Munyee Lau's open letter to a fellow passenger on an April 12 AirAsia flight has gone viral and received plenty of laughs and sympathy from others who have experienced some people's obnoxious flying habits during long trips.
Lau, 24, a comedy writer working out of Malaysia, was on her way to Australia when the person seated behind her caught her attention. First, Lau says, the woman repeatedly kicked her seat, then began loudly arguing with person next to her and noisily opening packages of
food every 30 minutes, according to the Daily Mail.
Lau, who wrote about the experience on the gag site SGAG, said that when she thought things could not get any worse, that passenger took off her shoes and stuck her feet up between the seat and the window. Lau snapped a photo and posted it to Instagram as evidence.
"For immediately, my nose was assaulted by a putrid smell of death and decay," Lau wrote in the letter titled "Dear Passenger 15A." "The stench was so strong that I turned to check if the old lady seated next to me was still breathing. It was so nice of you to take off your shoes and put your feet between my seat and the plane window. It must have taken considerable effort — it was a small space but you stuck it as close to my face as you possibly could. Your kindness moves me."
Lau wrote that she was particularly annoyed by the passenger kicking her seat, saying, "Despite my common economy seat, you offered me a full back massage by repeatedly kicking the back of chair. To date, I have yet to regain full mobility of the lower half of my body."
Since sleeping on the flight was no longer an option because of the obnoxious passenger, Lau began writing the letter instead.
"I wrote the letter on the motion sickness bag because I couldn't sleep a wink throughout the entire flight and had to find a means of distracting myself from the smell, short of jumping off the plane," she told the Daily Mail.
Lau later told ABC News that she hopes people get a good laugh about it while maybe developing some coping skills.
"Rather than being traumatized by it, I figured I'd write about it because that's how I cope," Lau said.
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