#163 Solo travel can be kinda tough

Transcript

Oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man, oh man. I thought that was it. From old Jeju, I didn't think I'd be recording anymore updates, but I'm still in my hotel room in Saegwapo. I was just about to try to go to bed to get up extra early when I got a terrifying stress-inducing email. I just flooded my system with the stress that my flight to Taiwan was canceled due to a typhoon. Typhoon, no set this in time, is a typhoon-guy-me, G-A-E-M-I. And yes, stuck between a rock and a hard place because my visa... maybe I just shouldn't record this tonight. Fuck it, I mean, I'll have lots of time at the airport. Basically, I don't know. Yeah, fuck it. Alright, I just got the email from my tinerary change. Yeah, I'll get into it more tomorrow. There's no need to do this now, but okay, leaving the Jeju to Shanghai part of the flight is still there, which I was like, what's up with that? It's a typhoon, right? I mean, I've never been around typhoons. I don't know how it works, but apparently this typhoon, it's only hit and land in Taiwan, exactly on the day I'm supposed to arrive. Very bad luck. Yeah, okay, I'll just get into it now. I'll just fucking do it now. So one of the emails I got was like, this has been canceled. You have to go to the China Eastern Airlines website to see the details, and I went there for a second, and it's like, oh geez, you know, this is complicated and weird, and I don't have an account here and what. So anyway, I tried calling Expedia. And basically, I just had to keep, I took a while. I was on the phone for like 50 minutes, lots of hold music, but it was mainly just a process of me continually. You know, I had to kind of encourage the Expedia lady, not encourage what's the word. Like, make sure, make sure it was clear that I'll take anything. I don't care. After I stayed overnight in the Calgary airport, I'm like, that's fine. Dude, I'll stay forever in an airport. I don't give a shit. That's fine. I just need to leave South Korea, because then that's like, I'm looking up immigration offices in Jeju City and like, going to temporary extension, whatever. But it's not like there's a weather that's keeping anyone from leaving Korea. Again, it's just Taiwan, so that wouldn't be a thing anyway. But I'm just stressed. I don't know what to do. I've never been in this situation. So she mentioned that the first half of the flight to Shanghai, that one isn't canceled. So I was like, all right, cool. Let's work from there. Like, what else we got? You know, send me to Shanghai. I just, I need to leave Korea. I didn't give myself any wiggle room. I would happily just book some more days in Korea if I could. But I'm leaving right at the end. So I got to go. So I'll go to Shanghai. What can we do from there? And I guess she was just assuming I was a normal traveler who would not put up with all these shenanigans. You know, she kept saying the best thing to do would be to cancel the whole thing and just try to rebook from the ground up or whatever. But I was like, no, I look at it. I just need to get out of South Korea. I literally don't even care what happens after that. I just need to get out of South Korea and eventually get to Taiwan. I don't care how long it takes. I don't. I'm a sounding more. I was not even remotely obnoxious on the phone. I mean, I'm probably sounding a bit fucking obnoxious right now. But I was just turn up the politeness to 11. I'm the opposite of an entitled customer. I'm like, you just get me out of this situation. Please, I'm suddenly mega stressed. I don't know what's going on. I just need your help. I'll do anything you want. In fact, no matter how nice I was trying to be, I got one teeny little chuckle from this lady at one point when I described staying overnight at the Calgary airport and that I was going to have an airport adventure and that that's fine. She was very business like not really in the mood maybe or maybe just not allowed. But yeah, she was like, okay, I looked through all the flights for July 24th. There's nothing for that day. And I was like, all right, well, you know, I know this sounds a little weird, but how about July 25th? I don't mind. So we put, I could put on hold again for a while. Pretty good hold music at Expedia. I didn't hate it. It keeps fading in and out and it switches once in a while. And there was a flight with the morning of July 25th. And she's like, so clearly, you know, that's not good enough, right? We should probably just cancel this whole thing. And I was like, no, no, like I don't even see why that's a problem. There's a term, a missed connection. I don't still quite get what it means, but it's it's some kind of travel term about that, about like just because of changes in your itinerary that you're on an extreme layover or something. Sometimes I 5:00 don't know. I guess you can get reimbursed for this type of thing. I was like, no, no, look, it's it's okay. I had to keep alleviating her worry that this that she was doing anything wrong. I'm like, no, no, that's totally fine. That sounds great. I have no problem with that. But then that one was full. So she pitched me this other one. She came back with she's like, again, like we just can't do this, right? This is not appropriate to you or applicable where you'll get to Shanghai basically Wednesday afternoon. Then you won't leave Shanghai till Thursday night. And then you won't arrive in Taipei till Friday morning. Or it looks like around noon, which is actually that's better because again, I can't book into this weird Airbnb. I've got till 9 p.m. And I was like, yeah, no, I know that sounds insane. That sounds ludicrous. But yeah, I mean, I did this on the way here. I did this in Canada. I did it in Calgary. It was kind of fun. I had no problem. Like it's that's fine. That is totally fine. So see, I hear it is China Eastern Airlines from Jeju to Shanghai arriving 2.30 in the afternoon on the 24th.

