Jaidan Turns Two

Today's song is: Happy Birthday

I arrived in Bangkok on the 29th and that night was unforgettable but in the best tradition of Hangover 2, I don't remember that much of it. Perhaps that is a good thing :-) Tavorn and Jaidan joined me on the 30th, which was a very quiet day of hugs and kisses, and getting reacquainted with my boy Jaidan.

Today is the 31st and Jaidan was born at 6 am 2 years ago. We took him to ToysRUS and let him choose his birthday present. Unsurprising, he chose another small stuffed dog. Jaidan has always liked dogs and it was his first word even before Momma and Poppa.

Tacky, Thavorn's best friend joined us for his birthday celebration. We are staying at the Davis Hotel which I recommend as one of Bangkok's finest older hotels with a definite Bangkok flavor to it. Jaidan had an hour longer swim in the hotel pool and it won't be long before he is swimming by himself.

Thavorn and Tacky had not seen each other for quite some time so they decided to head out for dinner and a night out .. ending up in an Issan music/dance venue which they enjoyed. Tacky regaled us with the story of her friend N from Switzerland who rented a motorbike and spent the week driving around on it from bar to bar before getting stopped after running a red light and N ending up spending the night in jail with lots of cockroaches crawling all over him when the lights went out.

The next morning N posted a 20,000 baht bond and has to have his day in court and may end up being barred from Thailand as he blew way over the limit. At this moment N is in the air travelling back to Switzerland. I think I could write a book on Tacky's exploits. The phrase fast and furious is an apt description of her life in the bars and the fast lane. I consider myself lucky to be a friend :-) Any farang would be lucky to win this ladies heart and would never be bored :-)

Fast and Furious

TTYL

Overnight in Hong Kong

Today's song is: Dead Flowers .. Willy and Keith  .. go figure :-)

I overnight-ed in Hong Kong after 30 strait hours of travel with no sleep. Mind you, I did not sleep much but it was wonderful to just close my eyes and rejoice at just being close Bangkok and Thavorn and Jaidan. I am staying at the Regency airport Hotel that you simply walk to via a 5 minute walkway. It is expensive but when you consider the alternative of taking a taxi to some unknown location in Hong Kong.

Here I am getting ready to type this blog post.

 and here is Jaidan waiting for me to arrive

Thavorn tells me Jaidan is missing his Poppa and starting to chat now. Unfortunately, I suspect it is in Thai .. the price I pay for going to Canada for 2 months. It should be easy to get caught up i English. I will start by reading Jaidan the 10 books I purchased and am bring back with me.

I found the trip long this time. I suspect it was because I had  3 layovers of 5 hours, 6 hours, and overnight in Hong Kong. I will have to do better in my planning for next summer. For example, Tokyo to Chicago is 11 hours while Newark to Tokyo is 13.5 hours. Now 2.5 hours may not seem like much, tacked on at the end of a flight, it is!!!

My Air Asia flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok is only about 2.5 hours and it leaves at 10:45 and puts me into Bangkok at 12:30 pm. I will get to my hotel at about 2:30 and have two errands to run before I catch some more sleep and meet my friend John for some beers and bar hopping.

And (I know, never start a sentence with And) in the spirit of saving the planet ...

TTYL,

Two more sleeps ..

Today's song is: Wasn't that a Party  .. Irish Rovers  .. to get me in the mood for Bangkok

Today is Monday and my day for cleaning up items left undone. Tuesday is packing and checking documentation for my flights and hotel stay over in Hong Kong on the 28th. Wednesday is off to the airport at 4 am for my 6 am departure to Newark, then Tokyo, then Hong Kong.

Tuesday afternoon my daughter Jaime and I are going to watch the new Star Wars movie which will be my last activity in Canada. Unfortunately I did not get to see everyone I would have liked to see like Larry, Liz, and Debbi, but I hope to make up for it next year.

Back in the village, it was Tai's 10th birthday and she was celebrating with cupcakes and friends.  Here are two pics ..

Jaidan showing patience

Ready to dive in

The difficult part in returning back to Thailand is deciding what to keep and what to chuck. I find myself divesting more and more. It is truly amazing what you don't need in life :-)

TTYL

Journeys

Today's song is: Me and Bobby McGee  .. Pink

It is interesting to compare journeys. The reason that friends give me for not visiting Thailand is mostly 'too far'. My journey to PEI by car takes longer than my flight from Ottawa to Bangkok, especially if you make it a two day trip which most people do.

I find the trip to Bangkok must easier and certainly less boring than an auto trip. The longest leg is usually about 12 hours (in this case, Chicago to Hong Kong). This may sound like a lot, but it is broken up with 3 meals that usually take an hour to dispense with and includes at least 3 free glasses of red wine. I also watch 3 full length movies which are good for another 5 hours. That leaves me 4 hours to kill. I always take an isle seat which mean I can get up and stretch whenever I want. I usually take at least 2 twenty minute stretches which kills at least another hour. That leaves with 3 hours of reading and or snoozing. All in all, not too bad.

