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I'm very fortunate that my sickness on the road has never been food poisoning or anything related; it's mostly been a cold or blowing out black snot plus coughing fits from weird weather or dust storms. Everything that happened within the first hour that I got into Vietnam is the most common answer I give lately: 1. I sat on a bunch with gum. 2. When paying for my visa, one of my bills had a small dot from a sharpie and the customs official wouldn't accept it. She was about I'd have to go to the back of the line that was 100+ deep at that point, but when she noticed I had some Thai baht in my wallet, she offered to let me pay in that currency. Except the converted rate she threw at me also meant she kept about $10 to herself, and that's when I learned not to just take the first price someone throws at me in SEA, even if they have a uniform on. 3. Got baited/switched when I picked up my prepaid sim. Once I got a chance to get some rest, I was on way better guard and the rest of Vietnam was awesome. I have another story that felt like the end of the world at the time, but it's become one of my favorite lovely travel experience stories: The time that caberham saved my rear end in HK. He'd never even met me in person and I'm never gonna forget the gesture. Long story short, a few fuckups within my control ends up snowballing into panic, so have your poo poo together before you travel as best as possible. The plan was to fly from JFK to Hong Kong, then connect to Kuala Lumpur. The idea was to get to my hotel in KL and promptly pass the gently caress out after a ton of travel. Except none of that happened. My flight out of JFK ended up getting delayed 4+ hours, so there's no doubt I'll miss the connection. The flight was originally supposed to leave around 11 PM, so leaving the airport meant spending more time on a train rather than doing anything interesting in the city. That was the first time I slept in an airport terminal. I got a tiny bit of credit due to noshowing my flight to KL, and since it was on a separate ticket, I had to buy a new one. Unfortunately, every flight was sold out until the next morning and after getting that sorted, next thing to do was find last minute accommodation. Swing by an ATM, then the screen has an error message in Chinese, and it spits out a slip saying "card not accepted". I hop on the wifi to call my bank, and the relief to hear that my account hadn't been compromised quickly turned into full on hyperventilating panic as the lady on the other end said, "However sir, your card expired yesterday." I nearly had a total nervous breakdown in an airport terminal, so I sit down to collect myself and talk through the situation with friends back home. I recall exchanging pm's with caberham here and on CS, so I fire him a message to get him caught up. He gives me additional contact info and tells me a place to meet him in the city. I figure with everything that's happened, gently caress it, what do I have to lose? Pick up a sim card, drop off my backpack in left luggage, hop on the airport express train, and when I meet up with him, turns out he's already out with the HK goons. They took me right in and all of the bad poo poo that happened felt like nothing. Hopped to a few bars, ended up going to karaoke, and after all that, I'm thinking it's about time for me to head back to the airport despite being in a near-delirious state. One goon offered, "I heard about what's going on, you're welcome to take a shower and rest for a few hours at least" and of course I took him up on that! Took a power nap, cleaned up, then back to the airport and flew to KL. In general, learned a lot from that trip and it really wasn't so bad having to survive KL and Penang with about the $70 I had in my pocket. Spent my birthday in Taipei and was staying with a friend, so I was able to get cash by sending him money over Paypal and he'd go to the ATM. I didn't actually plan on spending time in HK until the end of the trip, and that group of goons got together again for sushi. It felt real loving awesome buying dinner for the guy who offered me a place to quickly rest and we had another fun night out in HK. On my way back home, I was shocked to see my boarding pass show business class. Turns out a frequent flyer friend from back home used a systemwide upgrade on me as a birthday gift.
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Mar 29, 2016 22:54
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| # ¿ May 3, 2024 22:01 |
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