Big Adventure 25

If you are reading this we have made it back to and then from Nova Scotia safe and sound.

In my last issue I mentioned, "Our plane to New York leaves at almost midnight on the 20th" and that we would be back there on the 21st. Well, funny story - we actually discovered while standing in line to check in that the plane didn't leave at "almost midnight on the 20th" but rather "just a little after midnight on the 20th". This turned out to be an important distinction, as it meant that our plane had actually left Bangkok about 20 hours earlier - in the early morning of the 20th rather than late at night on the 20th.

The exceptionally nice young woman at the check in counter explained that unfortunately tonight's flight is seriously overbooked, and so while she would put us on the standby list she does not hold out much hope. The is no flight tomorrow, so the next flight leaves early Monday morning. She can not give us standby seats on that - so if tonight's standby doesn't work out we will need to call Aeroplan and rebook reward seats - not gonna happen - or buy full fare seats on that plane. In addition we have also of course missed our flight from New York to Halifax, and our rental car may or may not still be waiting for us in Halifax. AND if we do need to stay here until Sunday night we will have 2 more taxi rides and hope we can find a hotel with a room.

Luckily we got to the airport way early - Jacquie was finished at the decor show on Wednesday, so on Thursday we did some shopping and Friday was an extra day to kill with nothing to do but wait for our flight that left the night before. The reason this was lucky is that it gave us PLENTY of time to beat ourselves and each other up over our complete stupidity. So by the time it was time to go back to that nice young woman at the check in counter to find out if we could go tonight we were pretty much finished with doing so.

While giving us our boarding passes she explained how extremely lucky we are, and suggested that she thought we must be good people because we clearly must have good karma.

We ran to the gate where our flight is now boarding, got stuck in two long security lines, but the flight - that we were not booked on - waited for us (and I assume some other people, but we did appear to be last).

One of the disappointments discussed in detail during our wait was that we had spent 25,000 extra Aeroplan points EACH for business class seats and that our screw up will have ruined that. Well, no, it turned out we even got those seats. I am writing this from somewhere over the north pole while stretched out on my bed after a nice nights sleep. The seat/bed is fully electric with a lovely back massager. And right from the welcome champagne at boarding the service and food has been amazing.

We will be sending a letter to Thai Airways telling them about that nice young woman at the check in counter who we believe got us here and saved us a great deal of grief (caused entirely by our own stupidity).

From JFK in New York (where we arrived at 6:30 am) we took a $35 cab ride to La Guardia. The "sticker shock" has officially begun. At La Guardia we needed to go through the same process - convince Air Canada to honour yesterday's ticket. The woman at the counter did not want to help, but her superior was there and told her to say our connecting flight was late arriving (no kidding) so the ticket could be used - she did manage to charge us $30 for our suitcase being overweight, but that's a small price to pay. Four more hours to spare till our 1:00 pm flight to Halifax - then we'll see if Hertz still has a car there for us.

The rental car should be the easy part. It's fully pre-paid, we're just a day late picking it up. Well not so fast. They need to put a small ($60) hold on a credit card, as a security deposit in case we damage their car (since we are a day late, the piece of crap we rented is gone, so we get the free upgrade to a new Toyota Camry). But our credit cards are refused - a phone call later and we hear that a problem at Homesense / Winners resulted in some numbers being stolen, so they sent us new cards and cancelled the old ones (cancelled just a few days before). Now we are almost home, at the Halifax airport, with no other credit card and so no way - not even a cash deposit - to get our car to go those last few miles. So now the nice young girl there (Tanya) makes some calls, and finally reaches a regional supervisor and convinces that person that we are a good risk, so they agree that we can take the car, go through our mail (6 months worth) to find our new credit cards, activate them and then call Tanya with the new number so she can process the $60 charge.

Even as exhausted as we are, sitting here on Saturday night on our patio overlooking the LaHave River, we appreciate how lucky we are, and give a quiet extra "thanks" to those numerous nice people who helped us get here. Including Marlene for inviting us to stay here.

Time passes.

We have had a viciously busy time in Nova Scotia. Between taxes and visiting and Jacquie's store and a thousand (exaggeration) little chores around the mostly finished house. Highlights: seeing our friends and family again, especially at the wonderful party orchestrated by Bernadette (and her helper bees) and getting to see the now (mostly) finished house. Lowlights: the cold and the lack of warmth.

I was really a bit afraid that it would all seem too quiet to us now, but quiet is okay. (The town certainly seems pretty big - the other day I was out driving and I saw the taxi.) The day before we left I drove to town early in the morning. It was one of those perfect mornings - the river was a sheet of glass, and the rising sun was just starting to burn the mist off of the water. I passed an older man and his older dog just heading out for their morning walk, both of them obviously thrilled to be doing so. A strong reminder that I could also be very happy here.

The interesting thing about this visit was that it felt like the first time I really sat back and compared living in Koh Samui and living in Nova Scotia. Last year from the moment we made the decision and I said yes to the job I never gave it another thought - decision made. Of course I was now back in Nova Scotia with nothing to tie us to either place, and now with a grasp of what life is actually like living in Thailand. So of course reconnecting with our family and friends makes it hard to go, but then our life there makes it hard to stay. In the end, as our departure date approached we both started to get excited to be going back, which I figure is pretty telling . Plus we need a rest.

I'm writing this from the airplane, just entering Kazakstan airspace, heading for Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. For some reason we are going mostly east this time, for the first time (still far enough north to enjoy the summer long sunrise to the north. We miss the International Date Line, so it just keeps getting later and later. Next stop Bangkok - only about 6 hours to go - then home for a little hug from Sami.

We're here. Samui, Sami and sleep. I'll write more in a few weeks, when we wake up.