That is really insane. Then Shanghai to King Dao, Q-I-N-G-D-A-O. I have never heard of that place. Yeah, these are all on China Eastern Airlines. This must be, yeah, with the not rebooking. It's like I just have to take whatever flight's China Eastern Airlines has in order to because I don't know how much it would cost to rebook and stuff. I have to pull out the credit card, all this stuff. This one, as long as I did it, I guess, through China Eastern Airlines. There's no charge. So this is a pretty weird flight. But again, I just don't care. Yeah, it leaves at 11 p.m. The next day on July 25th. Oh, I see. That's a super short flight. So that's I arrive at King Dao at 12.30 a.m. And then I don't leave there until 9 a.m.

No, okay. It's not as bad as it seems. Yeah, because when I arrive there, it's 12.30 a.m. It is already the next day. It's July 26th. And then I leave at 9 a.m. So, you know, that's only at 8.5 hour layover. That's fucking child's play. That's nothing. So the Shanghai one is the long one. That's the one where I'm going to be in the airport for a day and a half. So that's longer than I was in the Calgary Airport, but I can't see it be in a problem. That seems fine. The Shanghai airport is probably huge and awesome. So that's what this episode's going to be about. Anyway, now I better try to go to bed. Push out the jive, bring in the love, man. Yeah, my body just got shocked with super stress. I was like, I don't know what the fuck. So then, of course, I'm missing out on two days of my Airbnb. I'm arriving two days late, where I kind of had this situation the first time I went to Japan. I was a day late because I got stuck in Russia overnight. So this one's two days late. See, I just message them. I said, hey, I'll be getting here two days late because of the typhoon, but don't worry about refunds and stuff. It's just bad luck because I think at the rate I'm paying for this place, you know, didn't know refund policy, all that. I just have to leave. So I was career tomorrow and I just kind of eventually get to Taipei and that's what's going to happen. As was going to happen, it's just going to be airports. But again, I just, I'm so not concerned, you know. I started editing an episode of this very podcast and I didn't get very far. For anyone curious, it's when I went to Akihabra. I edited like the first 20 minutes. It's a pretty long episode and I was like, I got to go to bed. I don't have time for this. Well, I got time now. I got all the time in the goddamn world. Like, that time is just going to go by so fast. The only problem will be of course sleeping is a little awkward. But it went better than I could have expected in Calgary. Yeah, this is fine. I feel so not bad about this. It must just be, I can see why the lady at Expedia was like, this can't be normal, right? Like that someone is just like, happy. I was trying to tell her like, yeah, it's an airport adventure. I know this sounds weird, but it's really fine. Don't even mind. Who the heck travels like this, you know? I got all the time in the world. It's fine. I don't care. I don't mind being in an airport. Heck, I'm going to some weird little room in Taipei where they want to charge me to use an air conditioner. At least the air conditioning, the fucking airport's free.

Man. Man, a man, a man, a man, a man, a man, a man. Okay, well anyway. Yeah. Who went from stressed to, yeah, I mean, it's fine. What do I care? What was the hurry? I guess that's the part of this weird. Most people when they travel, obviously, are on a short time frame and this 10:00 would be a terrible waste of two days of their travel. But it's a fucking typhoon. Man, what am I supposed to do about that? I'm just lucky, I guess, that it's mega centralized only to Taiwan. Every other flight seems okay. Yeah, I feel pretty much the same now. However, I felt about whatever tomorrow's travel was going to be. I feel about the same. What are those? Someone's setting off like fireworks or something? I can't see anything from my window.

