| Date | Plans | What Really Happened! | |
| Dec. 28 | Fly to Vancouver. | Made it to Vancouver. About 1/2 hour late, but pretty uneventful. Wanted to have a big chunk of steak for our last meal in Canada, but we had a late lunch of Sushi, so there may be no room.... | |
| Dec. 29 | Fly to Seoul via San Francisco. Arrive on the 30th (we lose a day by crossing the date-line) in Seoul and overnight one night. | Made it to Seoul OK. Just overnighted at the hotel and flew out the next morning. Not much time to do anything. | |
| Dec. 31 | Fly to Bangkok. New Year's in Bangkok! Take the (slow) train to Chiang Mai with sightseeing along the way. | Happy New Year. We celebrated new years with a nice Thai dinner. Because of jet lag, Vicky started to fall asleep by dessert, so we went back to the hotel for a nap. At midnight, there was fireworks over the river outside our hotel and we had a great view from our room.   Jan 2 - On new year's day, we went to the Palace and Wat Pho, one of the main temples. It's a beautiful place, but was very crowded today. Spend a few days shopping and are ready to leave Bangkok. Jan 5 - We took the "ordinary" train north to Ayuthaya. It's the old capital of Thailand and has a lot of the old ruins. We then took the overnight train to Chiang Mai. The weather's been great; about 31C and no rain. Spend a couple of days exploring Chiang Mai and surrounding area. | |
| Jan. 7 | Fly to Bangkok and overnight near the airport. | Made it to Bangkok and had Korean food! | |
| Jan. 8 | Fly to Singapore. Spend two weeks in Malaysia and Singapore and maybe southern Thailand. | We woke up early and flew to Singapore and then took a bus (about 4 hours) to Melaka in Malaysia. Melaka is an old historic town with buildings left over from Portugese and Dutch settlements. We'll spend a few days here and then north. Jan 13 - We've been in KL (Kuala Lumpur) for a few days now. The city is great, but we've been having afternoon rain showers. We're hanging out with a couple from Calgary that we met in Singapore and we're having lots of fun. We should be off to the beach in a few days for some real R&R.  Jan 15 - We're now on Tioman Island lying on the beach. We also explored the island on some rickety bikes. The brakes barely worked, so we had to walk the bikes downhill. They also only had one gear that worked, so we had to walk them uphill as well... Jan 19 - Just arrived back in Singapore. Tioman was great, but the weather wasn't. It poured one day and the other days we had a few showers. Didn't get to do any diving, canoeing, snorkelling, etc., but we BOTH got sunburnt anyways. Oh well, plenty of days on the beach left :-) Jan 22 - Well off to Bali in a few hours. Explored some of the sights around Singapore and did some shopping. We also met up with one of Al's friends (Bernie) from University who lives in Singapore. He took us to this great seafood place were we pigged out on some of the best seafood we've ever had. | |
| Jan. 22 | Fly to Denpasar, Bali. Spend some time in the mountains and on the beach. | Jan 23 - We're now in Ubud, Bali and staying in a small but beautiful guesthouse. Jan 28 - We've been in Ubud for about a week now and soaking up the culture (and Vicky is doing a lot of shopping as well). We've gone to see Wayang Kulit (Shadow Puppets), Kecak (Monkey Chant Dance) and others. Yesterday we also attended a Balinese Cremation Ceremony. Quite a bit different than Western funerals. We also did a bike ride (95% downhill ;-) ) in which we were able to see the "real" Bali, instead of all of the touristy places. Feb 1 - We've been in Kuta for a few days and getting ready to leave just as a whole bunch of people from Fort Mac are arriving (the dive club is coming here). Next time, we'll skip Kuta and go hit the beach elsewhere in Bali. The only reason to come here is to hang out in the nightclubs, because the beach is not that great and the shopping is not as good as in Ubud. | |
| Feb. 02 | Fly to Manila. Spend some time with Vicky's Family and go to Palawan, Mindoro and Banaue. | Feb 4 - In the Philippines for a few days now. Mostly drinking and eating with the family so far. Feb 9 - We went to Coco Beach near Puerto Galera on Mindoro along with Ray and 2 of his cousins. Mostly snorkelled and drank beer (after snorkelling of course ;-). Vicky even enjoyed snorkelling this time (3 years ago she had her head in the water for about 5 seconds before she got claustrophobic). At first she was hanging on to my shorts (good thing I had them tied), but later on she was doing it all by herself. I (Al) also finished my scuba diving certification!! The diving was great with lots off fish and coral. I even saw a 2 meter+ long sea snake. We're off to the North Coast of Luzon next for more beach, snorkelling and diving (and beer). Feb 13 - We got in from Pagudpud (a town in Ilocos Norte, northern part of Luzon) at 1:00 am. We are very tired, the trip there took fourteen hours, however it was worth it. The beaches were beautiful. We we're planning to go snorkelling but it rained the day we were scheduled to go island hopping. Pagudpud is the northern most part of the Philippines, on a clear day you can see Taiwan. We went with a school orientated trip. Al was surprised to see my (Vicky's) relatives enjoying the sun. Infact my relatives got sunburnt. The days were filled with activities. Beach volleyball was organised. Intially Al and I were supposed to be on the same team but there were several objections, so Al and I were put on different teams. Al was even showing my relatives that he can sing and dance?!!? My relatives were quite surprised with his performance. On the way back we were able to see several tourist sites of Ilocos Norte: the ex-president Marcos's museum, and Marco's body (we think it's a wax dummy!) We also stopped off in Vigan to see the Spanish-era houses. Feb 21 - Our last full day in the Philippines. We've been to the "province" to visit Vicky's relatives. We were also planning to spend more time on the beach, but a tropical depression moved through with some lousy weather. In Manila, it's rained a bit and it's a bit cool (+25C bbbrrrrrr (it's going to be so hard going back...)). | |
| Feb. 22 | Fly to San Fransisco through Singapore. 20 hours on the plane today!. Spend 2 nights in San Fran with Vicky's cousins. | Had a 5 hour layover in Singapore. Grabbed lunch and then had a Singapore Sling at the famous Raffles hotel. Took the 16.5 hour flight to San Fran. Luckily we were able to get an exit row so we had lots of leg room and we were able to get quite a bit of sleep. We spent a day with Vicky's family and had lots of fun until 2:30 in the morning. | |
| Feb. 24 | Fly to Edmonton through Vancouver. | Got up at 5:30. Ouch!! Luckily we got upgraded to business class for both flights. Hangovers are much better there than in economy class ;-) We arrived in Vancouver at 11:15 AM and had to catch the flight to Edmonton at noon. We had to wait for our bags because the conveyor got jammed. We made it through customs by 11:40 and ran to the other side of the Vancouver airport. We made it with about 2 minutes to spare!! | |
| Feb. 25 | Drive Home. | We're HOOOMMMMME!! :-( |