[ad_1]
A British passenger likely thought he’d flown to a parallel dimension after sitting next to his in-flight facsimile — who shared his name, looks and even a friend.
“It’s crazy. What are the odds on that?” Mark Garland, 58, said while describing the mind-bending encounter on a flight from London to Bangkok last week.
Mark, a bus driver from Wiltshire, in South West England, had reportedly been checking into his flight when the gate agents perplexingly told him that he’d already checked in, the New York Post reports.
It was only later that the staff realised that there were two Mark Garlands on the same flight.
The other was a 62-year-old builder from Bristol, who was a dead ringer for his younger counterpart with similar features and a matching bald head.
The younger Mark explained that the check-in employee apparently didn’t cross reference the booking number and checked in his lookalike instead, which initially caused him some agita.
“I stood at the check-in counter for 40 minutes while they tried to work out the problem,” he said.
“We then had to go to the boarding gate early to identify our cases.”
That’s when the doppelgängers met in person — an experience that evoked looking in a mirror.
“I was shocked at how strange it was,” said the younger Mark on seeing his in-flight stunt double. “People said we could be brothers.”
He added, “I said, ‘Look, I’m Mark Garland,’ showing him my passport, and he started laughing and opened his passport and showed me his name, and it was banter.”
They then proceeded to jokingly blame the other for causing them so many “problems”.
The elder Mark was similarly gobsmacked by the encounter, exclaiming: “It was crazy — I have never known anything like it.”
“I go to the desk and there’s a bloke who looks just like me, but he’s a bit bigger than me,” the construction worker said, before cheekily quipping. “I’m better looking.”
He continued to embrace the moment: “He’s like me, I’ve got a character and I love winding people up — we’re the same.”
The younger and elder Mark had coincidentally decided to travel to Thailand on vacation for four and three weeks, respectively.
And the serendipity didn’t stop there: When the pair boarded the plane, they discovered that they were sitting right next to each other.
The acquaintances subsequently chatted for the duration of the 11 and a half hour flight, during which realised that they had a lot more in common than just congruent names and looks.
The two lived just 15 minutes apart and had unknowingly crossed paths before like ships passing in the night.
“I’m a bus driver, and Mark said he sometimes uses my bus,” said Mark.
This article originally appeared on the New York Post and was reproduced with permission
[ad_2]
Source link
