Time for a More Thorough Exploration

We're still not over jet lag.  Yet that doesn't seem to be keeping us from plans for our next big trip.  This will be the fourth June that we are travelling.  Jay and I have cut our winter trips a bit shorter so that we can visit places in the spring in the northern hemisphere.  

We originally considered heading to the South Caucasus region this year. That would have been new territory for us. However, we chose to take the good weather and see more of a country that we briefly visited in 2010. We will spend an entire four weeks seeing much more. Our last journey was so long ago, our town had a local newspaper! In this shot, we are holding an edition of the Royal City Record in Jemaa El Fnal.  It appeared in print sixteen years ago.

     

We've even started thinking more seriously about how we'll spend next winter and have made some important decisions.

Tastes a Little Like Asparagrus

 

Routines are nice for a little while. It felt familiar slipping back into a Saturday morning drive to the Coquitlam Superstore for groceries. When one shops weekly, price increases creep up over time. However, as we hadn't been in our supermarket for four and a half months, we noticed right away how dramatically food prices are rising in Canada. As a humorous aside, Jay found drumsticks for sale.

It seemed funny as when we were at the house in Sri Lanka this winter, the Moringa oleifera trees were prolific. These are the seed pods of deciduous trees that can reach a height of 10–12 meters and can have trunk diameter of 45 cm. They cannot tolerate frost but that is not a problem in tropical places.  Nazir brought a seeding branch to the Minuwangoda house a long time ago.  Since then, new shoots of it were planted in several other places in the garden. We surely ate a whole lot over the last couple of months!

There is particular way of eating the cooked or boiled sections. They are typically separated into several pieces by hand and each is rubbed seed-first across one's bottom teeth to extract the seeds and soft gel. The outside is fibrous and discarded.  Jay loves them but I simply 'don't mind' eating them.  

Oh, the funny part was the price.  These were priced at CAD $1.99 EACH!  He looked at them but, of course, didn't buy any.  In recent weeks, we've each eaten dozens and dozens.

 

I've Seen 100 Countries

At the end of 2018, I started work on creating a new Flickr album.  The ideas was to document the countries and territories that I had visited during my decades of work and travel.  A simple list is boring but I figured a representative photo that I'd taken would be a fun format.  And, as we have been exploring the world over the eight years since, I have been adding one new photo for each new location.  Our retirement in 2014 accelerated our exploration and global travels.  This winter, which we just completed on Wednesday, allowed us to visit three more countries. 

First, we were on a cruise in December that had a port stop in Qatar.  Doha was interesting.  

A final Holland America cruise was part of our return to Canada.  On it, our second new country was the Philippines. The Westerdam stopped in Puerto Princesa, Boracay, and in the capital of Manila. 

The ship continued to Taiwan but we had already stayed there in the past.  Therefore, our final newly-visited country was Japan.  We first stopped at an island in the far south of Japan called Ishigaki.  We proceeded the a port stop in Naha, Okinawa and then disembarked in Yokohama.  We had just three nights in the Shinjuku area of Tokyo.

As a consequence, I included three new images in the Flickr album today.  It is a bit of a milestone as it my album now contains 100 of my personal photographs.

    

These are now part of the album. The images are arranged in alphabetical order.  In order to have a look at my photos, just click this link, I've Seen 100 Countries.  You can then click any individual image to see more information about it.

The First Chore When Getting Back

Since the beginning of November I've been starting my e-journal posts with the phrase, "Day XXX of Our Winter". We're home and now that is no longer true. However, I have to say that it sure seems like the local winter weather from which we escaped so successfully.

Since we've been returning from retirement winters a dozen years already, we are quite familiar with what we have to do when getting home.  There is an internalized check list and we've started checking off the items one by one.  One of the very first things I always need to do is buy insurance for the car.  I purchase only eight months of coverage as that is how long until we leave for an overseas hotspot again.  Unfortunately, I could not drive to accomplish that chore as I didn't have insurance on the vehicle.  Doh!  

The weather was wet.  I guess we're having a late atmospheric river, as these rainy systems are called here.  I took the SkyTrain to the next station and walked to the Westland Insurance branch in Columbia Square.  I hat my rain hat and umbrella.  It's only 600 meters from the station.

 

After getting Kimchi, our EV insured, we took it to buy groceries.  The Kona had an 82% charge, exactly the same as when we left it in October.  The tires were a little down.  I've noticed that during winters away, the pressure always falls a few PSI.  They are the low-rolling resistance type that generally have a pressure of 36 psi.  It was too wet during our drive for me to consider stopping for that.  It's a chore done on a fair weather day.

A Long Day as the End of Our Winter

Day 139 of Our Winter: We experienced a bit of a temporal violation.

Left the hotel in Japan - 9:40 am on Wednesday, March 18.

 

Got to Narita Airport in an Uber at 10:55 am on Wednesday, March 18.  Then, waited for our 2:00 pm departure to Taiwan.

Spent time in an airport lounge and at the gate waiting until Wednesday at 11:55 pm for our departure to Vancouver from the Taipei airport.  Actually, the plane pulled away from the gate at 12:13 am on Thursday, March 19.

Arrived at YVR one hour late at 8:30 pm on Wednesday, March 18.

Luggage was slow and we picked it up at around 9:20 pm on Wednesday, March 18.

Lastly, we took an Uber to New Westminster and arrived around 10:10 pm on Wednesday, March 18, 2026.

I will be uploading entries from Days 121 to 138 of Our Winter.  I had a bit of a digital detox during our two week cruise between Hong Kong to Japan and three night stay in Tokyo.  

Boarding Day

March 1 – 15, 2026 Itinerary 

This 14-night "The Philippines, Taiwan & Japan"

cruise visited the following ports: 

Mar 1: Depart from Hong Kong, China

Mar 2: At Sea

Mar 3: Puerto Princesa, Philippines

Mar 4: Boracay, Philippines

Mar 5: Manila, Philippines

Mar 6: At Sea

Mar 7: Kaohsiung, Taiwan

Mar 8: Keelung (Taipei), Taiwan

Mar 9: Ishigaki, Japan

Mar 10: Naha (Okinawa), Japan

Mar 11: At Sea

Mar 12: Osaka, Japan

Mar 13: At Sea

Mar 14: At Sea

Mar 15: Arrive at Yokohama (Tokyo), Japan 

Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade in the Mist

Day 120 of Our Winter:  Fitbit said that I slept excellently last night.  I didn't need my Pixel Watch to inform me that we were able to catch up on a lot the sleep lost getting here.  We did go to the Mezzanine floor in the Stanford Hotel for breakfast.  It was okay but nothing to write home (or eJournal) about.

Jay and I decided to figure out how to use the MRT.  We walked to the Yau Ma Tei station.  I'm sure I have a photo going down into the system in 2006 too.  First, we tried to figure out the transit card machine.  The service desk said that if we were just going a short distance, it'd be easiest to simply tap credit cards right at the gates.  It was easy.  It was only two stops to get off nearest The Avenue of the Stars, Hong Kong's version of the Hollywood Walk of Fame.  

Today there was little sun.  It was wet and misty from the start to the end of the day.  We walked around our area near the corner of Nathan Road and Soy Street and found a lot of restaurants. There were lots of folks walking along the Promenade but we were lucky to make it appear as if we had the city to ourselves. Actually, this city is busy both day and night.

The view below is from room 1705 in the Stanford Hotel.  As you can see it rained on and off for much of the day.  

Tomorrow we head to the Kai Tak Cruise Terminal in the afternoon.  The Westerdam will be waiting for us and take us to ports in the Philippines, Taiwan, and Japan.