Terrorists cannot stop us traveling the world

I'm looking at being on the road for the next six weeks - to Dakar, Beijing and Ho Chi Minh City

This column was intended to be a light-hearted look at the way international travel has evolved, and my experience of it over the years, but then the dark ugliness of the Brussels attacks erupted and I had to rethink my plans.

But I will say one thing. No matter what suicide bombers or hijackers do, we all owe it to ourselves to carry on our lives and our routines as best we can. So in that spirit, on with the column.

I'm looking at being on the road for much of the next six weeks, with a trip to Dakar in Senegal to see my daughter, Mai-Anh, then back to London before a long-awaited three-week business trip to Beijing, to meet my colleagues from China Daily face to face and get a taste of life in a city with a population of 20 million.

As a little extra, my wife and I will be heading on to Ho Chi Minh City, in southern Vietnam, to catch up with my 94-year-old mother-in-law.

Some trip, I think you'll agree.

For the visit to Beijing, I'm booked to fly on one of Emirates Airlines' massive Airbus 380 jets. It's climbing onto one of those vast behemoths that makes you realize how far air travel has come.

I think back to my days in Vietnam during the early 1970s, when civilian flights often meant scrambling on board a World War II-era Douglas DC3, sharing the cabin with the most unlikely of passengers.

On a flight to Vientiane in Laos from Ho Chi Minh City an elderly woman boarded the DC3, accompanied by her teenage son - who was carrying a pig. The animal, trussed up in a wicker basket, lay contentedly next to her during the three-hour flight. You couldn't make it up, and I swear I'm not.

Fast-forward to the mid-1980s, and I took a flight from Hanoi to Ho Chi Minh City in a 1950s, Russian-built propeller plane that had had, shall we say, several owners.

We taxied, or rather lurched, to the end of the runway, ready for takeoff. Then the rear door opened, and four men carrying a Honda scooter scrambled on board. There were no spare seats, so they squatted in the aisle beside their Honda. As we came in to land, the pilot said something in Vietnamese and they all scrambled to their feet and held on like standing-room only bus passengers, lurching forward as we landed. We stopped at the end of the runway, and they jumped out and rode off on their scooter. No one said a word.

Again, you couldn't make it up.

There have been high points, too. Based in Paris in the mid-1980s, I was assigned to cover a news conference for the Air France annual results and was mysteriously told to bring my passport to Paris Charles De Gaulle Airport. Only when we were ushered out of the lounge were we told that we were going off to Marrakesh, in Morocco, for lunch - on Concorde.

Philip Short, then the BBC's man in Paris, and I were the only non-French journalists on board. We couldn't believe our luck.

After two and a half hours aboard the world's only supersonic passenger plane, we arrived at distinctly low-tech Marrakesh airport and were told to put our passports in a plastic bag held at the bottom of the stairs by a gentleman wearing a grubby dishdash (robe) and a delightful welcoming smile.

We ate lunch at the exclusive La Mamounia Hotel followed by a leisurely news conference.

Being the dedicated journalists we were, Philip and I rushed to the telephone booths to send our stories to Paris, only to be told: Sorry, the lines are down.

So it was back home to my wife and family; she asked me if I'd had a good day, to which I was able to issue one of the best one-liners of my life. "Yes, went to Marrakesh for lunch on Concorde."

So flying to Dakar, Beijing and Ho Chi Minh City will be yet another adventure. But I'll keep those poor souls in Brussels at the back of my mind all the time.

The author is managing editor of China Daily Europe, based in London.

Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com