A Tale of Two Cities…

In travel, one does not go north, south, east, or west —we go forward. This is measured in time and inertia, not direction. We have returned home. I use the word ‘home’ loosely; I have long thought of home as where you keep your underwear. For us, that drawer is located in northern Thailand, in that country’s second-largest city, Chiang Mai—not Seattle.

Comparing these two cities is a study in contrast: Asian versus Caucasian; tropical versus temperate weather. On one side, the long-held ancient traditions of society; on the other, the rugged individualism of the West. One has never heard of ‘Taco Time’; the other embraces the crisp bean burrito, first dipped in sour cream, then dunked in hot sauce. * Historical note: this burrito retains its molten heat so long that settlers in the 1800s along the Pacific coast would use them to heat their cabins.

The Thai people I know would be shocked—first by the cost of… everything, then by societal rules such as walking into someone’s home without removing one’s shoes. Curling up on the couch with shoes on would be as unusual as seeing my father having fried fish for breakfast. Though, with the arrival of the digital age, the world is shrinking and becoming more homogeneous. I may be so bold as to say this is a detriment to the East. I’ll back this up with no facts or nor personal experience; I can do this because we have entered the age of the ‘death of truth.’ Where a lie is merely a drifting ghost, but when repeated enough, it gains a heartbeat to haunt us all.

Geez, Bill! Maybe not listening to melancholy new-age music while writing would be a good idea for the future. 😊

The Pursuit of Return Tickets…

I did not pay the full kingly ransom for the upgraded flight from Taipei to Seattle. That would be beyond insanity, for it would be north of $15,000 for a pair of these seats. Fortunately, EVA Air does give you an option to bid on unused seats, since airline makes no money on them otherwise. The way it works is you go online, place a bid (along with a credit card number) and 50 hours before the flight, any empty seats in this class go to the highest bidders. So, for the flight from Taipei to Seattle we won. Excellent! Maybe karma just paid me a dividend.

The pursuit of a return flight upgrade became a confusing and frustrating labyrinth too convoluted to recount here. Let’s just say once in the sky EVA Air is my favorite airline, but when trying to contact them later they are notoriously the worst on the planet. Let me repeat ‘worst on the planet’.Even the Red Sea Airline in Djibouti in North Africa, which only has an arsenal of two prop planes and has daily routes to Mogadishu, at least they have someone to answer the damn phones. But suffice to say I was unable to secure a return flight with the upgraded seats ahead of time and will have to depend upon the kindness of the person at the check-in desk the day of the flight.

Then… out of the blue, three days before the return flight, a godsend of an email arrives. There was a feeling no different to getting one of the 5 Golden Tickets in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I am now allowed to bid. In which I did.