A Little Bit Louder

This morning I started my 24 hour journey to HK… it started in a bit of a panic though. As I was about to leave at 8am, I checked the Air China website to see if my flight was still on time. To my shock and amazement, the site listed my flight as flying at 8:45! I tried calling the Air China office in KTM, but they weren’t open yet, so I rushed off to the airport as fast as I could, praying all the way.

Traffic was amazingly light and I made it to the airport in about 20 minutes. To my relief, the flight was actually at 10:45 as scheduled. Problem was, in my rush to leave, I left my printed eticket on mark’s table…. more praying… I hand the check in counter my ipod, where I had copied my itinery and conf #’s for this exact event. They looked at it a long time, then decided to accept it and give me my boarding pass.

At just a bit past 11, I was off, flying along the Himalayas… even more magnificent than the last time I saw them as we got much closer. In fact, we were flying through a gap in them to Lhasa before continuing on to Chengdu. There’s no words to describe how majestic those mountains look,... and trying to capture pictures through a plane window won’t do it any justice…. just trust me, it was amazing!

Lhasa was my next hurdle. Even though we were just stopping to drop off a few passengers and picking up a few more, we had to get off, clear customs, and get back on the plane. Problem was, I did’t have a visa, and was told that I didn’t need one as I was in transit. So I told the customs guys this, and they asked to see my ticket… so again, I handed them my ipod, and again, it was accepted after much studying of my text file itinery… all this while i sat there freezing. It was 6 degrees outside… and i’m sure it wasn’t much warmer inside. Plus we were at 12000ft… cold… the terminal had no heat at all. So half an hour of freezing and basically walking around in a circle, I was back on the plane, in a different seat, but happy that I had an official stamp that said i was legally allowed to be in China for up to 24 hours… which meant I got to leave the airport in Chengdu.

In Chengdu, I picked up my bags and went through another screener… to this point, I had gone through 6 security screeners/pat downs/bag searches/passport checks… where they decided i couldn’t bring in the Gurkha knife that I was given by Joshua’s father. If I had just bought it in Thamel, I would just leave it, but receiving one from an actual Gurhka soldier is different. So I told them that I wasn’t staying in China, but in transit through to HK… and asked if i could just pick it up on the way out of the country… they agreed…only if i had a ticket to leave tomorrow… wanting to see the ticket, I showed them my ipod… and again… accepted!

So there I was… in arrivals… and no clue where to go. I hadn’t made up my mind yet as to whether or not I was going to overnight in the airport, or try to find a cheap hotel. Everyone I talked to spoke very little if any english, or cantonese. But I did find some girls working at the car rental place that were nice enough to help me find a hotel in town for 380 Yuan ($68 CAD)... mostly I just wanted a clean/safe/secure place to sleep, and international departures at the airport was closed so if I were to stay there, I would have to sleep outside the secure area… something I didn’t want to do. So now I’ve got a room at the Sichuan Hotel… part of the crown hotel chain… pretty nice… small room though, but I don’t care… i think the bathroom is almost as big as the room….

I definitely need to read chinese though, or at least speak mandarin fluently. I went to a restaurant after dropping off my things and ordered something to eat. I recognized the chinese character for beef so I pointed to that and also got a bowl of congee. It turns out the characters beside the word “beef” meant “burn your face off hot”...

Well, it’s been an incredible day of travel… flying over and along the Himalayas, being incredibly blessed in all my encounters with officials, customs, etc. I have a 5am wakeup call tomorrow so I’m off to take a long hot shower and then to bed. Thanks to everyone who has been praying for me through this trip. It continues to be more challenging and amazing than I had ever thought.

yeah that’s right… Air Canada!.... I’m not sure why everyone rags on them so much. I can’t remember the last time I had a bad experience with them. Maybe because I usually have pretty simple travel plans and not much goes on.

This trip has been different though. I don’t think anyone ever saw what’s happening in Bangkok coming. Let me set the scene for you. I booked a round trip ticket on Air Canada from Calgary (YYC) to Bangkok (BKK). Then from there, I booked a round trip ticket to Kathmandu (KTM) using aeroplan points (which saved me about $1000). I figure, while I’m here, I’ll see if i can get a cheap flight to HKG, i might as well go and see if i can visit some relatives I haven’t seen in over 10 years… probably 15… I check around and find that I can get to HKG for $330 RT from BKK, and I’m able to push out my return flight to Calgary for about $75 (which is a whole lot less than I thought Air Can would charge me).

My revised plans then are:

• Nov 26: KTM -> BKK (handled by thai air)
• Nov 28: BKK -> HKG
• Dec 5: HKG -> BKK
• Dec 7th: BKK -> YYC.

As you can see, my travel plans are heavily reliant on Bangkok being up and running.

Nov 26th: I find out that BKK is shut down … literally hours before my flight. I go down to the Thai Air office, and they issue me another ticket for the next day. I’m pretty sure the airport won’t be up and running by then, but I have little choice so I take the ticket and leave.

Nov 27th: BKK is still closed so I go back down to the Thai Air office to get a new ticket. This time they issue me a ticket for Dec 1. Again, having no choice, and not much extra money to book new flights that I would pay out of pocket, I take the ticket and resign myself to the fact that I’ll be here longer.

Nov 28th: I’m supposed to be flying to HK today on Emirates Airline. Unable to do so, I call the office to see if they can do a refund. The office here in KTM is completely useless. I’m not even sure why they exist as they tell me that Emirates doesn’t actually fly out of KTM. They tell me to wait till I get to an airport and get a refund from an actual Emirates counter.