Man, now I want to go out there and go explore. See what's going on over by the waterfront. Something's going on. But it's just because I'm all jazzed up now. I'm all fucking filled with strange stress hormones. How else? Over now already. Yeah, this is just a longer, just a longer flight now. That's all. If anything, I was even just a little bit like, oh man, my layover in Shanghai. It's only a 90-minute layover. I don't have to go through security again, I guess, but I was like, even that. I'm like, yeah, it's a little bit of a quick layover, just a little touch fast. After missing my connection when I left Amsterdam and getting caught in Russia, much like I like getting to the airport early, I like having a lot of layover time. Well, now I got a lot of layover time. I got seven and a half hours for the final bit and I think about 32 hours. Sounds right. That's nothing. That's a piece of piss. That is fine.

So I guess I should re-download this. I tinerary stuff now. Put it on my phones. That'll be my final act. And then yeah, I gotta go to fucking bed. Yikes, man. Still not too bad. It's still 20 to 10 at night. It's really not that late.

But all right. Oh, Jesus. Anyway, stay tuned. I got some airports ahead of me. Awesome.

Hello, what a shame. What a shame. Just looking at the window of the plane. Looking at what I can see of Jeju.

I can see some of those aureum even from just the runway, because there's so many of them on the island.

And yeah, it's a shame that I had such a nice time on Jeju, and through no fault of Jeju, I'm leaving with a heavy heart.

I feel so stressed out and bad today.

Long story short, basically, the flight they got half canceled because of the typhoon. Actually got fully canceled, but the communication between China-Eastern Air and Expedia is not good.

I don't know. I mean, I'll talk about it more later. I don't know who's at fault. I'm leaning toward China-Eastern Air a little.

I don't think I'll be using them in the future. But it's just a fucking bizarre situation all around that this typhoon messed up my flight. Anyway, basically, I had to buy a new emergency flight, and it's crazy expensive, and I don't think there's any refunds coming on the one that I lost, and even if they are, I think it's a credit.

I said I'd have a very hard time using, but that one's a specific airline.

This is not a good place to record a podcast.

Airplane getting ready. They're moving the rudders up and down. So loud.

But yeah, basically, I still have many days in the airport ahead of me. I'm still not getting to Taipei. It's Wednesday now. I'm still not getting there till Friday. If it hadn't been for this rescheduling from the typhoon, I'd be there right now. 15:00 I'm supposed to be a very quick, easy, short, inexpensive flight, and now the whole thing total. I mean, it's over $1,000. This has caused me to also have a terrible flight, where I have to live in airports for many days. I mean, it's a typhoon. What can you do, right? But Jesus Christ. But also, this is now putting me a day out, past my visa. So when I get to, I got to go from Jeju to Busan, and then I got to go talk to somebody. I don't know. Go to the information desk, see if there's somebody from immigration I can talk to. I don't know. Anyway, it's been terrible and stressful and awful.

There's somebody waving one of the aircrew waving to the plane.

But yeah, I mean, I don't quite have tears on my cheeks, but fucking close enough, I feel bad.

But I can at least gander out the window, as we leave. I don't know.

Maybe I'll get a view of Jeju as we go.

I'm not sure how the flight exit path is going to go.

Maybe not. Looks like I'm pointing toward the ocean.

The sun is almost down.

But you know, maybe once we take off, we'll loop around or something.

Wow, there's another Orion behind the airport. I guess that is where I walked, right?

When I walked around the island, I'm pretty sure I just walked around the airport. So yeah, that little road down there.

I walked down that thing.

It had a lot of it. It's just being tired too, which is not going to get fixed any time soon.

I had to stay overnight in Busan and stay overnight in Shanghai.

This is not going to be fun.

I don't know. Maybe the spirit of the Calgary Airport. Maybe it will be somehow.

And the sun setting behind one of those little Orion mountains. It's really, really beautiful.

That's where I just got to remind myself that I'm still very privileged to be able to do all this stuff.

I guess I should just look at it as I'm lucky this hasn't happened before.

