Uber XL Required

We don't fly for three days, so we rightly feel a bit accomplished having our winter trip packing mostly done.  This is much more than we usually pack for a winter; in fact, it is nearly twice as much as we took last winter to Mauritius and South Africa.  The amount of clothing is approximately the same though.

Turkish Airlines allows two checked bags each for free. We felt obligated to take them up on their offer. We are making use of the space to bring a lot to Sri Lanka with us.  So this hallway line up is just for the two of us.  We do have two other standard overhead carry-ons for at least 16 kg more!

Bag Weights

BAG NO.	WEIGHT
1	21.5 Kg
2	22.0 Kg
3	20.0 Kg
4	13.5 Kg
Total	77 Kg (170 Lbs.)

Packing for Perpetual Summer

 

My clothing situation should be easier than it seems right now. For ten of the last eleven winters, we've gone abroad to places with a lot of sun.  We stay warm from November through March. So, my closet should only need shorts, Hawaiian shirts, and a place for sandals. Indeed, we have weeded out the storage areas and rid ourselves of a lot of winterwear. I have no heavy winter boots; for example, but that's partly due to the fact this part of Canada seldom has snow that sticks to the ground for long. 

Yet, I still need a few things for warmth. Even though we leave this week, the temperature today didn't go over 8°C. A few sweatshirts are still required. Things can still be cool in March and April when we return to British Columbia too. 

This winter's packing is a bit different. In less than a week I'll be only 7° north of the equator. So, I must pack all those shorts I was talking about. However, this winter we're coming back through Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Opps, as we sail north at the beginning of March, we will need to bring along a few long sleeve shirts and light jackets. And neckties are welcome on the MS Westerdam for gala night dinners. Before flying home, we have three nights in Tokyo. The nightly lows will be in the single digits and only the low to mid teens during the day. This will require a jacket and perhaps sweatshirts in our luggage too. 

Jay and I began to organize clothing for our winter today. We have a piles ready to be soon suitcased. They will be with all the other junk we're leaving behind in Sri Lanka, the initial stop for almost four months, except for our little sojourn in Dubai. The jackets can stay hidden for the majority of our time away. 

You know what though? If I've leaned anything through years of moving around, it is that clothes, and any manner of desire can be purchased anywhere!

 

Outlining Our Winter's Main Itinerary

Our winter will have a number of interlocking sections. In order to clarify all the reservations and plans, I wanted to add a simple table outlining the basic itinerary. These are the dates we fly between countries and board or disembark from ships. 

It may look complex but it has fewer segments and reservations than last winter. Many fewer!  It is likely that we'll be doing other things while in Sri Lanka as it is an island of 23 million people and easy to explore.  We could easily fly on a short trip from there as it lies in a central location for most of Asia  However, I wanted to get the basics posted, as much for my own visualization as for a journal entry.

 

Day	Event/Location
Oct 30	Depart Vancouver via Turkish Air.
Nov 01	Arrive in Sri Lanka on Turkish Air after transiting through Istanbul.
Dec 12	Depart Sri Lanka w/ Jay's sisters, Arrive Dubai, UAE on Emirates Airlines.
Dec 13	Board the MSC Euribia in Dubai for a 1-week cruise.
	(Port stops in Doha, Qatar; Manama, Bahrain; Abu Dhabi, Sri Bani Yas Island, and Dubai, UAE.)
Dec 20	Disembark the MSC Euribia in Dubai for a 1-week hotel stay.
Dec 27	Depart Dubai, Return to Sri Lanka on Emirates Airlines.
Feb 26	Depart Sri Lanka, Arrive in Hong Kong via Thai Airways.
Mar 01	Board HAL ms Westerdam in HK for 2-week cruise to Tokyo.
	(Port stops in Puerto Princesa, Boracay, and Manila, Philippines; Kaohsiung and Taipei, Taiwan; Ishigaki, Naha, Osaka, and Yokohama, Japan.)
Mar 15	Disembark HAL ms Westerdam in Yokohama for 3-nights in Tokyo.
Mar 18	Depart Tokyo, Return to Vancouver via EVA Air.

