Day 078 of Our Winer: It didn't particularly feel like a Saturday. Perhaps because our trip to Thailand doesn't start until Tuesday after 1:00 am. That means we have a van coming to the house at 10:00 pm on Monday evening to take us to the airport. So it seems like the weekend is coming rather than already here. That is the immediate travel destination.
This morning started out with the discovery of a new bunch of bananas that were ready to cut. One other plant was in front of the ready fruit at the back. A papaya tree was in front of both. Some of the bunch was already yellow. If we'd not picked today, animals would've started to have a feast on them. Squirrels and many types of birds in Sri Lanka enjoy bananas. In the picture below, Jay and his sister are looking for any others ready for harvest. You have to look for them mid-frame under the leaves.
We did enjoy the warm weather today. It might be a tad cooler in parts of Thailand but not for the immediate stay in Bangkok and Pattaya. When we head to Chiang Mai in the north, the elevation will ensure the evenings are cooler. We will be away for a total of sixteen nights.
We completed the new, online Thailand Digital Arrival Cards. We filled in the passport and hotel information for all four of us. Immediately we got the PDF with the QR Codes that must be shown to immigration when entering. Thailand has a lot of tourists and works pretty hard to make it easy. The last time we were there with Jay's sisters, we saw Bangkok only. A couple of years ago Sri Lankans required an official visa but the rules have changed. The print out today is all we need for our journey.
In other travel news, Jay and I have a whole lot of logs on the fire. We have our return trip that is pretty well planned with flights to Hong Kong and a cruise to Japan. We fly back to Vancouver from Tokyo. It will mark the 100th nation we've visited.
Then, we have scheduled another one of our June trips. We were undecided at first about where we'd head but have ultimately decided on four weeks in Morocco. We visited once by ferry from Spain but really only saw Marrakech and Fes. A month will give us a chance to see more of the coast and the Atlas mountains.
Lastly, and most importantly, we decided today that it is definitely not too soon to start discussing the winter of 2026-27. We had only one day in Rio de Janeiro as a cruise port during the winter we spent in Argentina. We've been wanting to return. It is a phenomenally beautiful location. Brazil now allows a tourist stay of only 90 days in a calendar year, so we have a chance to do some new exploration before landing to match our usual total of 4.5 months. We have been looking into Guyana and Suriname. Yet the initial search shows they are very difficult countries from which to connect to Brazil. The planning stages are fun for us. So, we'll keep at it until we find something that works. We've sailed on the Nile and been on the Mekong. The Amazon River is a bucket list item but it's around 2850 km from Rio. Anyway, planning ahead is our motto!