Southeast Asian airlines are generally among the best in the world, particularly when it comes to customer service. But I have had my share of “fun” on them as well.

So now let me spin a tale of a time when I flew Garuda, the Indonesian flag airline.

Seems I was at the Jakarta airport, trying to catch a Garuda flight to Hong Kong. But after a search in the computer the counter agent announced that the airline had no record of me, the flight was full, and I would have to rebook a later flight.

This really didn’t compute with me, as I had checked with Garuda a day or two before, and had been told that everything was cool.

But then I remembered that East Asians have a propensity for getting first and last names mixed up, so I enquired if they had anything under John. Oh yes Mr. John, the agent said. I have your records right here, everything is in order and you are confirmed Business Class.

Things didn’t work out that well in Hong Kong, though, where one day in a similar situation the airline really couldn’t find our reservations to Tokyo. The Chinese lady counter agent, however, was very solicitous, explaining that since we were not in the computer, we really didn’t exist, and since we didn’t exist, we didn't really need a flight to Tokyo, so please relax.

This explanation caused my traveling companion, who was new to the ways of the Orient, to almost bust a blood vessel. But after he calmed down a little, and stopped threatening to burn the place down, we found the Station Chief, and he got us a flight to Tokyo on Swissair.

The Swissair flight was fine, except when I tried to chat up the cute flight attendant. Trying to speak Switzerdeutch, (The Swiss version of German), gave me a headache in about five minutes, and I had to revert to English.

This lost me much face with my traveling companion, but the flight attendant thought that it was kind of humorous.