Back in town...
I was sad leaving Bangkok on Tuesday night and it's 35 degree weather, but I knew that I'll be back again, so that made the departure easier.
Our first stop on the way back was a 12 hour overnight lay-over in Hong Kong where we agreed to not get sleep at a Hotel. We were hoping to buy some electronics but by the time we had arrived back to Mongkok, all the stores were closed. It was still an interesting night where I managed to convince my friend at 3am to hop onto some random bus and see where it lended us. We ended up in this hugely dense residential area with high-rise buildings all around us. The are was very un-Hong Kong-like since there was practically no pedestrians or cars in motion.
These long-haul flights are starting to get easier as I slept a good 7-8 hours on the last Hong Kong to New York flight. In New York, we managed to narrowly catch the American Airlines flight to Montreal, as we were approaching Montreal, we thought the end of journey was near. Once again, however, leaving Montreal is much easier then getting back to it!
As we were approaching Montreal, we get a message from the captain that there was a lot of fog that had suddenly accumulated over Montreal and that we would need to wait for it to clear before we can land. We circled over Montreal (so close, yet so far!) for about 1.5 hours before they decided to head back to Albany, NY for refuelling. Upon touchdown, we were basically told that the plane was now heading back to JFK and that we could *maybe* catch another flight to Montreal later that night, or if we get off, we were totally on our own. We decided to disembark and rent a car back to Montreal.
Well that turned out to be easier said then done. Practically every car-rental company had a desk at the airport, but only Avis had a car that we could drop off in Canada (it needed to have a Canadian plate). Unfortunately, somebody beat us to that car already. We then decided to rent an american car that we would drive back to Montreal and drive it back to Plattsburgh the next day to drop it off. Only Hertz was willing to let us do that. We then rented the car (at a cost of 155$ USD for ONE day!, but fortunately split with 3 more passengers of the plane) and headed toward Canada. At the Canadian customs, we were informed that would not be allowed to enter the country with an american rental car. The customs officer then seemed to feel sorry for us and finally let us through.
Anyways, I'm now back home (and it's freaking cold here, and why is there still snow??!) and back at work. I'm currently going through all my pics and will start re-uploading the old ones in full-resolution as well as upload all the missing ones from Singapore and Bangkok.
One note about the DSLR camera. It's a nice camera, but not for me while travelling. Too big and heavy, on the last 2 weeks in Bangkok, I was leaving it at the hotel a lot more often than not. I'll be selling it and getting a high-end Point&Shoot camera instead(maybe going back to the Powershoot A series from Canon).
Stay tuned for pics...
Our first stop on the way back was a 12 hour overnight lay-over in Hong Kong where we agreed to not get sleep at a Hotel. We were hoping to buy some electronics but by the time we had arrived back to Mongkok, all the stores were closed. It was still an interesting night where I managed to convince my friend at 3am to hop onto some random bus and see where it lended us. We ended up in this hugely dense residential area with high-rise buildings all around us. The are was very un-Hong Kong-like since there was practically no pedestrians or cars in motion.
These long-haul flights are starting to get easier as I slept a good 7-8 hours on the last Hong Kong to New York flight. In New York, we managed to narrowly catch the American Airlines flight to Montreal, as we were approaching Montreal, we thought the end of journey was near. Once again, however, leaving Montreal is much easier then getting back to it!
As we were approaching Montreal, we get a message from the captain that there was a lot of fog that had suddenly accumulated over Montreal and that we would need to wait for it to clear before we can land. We circled over Montreal (so close, yet so far!) for about 1.5 hours before they decided to head back to Albany, NY for refuelling. Upon touchdown, we were basically told that the plane was now heading back to JFK and that we could *maybe* catch another flight to Montreal later that night, or if we get off, we were totally on our own. We decided to disembark and rent a car back to Montreal.
Well that turned out to be easier said then done. Practically every car-rental company had a desk at the airport, but only Avis had a car that we could drop off in Canada (it needed to have a Canadian plate). Unfortunately, somebody beat us to that car already. We then decided to rent an american car that we would drive back to Montreal and drive it back to Plattsburgh the next day to drop it off. Only Hertz was willing to let us do that. We then rented the car (at a cost of 155$ USD for ONE day!, but fortunately split with 3 more passengers of the plane) and headed toward Canada. At the Canadian customs, we were informed that would not be allowed to enter the country with an american rental car. The customs officer then seemed to feel sorry for us and finally let us through.
Anyways, I'm now back home (and it's freaking cold here, and why is there still snow??!) and back at work. I'm currently going through all my pics and will start re-uploading the old ones in full-resolution as well as upload all the missing ones from Singapore and Bangkok.
One note about the DSLR camera. It's a nice camera, but not for me while travelling. Too big and heavy, on the last 2 weeks in Bangkok, I was leaving it at the hotel a lot more often than not. I'll be selling it and getting a high-end Point&Shoot camera instead(maybe going back to the Powershoot A series from Canon).
Stay tuned for pics...
posted by Benji99 at 10:13 AM
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