More details of this winter were added here in my journal as our plans were being made. I'm able to easily keep track of specific items irrespective of the day because I can add a topic label.  Every daily entry has at least one in its footer. In this case, they will appear as part of Winter 2025-26 (planning). I will add the same to this entry too.  I've added the itinerary of our Holland America cruise from Hong Kong to Japan. The map comes from the HAL website and appears below:

It's Been a Great Run of Good Weather

This photo was at taken from our balcony at 7:08 this morning.

 

The days have been extraordinarily clear and sunny lately.  I appreciate the nice weather as October can get pretty dreary some years.  

Last year, we didn't leave for the winter until the second week of November and I was more than ready to go somewhere I could see the sun!  This year, we will be in Sri Lanka on November 1st.  It takes a while to travel to the other side of the earth and we actually leave Vancouver two days before that!

So it is a pleasure having such a run of great weather.  This morning there was an interesting cloud but it continued on its way eastward.  The sky today has been predominantly sunny.  Yet, tonight's low may be 5°C so it definitely is time to start packing. 

$C\; so\; it\; is\; time\; to\; start\; packing.$

persto

 

Saturday is usually our grocery shopping day when we're in New Westminster. We do drive just over the border into the city of Coquitlam to get to our nearest Real Canadian Superstore. That is what happened this morning. 

We are keenly aware that our winter away is rapidly approaching. We are going to pack for our winter based in Sri Lanka over the next few weeks. That means only three Saturdays remain. This week, I arranged to have our Internet service switched off for the four and a half months we'll be away. Think of how much we save on the reoccurring bills that are 'put to sleep' until mid-March 2026!  Honestly, these factors, such as not needing to carry auto insurance helps a lot in paying for our winter journeys. 

Jay is superb and figuring out a grocery list. Even though we'll continue heading to the Superstore in upcoming weeks, the purchases will differ from usual. We pick up more things with 'best before' dates that run past our winter away. As a case in point, there was a good deal on cranberry juice today as it expires late next year.  I am in awe of Jay's ability to have the refrigerator empty exactly on the day we fly. We unplug it. In fact, we turn off the electricity to the whole apartment at the circuit breakers. One more bill we needn't pay when away.

Preparing for a Cruise Port

I was just looking up some information about the country of Bahrain.

Jay and I are expecting to take a look around on December 15th as we have a one-day cruise stop during our itinerary on the MSC Euribia.  One thing makes this research different than when planning our visits in most other ports.  

You see, Jay and I lived in Bahrain for two and a half years! Admittedly, it was a long time ago though. In fact, neither of us have set foot on the island since leaving for work in Dubai in July of 1991. Oh yeah, and did I mention that our stay coincided with Gulf War I?

Thirty four and a half years have the general habit of changing just about everything.

 

Time to Start Getting Ready

I had a long messaging conversation with my sister this afternoon. She asked me about our winter plans, knowing that we always spend four or five months during Canada's winter in a place that's warmer. Most of our last was spent in Mauritius and South Africa.

   

For the upcoming winter, we'll use Sri Lanka as our base destination. We headed there just two years ago too.  In fact, the picture above was one of the first taken at the house after arriving in Minuwangoda in November 2023. 

I checked my calendar and we'll be heading there again in less than six weeks! We will again fly through Istanbul, but without doing an unexpected stop-over this trip, I hope.  We'll connect directly to a Colombo flight and should arrive on the tropical island on November 1st.  We have some other travel plans in December with Jay's sisters. The stay in Sri Lanka will be like time enjoying our second home.  

Finally, in 2026, we will leave a bit earlier than during some years by continuing eastward. Jay and I already have bookings to fly back from Japan in mid-March.

From Zero to One Hundred

Our upcoming winter away is almost completely planned, booked, and paid for. We will leave on the last day of October on Turkish Air connecting through Istanbul but our final flight returning home is via EVA Air through Taiwan in March 2026. 

Just a single hotel stay of three nights remains open in mid-March. We still have to decide where we'll stay in Tokyo. We were doing a little research this afternoon.  Travel requires preparation! Interestingly and perhaps surprisingly, our few days in Japan will be our first real time there other than at the Narita airport. If plans work out as expected, it will be the 100th country or territory to which we've journeyed. 

