FINALLY! 2 Warmhearted souls escape the cold (YVR-TPE-BKK)

That truck looks like it came from far away ....  Zu is here !

Zu arrives at 11:30 and Hans & Denise arrive at 12:30. 

What does that make?

It's a Mexican Reunion after THREE years.





The Good-Bye visit to Grandma is disheartening.  
She seems to loose her mental grip on things......


21:00 
It's FREEZING outside, so we take a TAXI to Granville & West Georgia and only there change to public transit.  

I almost fall asleep in the taxi.






EVA Airlines is flying the route YVR-TPE at 0:50.   China Airlines (another Taiwan airline) is taking off along the same route 10 minutes ahead of us.  

I'm awake when the pilot guns the engines but I'm already asleep before the wheels leave the ground.  Talk about TIRED.  I sleep through the first 5 hours of the flight.

Only 20 minutes before we reach Taipei, do I realize that the Entertainment system has the Obama Parts Unknown episode.  As soon as I see pictures of Ha Noi, I feel my eyes getting wet.   I'm glad to be on my way home !

Thanks to my lay-overs here a few weeks ago, I know my way around Taipei's airport.  First stop smoking lounge; second stop Starbucks (the coffee in the plane was atrocious).  We have 2.5 hours until the plane for Bangkok leaves.

I'm drinking an Americano while Zu drinks Coca Cola:  I don't think the caffeine uptake coefficient of Coke is that good compared to that of coffee.

 I'm noticing how much my mood has improved just because I'm in Asia already.

Waiting to board the plane, I finally dip into the snack I got on the first flight: Fish Floss.   WTF is that?

Time to eat my airplane food snack ;-)

You have to try it yourself.  Taste & Texture are indescribable 

8:04 Taipei time
About to board the Taipei-Bangkok-Amsterdam flight. Lots of tall blondish people, whom I surmise to be Dutch.  Good thing I don't have to fly to Amsterdam right now; the 3.5 hours to Bangkok is more than enough.

Return of the Jedi

Immigration at Souvarnabhumi Airport is reasonably speedy (30 minutes line-up) and 15 minutes later we have found and boarded the Bangkok MRT (the red line in the metro map below).  Cost for one person for the whole way: 45 Baht / USD 1.40:  Do NOT take a taxi at the airport, LOL.

When we get off at the terminus station, there is a taxi stand but we ignore it.   I'm looking for Bus 59.  I see one bus , but in the process of looking for a bus stops we get LOST.  Maybe we SHOULD have taken a taxi at the terminus station ?
But I don't take taxis anymore as long as I don't have to. A recent habit; I'm looking to put in some legwork to be able to donate the savings to a good cause.

Good thing I've done some internet reading before. I see a taxi with its taxi sign lit up in RED.  Anywhere in the world this would mean that this taxi is NOT available.  Anywhere BUT here.   I wave, it flashes its lights and takes us in. 
It is a non-metered taxi, so when we reach our destination he asks us "How much do you want to pay?", while at the same time rubbing his belly and indicating that he's not getting enough food.

The room booking had been arranged VERBALLY without an exchange of e-mails with the owner in JULY.  It had occurred to me in the previous days that it might be wise to send him an e-mail to make sure that we actually have a room when we get there.   So I have to laugh when we enter the lobby, he points at me and says "I just sent you an e-mail 5 minutes ago asking you to confirm your booking today".  I'm just happy to be in a part of the world where this kind of thing still works well.

Time for a shower and a trip to 7-Eleven.  But the booze fridge is LOCKED. So we just head to Canal View Restaurant right around the corner.  I know that they serve wine, LOL.

The food is MUCH better this time at Canal View, but all of a sudden I'm TIRED. And I mean REALLY TIRED. I barely manage to walk back to the hotel afterwards and just collapse onto my bed at 5 pm.

We're consious again at 8 pm and I decide to give Zu a tour of the tourist ghetto of Khaosan Road.

Khao San Road.  Horrible tourist ghetto but Pretty Lights.

Time to head back to 7-Eleven because the fridge will be unlocked now ;-0

10 days of Gulag existence mostly in pictures

Tanned traveler takes transit to Hotel Gulag

Sunrise over Hotel Gulag

that white stuff! That wouldn't be SNOW???

the white stuff AGAIN?

It must be Christmas !

cold

3rd world living:  HIGH cell rates for LOUSY service.  Oh Canada !

at 7:30 pm THIS happens:

The power in lower North Vancouver is OUT.  

WTF?  There was NO WIND !  

My room is DARK & getting COLDER by the minute.

I knew I shouldn't have come back to the THIRD WORLD !!!

The power comes back on at 3 am.  I have to pee but temperatures in my room have dropped so far that I don't dare to get out from under the covers for 20 minutes.

Later in the day, I am curled up under my blankets with the heat on maximum. I am shivering and my feet are ice cold. 

I even look up the symptoms of Dengue Fever & Malaria (the incubation periods match my travel schedule) but I'm missing most of the symptoms.

It's a relief to read that Florida and the Island of Hawaii also had recent Dengue Fever outbreaks.  

Then I read an article about that good Samaritan Arab or Persian kid who tried to save an unknown man being attacked.   And it really does seem like in THIS FUCKED-UP SOCIETY NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED.

December 28.  George would have been 36 today.

\

Apple throttled its old iPhone models.  NO, they did NOT do that to create purchase demand for the newer models. Ha.Yeah right.  Fake News.  Finally found it.

My Motorola is three years old.   And I've been twiddling my thumbs more frequently recently waiting for it to do something.   Isn't capitalism GREAT?

What isn't GREAT is the annoyingly SLOW internet in these parts here.  Can't wait to get back to Vietnam !

WHO EXACTLY is it that forbids oil imports to North Korea?   Who exactly is it that is thus responsible for North Korean fishing boats running out of fuel mid-ocean and reaching Japan with corpses of fishermen aboard?  Who exactly is it that is thus responsible for the PEOPLE of North Korea NOT having any heating fuel in the middle of winter.   Nice going, Donald !  You're only forgetting one minor detail:

Canada is increasing the severity of its paranoid monitoring of its citizens and as a result a foreign bank sees itself unable to do business with me for the sole reason that I am a resident of Canada.

A Chicken Curry at Denny's.   UGLY but edible

Frantic ATM Action before my foreign account gets deactivated at midnight on Dec. 31

40000 people have been out of power in the Fraser Valley for TWO NIGHTS now. The other 60,000 only had to endure one night in the cold and dark.   
1st World ????

The rain and snow have come to an end; I can see some pink clouds that evoke VERY faint memories of a Viet sunrise.

But it doesn't quite FEEL the same......

Siberia anyone?

I finally found the USB cable for the Canon Ixus and retrieved this picture of April 2016 ;-)
6 stitches in 2 layers under that bandage, LOL

I make it halfway through Blade Runner 2049 on Dec. 30

Pretty but bone-chilling ;-(

The weather forecast predicted SUN

It's already foggy on New Year's Eve, so the haze around the crane light the next morning doesn't necessarily have to be the fine particulate pollution from the fireworks.

But by the evening of January 1st the air smells just like it looks.  Unfortunate.  Time to leave !

No, that's NOT camera shake but FOG.


Oh, right.  I killed another camera in Vietnam.   Time to buy a new one.  

Ah well, at least they have something to show for it after their short lives ;-)