The connecting flights of 3 hours are easy!

I am back in Ottawa for my last 4 days in Canada. Today I washed Elaine's car to remove the road grime and bugs from the trip. I am chilling out with some red wine and a book. I certainly have no wish to get back in a car. Sunday, I will go to my sister's downtown condo to pick up a few items I have stored there. Monday, I am off to the lawyers and my insurance company to to tie up loose ends. Tuesday, I will pack and double and triple check my connections and hotels. I also hope to see my son Jordan sometime before I leave.

It was great to visit wit my sisters and my daughter Jaime on our trip out east to spread my mom's ashes. Especially good to spend quality time with my daughter Jaime!

I am. however, really looking forward to getting back to Bangkok, the most fun city on the planet. Also looking for some great lovins from Thavorn and Jaidan :-)

Don't Stop Believing  .. Journey

TTYL

Ashes to Ashes

Today's song is: Break up in a Small Town  .. Sam Hunt

and Part of Your World .. both requested by Jaime

Today we were out by 9 am, driving to the beach that my mother spent her PEI summers at. We were travelling based on my memory where the rental college was located and after a few misdirections we found it. We parked the car and decided to walk the beach for a while to get in the correct frame of mind to scatter the ashes. After about an hour we sat down on some rocks. No one seemed to want to take the initiative so I scooped out a fair size whole in the sand and removed my mom's ashes from the gold transportation bag and spread them on the bottom. I then carefully spread the sand back over the ashes and Jaime added 2 flowers (Queen Anne's Lace). We then sat for a while and then left the ashes to the sand and inevitable ebb and flow of the ocean tides.

We then headed out looking for the fish and chips shop where we used to take my mom. Our mom, being English, loved her fish and chips. However, my memory failed me this time and we decided to head off to the Dune's restaurant. The 30 minute waiting list for lunch scared us off and we headed down the road to Richard's Fish and Chips which came highly recommended. Upon arriving at Richards, we discovered it was also the original location we were looking for. What luck?

We decided to try Richards and it was okay, but I am not sure if it was better than our original place. Richard's seems to have been heavily promoted and I am sure it must have been mentioned in some rag like the Lonely Planet, which all the backpackers and similar tourists seem to think is the bible for travel an eating. I always recommend asking a local.

We then decided to visit Stanhope National Park and walked and sat on that beach for another 90 mins before returning to Charlottetown. It looks like it is an easy night for drinking wine and reflecting on today's activities.

I promised some picks so here they are:

Last night's dinner at the Charlottetown Harbour

Music Recital, Charlottetown Harbour

Dining place from below

Charlottetown Harbour

We had dessert here

Checkers anyone?

Charlottetown outdoor mall

Student street musicians

Beach where we spread the ashes  .. Ann and Jaime in the distance

Steps down from the cottage

Elaine, Ann, and Jaime

Various shots of the Dune's restaurant gardens

Not sure why they have all these Cambodian statues

Teak root chair

The Dunes from the gardens

Where we ate

The blue signed restaurant is where we used to eat

Stanhope beach

selfies in the wind  .. front facing camera

The sky is so blue in Canada

TTYL

Charlottetown, PEI

Today's song is: Crystallize   ... Lyndsey Stirling  .. recommended by my daughter Jaime

We arrived in Charlottetown yesterday after overnighting in Fredericton New Brunswick. The roads from Quebec City to Fredericton are beautiful and the pics do not do the countryside justice. The roads from Fredericton to Charlotte are the older roads that I am used to from the 90's when our family was doing the summer vacation in the maritimes. The Confederation Bridge is an awesome engineering feat. It is worth the trip all by itself.

Confederation Bridge

On the road again ... I'm driving ...

Today is a day of rest from the cars and I think a walk down to Charlottetown harbour is in order. After much discussion we decided a 4 pm sojourn to the harbour would be ideal. It should be a good photo opportunity.

TTYL

Audience

Today's song is: You are my Sunshine  .. Johnny Cash

Warning, this post will only be of interest to nerds and geeks with an inquisitive mind ...

I have been puzzled of late with the stats on my viewing audience. France, for some reason hosts the highest numbers of page views. That is sort of unusual IMHO as my blog is in English and we do not see all that many French folks in Thailand. I decided to review the data. This is what it looks like:

Two things immediately jumped out at me. One, the most prominent operating system is Linux but Linux desktops are not very common. Second, the most prominent browser is Safari which is on Apple IOS (MacIntosh), which was way down the list of operating systems.

My conclusion is that someone or some company is running a bot (short for robot) in France on a Linux server. A bot is an automated system that does something on a regular basis such as visit a website. Often the bot will be what is referred to as a headless browser. Headless browsers can pretend to be any type of browser and I think in this case, it masquerades as a safari (Mac) browser.

Now why the bot is interested in my humble blog, is beyond me. I can only conclude that Google surfaces my blog with some keywords that the bot is interested in.

I warned you that this post would only be of interest to geeks and nerds. Any thoughts out there on my conclusion?

TTYL