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| With John & Chin in Singapore |
I flew the coop! Well, for a short while anyway. I've left Paul, Calypso and Indonesia (with its oppressive heat and humidity) behind in order to visit my sister and mother in Canada. My Mom has been in hospital for quite a while so a visit was definitely on the cards.
It was time to leave for a visa run anyway so Paul and I flew to Singapore for a couple of days where we met up with our long time friend, John, who had flown in from Bangkok with his lady friend, Chin. I only had a day and a half before I needed to catch my flight to Shanghai en route to Toronto but we had a wonderful time wandering around Singapore and catching up with each others news. Chin is a delightful girl who loved taking photos of everything and everybody. Despite her tiny size, she could give a fabulous massage; I felt like wrapping her up to take along with me.
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| Landing in Shanghai |
My flight to Shanghai was 5-1/2 hours followed by a 6-1/2 hour delay before a 14 hour leg to Toronto. Not fun I can assure you especially as Shanghai airport is dismal beyond speech with no atmosphere, no fancy duty free shops or restaurants to alleviate the boredom and no comforts. And then there were the flights themselves! These had little in the way of services; no entertainment, no tea or coffee and certainly no wine to drown my sorrows. The first flight had no pillow or blanket, no dinner (but in fairness to them the plane left at one in the morning) but not even any drinks until breakfast was served just before landing. On the second flight, dinner was the same as lunch which was the same as breakfast which was also the same as breakfast from the previous flight so not exactly stimulating food selections. "Would you like pork & noodles or chicken & rice, ma'am?"
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| One carry-on bag each? Yeah right! |
On the positive side, they left and arrived on time, something that I'd read was a major problem with this particular airline, the flight attendants were pleasant enough and spoke sufficient English to communicate with me, one of less than half a dozen non Chinese passengers aboard. The Chinese passengers, however, were another issue. For them, it was one long rowdy party scene, so incredibly noisy and undisciplined but they all seemed to be enjoying themselves no end. I felt as though I was riding in a cattle truck. Sleep was the impossible dream.
While waiting out the time in the airport, I thought I'd pass the time by logging onto their WiFi but again I was thwarted. No Google, no CNN, no BBC, in fact, no news web sites whatsoever. Not even Facebook! Too much information for the Chinese population I suppose. Heaven forbid that they should learn what's going on in the world.
It all ended well enough which is the important thing. My sister and her husband met me at the airport on a beautiful sunny day; chilly by my standards but definitely Spring was in the air. And before I fell flat on my face from exhaustion, we took a quick trip to the hospital to see my Mom. She's been through a tough time of late and is frightfully thin and frail but, hopefully, will be released home next week. Now to work out how to build her up and get some more weight onto her. That's going to be a challenge.
I arrived to Spring; beautiful, sunny and relatively warm. Well, at least for a day or two anyway. It didn't last though, a few days later it turned bitterly cold, rainy and windy. But, the spring flowers are putting on a great show, something I haven't seen for more years than I care to remember.
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| Scilla |
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| Crocus |
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| Yellow Crocus |