I looked back in some old scanned photos to find what I could show from one of the first countries that Jay and I visited together. I found this from 1988. It shows the island of Helengeli in the Maldives.  We took a boat from the capital of Male and stayed at a resort, the only buildings on the tiny speck of land in the Indian Ocean.  That was surely many countries ago!

 

Not Uncle Ben's!

 

It is still overcast today but the air is drier than during the last couple of days. In the morning, Jay and I drove uptown and picked up my new coffee mugs at London Drugs. I ordered them online, paid with a card, and had them waiting for me at the service desk. I also switched out a SodaStream CO2 canister and traded in the old for a new one. 

After, we crossed into Surrey and along the King George Boulevard to 72nd Ave. That's not exactly the way we went as I followed the Google Map's suggestions on the in-car infotainment screen. Jay wanted to stop at the Colombo Store. The capital of Sri Lanka is around 13,400 km; however, a small grocery store with its name is less than 15 km away in Surrey, BC. 

Jay bought two types of specialty Sri Lankan rice and a few other products. There are dozens of types of rice available on the island of 64,600 sq/kms.  That is where we'll be spending a large part of the upcoming winter season.

 

Two Weeks Aboard MSC Ships by Year's End

 

We have already been on a cruise ship in 2025.  In January, we boarded the NCL Dawn in Mauritius and disembarked in Cape Town, South Africa.  That was during our winter away.  However, when we discovered both a reasonable cruise deal and a great airline price to its embarkation port, we grabbed another chance.  It will be during Jay's September birthday week.  Next month, we will hopefully be able to fly to Barcelona on the 2nd; that is, as long as Air Canada staff do not strike and cause travel disruptions!  We have just one night in a hotel.  We'll return to Vancouver the day the MSC ship returns to Barcelona.  It should be a great, eight nights!

We will not be visiting any new countries on the Mediterranean cruise.  We have already stayed in Spain, Italy, and France.  Ibiza belongs to Spain and the island of Sardinia is a part of Italy.  We spent a month on France's Côte d’Azur although we didn't make it to city of Marseille.  So the two islands and the major city in southern France will be new experiences.

 

We have spent a great deal of time in the Middle East.  Jay and I have lived in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, and the UAE.  In fact, more than one third of my teaching career took place in the Persian Gulf.  Today, we bought a 7-night MSC cruise leaving from Dubai.  We'll be doing it just before Christmas and returning with Jay's sisters to Sri Lanka for most of our upcoming winter away.  This cruise will be an interesting week of both new and old for us.

Neither Jay nor I have been to the country of Qatar, so this cruise will allow us to add another new country in 2025.  By the end of the year, we will have visited a total of 98.

Red is For Next Winter's Trip

Jay and I now have just four, plastic file folders. A yellow one wore out last winter during our journeys. 

We continue to print reservations and receipts as we can have a lot of irons in the fire. We sometimes have 3 or 4 trips in the planning stages simultaneously, often months or even years ahead. So, important paperwork must go into different folders.  Right now though, only two of these four colours have anything in them.

   

The black one has information for Jay's birthday week in September. It's mostly complete. 

The red one had just one item inside until today. This space will contain information about our upcoming winter of 2025-26.  Since retiring early, we leave for four to five months during Vancouver's rainy winters. We have known that Sri Lanka will be a base again for a while. We bought one-way tickets on Turkish Air a while ago. We visit with Jay's sisters on the island every few years.

Buying one-way tickets no longer costs much more than one would pay for roundtrips. For most of our lives this wasn't the case. We sort of welcome the new situation as it allows us additional options when planning our often complicated winters away. 

I'm posting this entry today because we have decided upon important aspects of our return to British Columbia. Although we fly east through Istanbul to get to Sri Lanka in November, we'll continue going east from there on our return in March. 

We visited our lovely cruise consultant at the Expedia Cruise Ship Centre in Queensborough this morning.  We know we'll be taking a bit of a sea voyage on the way home in the spring.  That means we will require two air tickets, one on each end of our Holland America exploration. There's still plenty of time to iron out those details.