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So, as you would figure it plans have changed a bit concerning my grand scheme for an around the world adventure.

A couple of things were concerning me. In planning for the trip it was a bit hard trying to fit in Africa, India and Australia. The already made packages tend to skip out on one or the other, ie, Australia, SE Asia, India or Africa, SE Asia, Australia and in trying some of the custom options the prices was quite prohibiting. Now, of course, since this was all in the planning stages and I hadn't gotten around to actually contacting around the world specialists I wasn't overly concerned.

But I was concerned about something else. At the end of October my boss, Mr. Nydam, was retiring. Now I was counting on having 4 weeks vacation next year plus 2 left over from this year then maybe taking another 2 weeks with no pay to come up with the 8 weeks that I was looking at for the trip. I figured I wouldn't have too hard of a time to convince Mr. Nydam but I wasn't so sure of his successor, Gerry. Now, maybe Gerry would be ok with this and maybe not so while I was thinking over this dilemna something else popped up.

A few weeks ago I casually asked Bev on MSN messager what they were planning for vacation around or just after Christmas. She said they were looking into going someplace warm for two weeks in January. So that set me a thinking. If I could convince them to go to Africa or India it would solve at least part of my problem for the Around the World and on that trip I wouldn't have to be gone so soon. So, I asked Bev about India a few days later and she indicated that some friends of theirs in Goa were coming back to England at that time so they weren't thinking about India for this trip.

Ok, I thought, that leaves Africa so I started doing a little research. I know that they usually stay at RCI timeshares when traveling. I checked out the RCI website and saw that there were TS condos in Johannesburg and Victoria Falls (where I had planned to go) and also in Mombaso, Kenya. The airfares to Johannesburg were a bit pohibitive but I found a flight to Mombasso on Tuesday 2 January for arounf 260 pounds (about 600cdn) and on of the TS there had a Tuesday checkin. Bingo!

So I started to do some research looking into safaris and all kind of those things. Read a bunch of blogs of people who had traveld in the area, general focused on that for a few days while I waited for Bev or Fraser to pop up on MSN messager. Finally Fraser logged on. So I laid out all the options to him and he said sounds like a good idea, I'll talk to Bev when I get home.
@ days later I get an eamil from him saying they couldn't book anything in Africa but they found something going to Bangkok but he had to know right away if I was interested because he had to make the reservatios.

This was on the morning of 16 Oct as we were in the final stages of the planning of Mr. Nydams retirement cocktail and dinner that night so things were a bit crazy that morning and Fraser was nowhere to be seen! Finally mid-morning he came back on and asked me for the phone number at work so we could talk. A few minutes later he call and told me they booked a week in a TS in Bangkok, a week in a resort (none TS) in Hua Hin south of Bangkok on the Gulf of Thailand and the flight on Qatar Airways leaving on 5 January and returning on 20 January, was I in or out?

Oh, geez, this didn't really fit into my plans, it meant taking a little more vacation time than I planned, was the cheap fares to London still available that I had found the previous week...... So I told Fraser to hang on a sec, I checked the Air Canada fares and saw the flight to London leaving Christmas day was 702cdn so I said sure, why not? I always enjoy traveling with them and they seem to like traveling with me or else they wouldn't keep asking me to on vacations with them. It would throw a bit of a wrench in the grand scheme of things but I could work that out later.

So now I am going to Thailand. The Qatar Airways flight will be around 440 pounds (about 1000cdn), the TS in Bangkok won't cost me anything any and 1/3 of the resort hotel room in Hua Hin is a real budget buster of around 35cdn per night. Figure I can afford that. Fraser said they were going spend Christmas in Wales with the girls and wouldn't be coming back until the afternoon of the 26th. Great, I'll check for leaving the 26th arriving on the 27th. I checked the airfare again and in an hour an a half it had crept up to 740, now I to play airline roulette again. BA was 732 on Christmas day but 780 on the 26th, it went back down to 732 on the 28th. AC was clocking in at 732 for any of those days. I would wait until the next morning and check then.

So, the next morning I started checking fares again. I checked Air Canada first Although I prefer flying British Airways over Air Canada when going to England the fares were cheaper on AC. Now this particular morning AC was showing a fare of 652 on Christmas Day ariving the 26th and the before stated fare of 732 on the other days, BA was not changed. So, I decided despite Bev and Fraser not being home I'm a big girl and I can find my way to their place. I checked the National Express (The Greyhound of Britain) and it showed a fare 6.50 pounds from Heathrow to High Wycombe and I've taken the local bus system there so I know which bus to take to get to their place. I bought the ticket. I picked the 23rd of January to come back just in case there are any tieups with the flight returning to London from Bangkok on the 20th plus it gives me a couple of days breather to recover from 13+ plus hours of flying.

