quality leather shoes I mean Shoe Zone or Priceless Shoes spending territory.

Think how good it feels to shuffle your feet into warm white sand and gaze out onto a softly rippling ocean, or sip beautifully blended guava beans in lavender smelling cobblestone courtyards knowing what a great deal you got online.

Flights to Lebanon are even cheap at this time of year. Yes Hezbollah are a rowdy lot and I don't much like the look of their newest resident Samir Quantar, but looking past the occasional rabble rousing, gun firing parades, I hear that the weather there is fabulous in December.

I think it will have to be snow in Prague for Christmas this year. The pictures of the old-world river bridges overlooked by the rising gothic city have seduced me. Twisted buildings by Frank Gehry and century old cathedrals, the place looks like it could rise up behind you and stab you in the back with a stiletto knife.

But enough of being pompously descriptive, I must empty my change jar and start counting my roubles.