Dec 1: I’m getting worried about getting a flight home by the 7th so I call Air Canada to see if they’ll fly me home from KTM on the 7th as they just issued a change of policy to accommodate travelers stranded by BKK and Mumbai stuff. Air Canada can’t find my Aeroplan booking. I’m starting to worry that they’ve totally lost the booking in the system and I would be up the creek waiting till Thai Air can get me back to BKK. I get transferred over to Aeroplan who are able to find the booking. Turns out that the original booking reference was overwritten by Thai Air when they rebooked my flight.

I explain my situation to the agent (who, unlike the travel insurance agent is very knowledgeable)... and she figures out I can get to HKG via Lhasa and Cheng Du. Lhasa is a tibetan city… Cheng Du is a small Chinese city of 11 million people…. I had never thought to travel that way. So I ask if she can book me and she does. So I leave KTM on Tuesday, after an extra week here, (which has been quite fun and taxing all at the same time).... It’s a 24 hour travel day to get to HKG … a direct flight would be under 4 hours, but at this point, I’m just glad to be getting out.

So now I have a flight to HKG, but a return flight from BKK to YYC. I call Air Canada back, and ask if they can reroute my ticket through HKG. The agent puts me on hold for a minute and then comes back and asks if I want to leave HKG on the 3rd since, the official Air Canada policy hasn’t indicated that my flight on the 7th would be canceled yet. I tell him that I’d actually like to stay in HKG for a few extra days if I’m going to be there, but that I’d like to be proactive in booking a flight home so that I’m not caught trying to find a last minute flight home. I tell him the 10th would be find so I can spend a full week in HKG with my relatives. The agent finds me the last seat out on the 10th via NRT (tokyo), YVR, YYC. I get in at 1:24 on the 10th. Plenty of time to get a good meal in, a shower, and still get to youth. WOOO!

Now I feel stupid for not calling AC in the first place, automatically assuming that THAI would be the best bet (Though maybe AC wouldn’t have done anything at that point anyway). Flying over to Asia, AC had the best plane, and best food vs ANA and THAI, which really surprised me. Thai kept flowing drinks, so I never went thirsty but they ran out of chicken so I had some overdone fish instead. Most importantly, when I needed a way to get home, they really stepped up. I can see now why it’s ranked one of the better airlines in the world. Thanks Air Canada!

The hardest part about being here right now is finding purpose. By Wednesday morning, I had said my goodbyes, packed, and was mentally already in Hong Kong with my relatives. Then I found out I BKK was shut down and I would be here at least another day…. and then another… and now I’m scheduled to go out Monday (which doesn’t look great either).

At least now I know I’ll be here a few more days and can once again ramp up my existence here. For a few days, I left my bags packed and tried not to start/get involved with too much locally because I wasn’t sure how long I was going to still be here. Being in that state… stasis if you will is tough on the mind. I was spending all my time trying to figure out how to still get to Hong Kong, or at least out of Kathmandu to somewhere with more flight options.

Today I pretty much accepted the fact that I am where I am, and I should make the most of my extra days here. So today was awesome. Binod taught me and Ashok how to ride a motorcycle. I’d never been on a bike before Kathmandu, and now I was riding one. Mountain biking tons this summer improved my balance significantly, so my comfort level on 2 wheels is decent. There’s lots to think about on a motorcycle though and I’m far from ready to ride in traffic, but it was a super fun afternoon of hanging out with a couple of local guys… and a whole lot of laughing. I’m not a motorcycle ninja… yet… but Mark definitely looks like one with his neck warmer up and his toque down… and I think it’ll be the NEB name one of these weeks.

Youth tonight was pretty cool too… movie, pop, popcorn… but great because of the part after where a mass of people walk home, laughing and singing silly nepali songs I don’t understand, but have actions to them … it reminded me of being in school, walking home with my friends where people would drop off along the way depending on where they lived. We never did any actions to any of the songs we sang on the way home from school, but then again, I don’t think GnR songs were meant to have actions. The best times I’ve had here in Nepal thus far have been times when I’ve just been able to hang out with people, without a specific agenda. Walking home tonight was another one of those times.

I think there’s something valuable about people living within a walking distance of church… or of the community they’re actively involved in… I love the fact that people from the church can walk over to our place… and that extended families live together… maybe I need to move?

So I’m still in Nepal. I went down to the Thai Air office and it was twice as hectic as it was yesterday. Everyone is trying to find different ways to get around asia without going through Bangkok, one of the largest hubs in the area.

Last night I was speaking with my travel insurance company (thus far useless), and they were trying to be “helpful” by suggesting things like taking a train/bus to another international airport…

agent: “Maybe you can take a train or bus to New Dell HI” me: “sorry, where?” agent: “New Dell HI, India?” me: “oh, you mean, New Delhi!” agent: “uh… yeah” me: “... it would be faster for me to sit around for a week”

Scott and I took a flight to Phuket this morning (It’s pronounced “pu get” for those of you with a dirty mind…) For a discount airline, Nok Air is pretty nice… it’s run by Thai Airways. The seats reclined to a pretty steep angle which made for good sleeping. The airplane bathroom was also the nicest thing i’ve crapped in in 2 weeks… It’s amazing how a few weeks in the back country will change your perspective…

Anyhow, we hopped a bus to Krabi (pronounced Grabee) and 2.5 hours later, we’re in our hostel… clean, air conditioned (necessary when it’s 30 degrees and humid), all for 600 baht… We’re also booked on a few tours for the next few days. A snorkling island hopping tour tomorrow… and then a full day kayak excursion around some caves and islands… I think we paid a bit more than we could’ve gotten those for, but hey, we’re on vacation… and well, we’re in thailand.

That said, I’m going to get off this computer and go find some eats… I hear the Pad Thai is super in this town and only 25B….