I finally contacted Fraser on Monday and told him of the plans and he didn't have a problem with that, they'll just leave a key someplace for me to get.

Now I am off to England on 25 Dec arriving on 26th Dec. I have a week and a half in London with Bev and Fraser including New Years then we take off on Friday 5 Jan for Bangkok arriving Saturday morning the 6th. We'll be in a TS in Bangkok near King Rama IV Road (within about a 10 minute Tuk-Tuk ride to downtown Bangkok). On Saturday the 13th we'll take train, bus, car to Hua Hin about 2 hours south of Bangkok. There we will stay at the Majestic Beach Hotel for a week before returning back to Bangkok on Saturday 20 Jan for our flight arriving back in London later that day. I will then have three more days befor I head back to Montreal on the 23rd.

As for my around the world trip? Who knows, I have plenty of time to see how I can salvage that....

CLD Sail Weekend

Fianally got around to putting up the photos from the CLD Sail Weekend we had back in September.

Just a brief (yeah, sure) synopsis. On the Friday afternoon Alison and I drove down to Plattsurgh where Mr Nydam's boat the Rhaki, a 29 foot sailboat, is moored. Fiday morning Nr Nydam and his wife and Gerry and his wife went down to the southern tip of Lake Champlain to sail up Mr Nydam's other boat, a 35 foot Jouet. Alison and I bought all the provisions for weekend and then waited on the boat drinking wine til the Jouet arrived.

In the morning we took the two boats over to dockside where we were joined by bMr Nydam's son Bernard, who was going to help us sail the Rhakin and John and his wirf Mary, who were going to sail with Mr Naydam and gang. We were meeting up up with Bert and his 31 foot hunter with his wife and Claude and his wife. Eric and his family were going to meet us at the beach we were headed to. So we all got together, built a fire, had lunch, goofed around. Then Bert took Claude, his wife and Eric's family back up to his marina and we sailed back to Plattsburgh. Alison and Bernard left and I spent the night on the Rhaki.

Next morning Mr Nydam said the winds were very favorable, blowing stright down from the north so they were going to sail the Jouet back down to Port Henry and would I like to come? Well, gee is the old pope polish or what! So we spent the day sailing straight down Lake Cahmplain with everyone taking an hour on the tiller. The rest of the time was spent talking, eating, reading, eating, site seeing, eating....

A fun weekend was had by all!

Airfare Roulette

I won!

I'm off again on a small trip. It should be the last one until the major travel plans next year. I decided I was going to my 31st high school reunion in California in November. Why 31st? I don't know, someone dropped the ball and nothing was organized for last year so this is a combined class of '75 and '76 reunion.

My sister took off for hers (40th) at the end of August so I started to look into price of airfares between Montral and the LA area.

Well, as usual it was a bit of a process. I checked out various sources (expedia, trvelocity, kayak) and got a whole range of prices for flights either going to LAX or to John Wayne International Airport in Santa Ana. At first the cheaper ticket was to John Wayne. I kept checking the fares and by the end of August it looked like John Wayne at around 460.00cdn as conpared to LAX at around 580.

On Saturday 2 Sept before I took off for Kama and Scotts wedding I checked again and the prices had all gone up with the John Wayne price going all the way to 700 and something. Geez, I thought, I missed out but I figured there could be mitigating factors, A new month, the weekend, a holiday weekend at that. I figured that since I had plenty of time til I was going that I could just monitor the situation since I knew how cheap the fares could go.

One day around the 8th of September I checked just as I came into the office in the morning to see that the fare to LAX was arounf 480cdn with Northwestern Airlines. I fiddled around a bit and as the morning progressed I saw that the fare was slowly rising (this is checking on Travelocity and Kayak) but on the Northwetsrn site the fare was still low. I decided to hold out and by the next day the fare was up to 560cdn.

About a week later the price suddenly dropped on American Airlines to 472. I decided to grab it. After inputting all the stuff on the AA site I was given the option of holding for 24 hours (actually it was more like 36 hours as it was until midnight the next day) so I took that option. Sure enough the next day the price started climbing abit so I went ahead and purchased it. As soon as that transaction was done I bought the ticket to the reunion and reserved two nights in the Coast Long Beach Hotel where the reunion was taking place. Now all I had left to do was to keep on checking on rental car prices...

First chart is kayak's graph of the LAX fares followed by Santa Ana (John Wayne).