You know, I've never had a canceled flight in the horrible last second rebooking. Again, it's not even the time so much. I mean, it bothers me to outstay my visa. I really tried not to do that. So I guess there's a lesson.

If you get a six month visa to a place, maybe it wouldn't kill you to leave a day early. But I mean, I didn't know there was typhoon stuff. I don't know. This has never happened to me before.

It really is just the expense, man. Even losing the $300 flight and not getting a proper refund, it's like, well, that's fine. If that was all that happened, that'd be fine. It's then on top of that, having to book a $650 emergency last second flight, because it's the only thing available.

Oh, that feels bad.

So yeah, you know, just like, yeah, price of doing business. Just lucky this hasn't happened before. It's got to happen eventually that something will go wrong. Ultimately, it's just numbers in a bank account, you know. $1,000 is a lot of money. But presumably, if all goes well when I pass away from this earth, they'll be. As long as there's at least $1,500 in my bank account when I die, then I guess it didn't matter, right? I didn't need that $1,000.

But anyway, yeah, all this stuff combined with being tired. I feel very sad.

Now let's do a little SNIP SNIP editing.

First stuff like that, to avoid all these noises while we take off. 20:00 And then I'll tell you what I can see. Tell you if I get a final view of Jeju Island.

Does this...

All right, we taxied around so that now I am looking at the island. It's a bit cloudy today. I can't see the top of Halicent. Oh, lifting off now.

Airplane makes a lot of weird squeaks and noises.

The 40-minute flight is maybe not where they put the most tip-top planes. So now I'm at Gunsan Heights looking down at Jeju City. Yeah, I am getting a view, but it is Jeju City, which I don't really know that well.

But it is still cool to see it from above and then behind just...

I'll just melt these.

Some poor kid that does not have a...

I have a cough drop in my mouth to help make my ears pop and whatnot. Apparently that kid does not have that.

Oh, there's that park. I don't remember what it's called, but it's like this nice park with this nice ridge walk. It was basically the last thing that I did before getting to halfway.

Man, this is nice and glad I got a final view. This is pretty.

And that park looks a lot smaller from up here. It felt real big when I was in it.

And it's pretty weird just to look at the coastline.

It's like, dude, I just walked on all of that. Walked the whole goddamn thing.

I can see Halicent better now behind the clouds, man. It really is big. That is a big, big boy. It's a big mountain.

Oh, and I think I know pretty sure that's the orium with the ancient pagoda that I walked up. Man, yeah, looking at that because that was like, you know, that took me a couple hours. That felt pretty large. You look at that little thing and then you look behind it to Halicent. Holy balls. Halicent is crazy.

Half of the Fuji is still no joke, man.

Oh, man, yeah, I can just see tons of the coastline. Now, there's a lot more little lakes inland than I realized. I guess I didn't go inland all that often. Is that what I'm looking at? Maybe they're not lakes, actually, with the sun going down. It could just be that they're, uh, yeah, maybe they're greenhouses, that must be it. Farming stuff. It just looks blue from, at this time of day.

Oh, fuck, there's that beach.

I don't remember what that beach is called, but that's one of the super pretty beaches.

Even from up here, it is still super pretty. Oh, and there's a bunch of the, uh, the windmills. Man, it's so crazy that I walked all of that. That is so cool.

And there's some of the, uh, some of the windmills out in the water. And yeah, now the coast is finally going far enough away for me that it's just disappearing into some clouds. Man, that's eerie, though.

The, uh, the water doesn't look like water at this time of day with the sun almost down. It looks like sky. It looks like Jeju Island is just floating.

Floating in the clouds. Yeah, there's like clouds all across Jeju, but they just pretty much stop. They don't continue out over the water, so I guess there's just something about the land. I'm sure it's the basic cloud theory. I don't know. It just gathers them up.

Well, that was cool. And it's like the perfect final view after, uh, after walking all the way around the island, just being able to see like a quarter of it from the sky. I guess I'm just lucky. They put me on the right side of the, uh, literally the right side of the plane to be able to see that.

But all right.

Jeju is disappearing now behind me. Yeah, this would have been the perfect triumphant ending. Instead, this is just this weird, stressful day.

But whatever, still good. Oh, there's sunrise melt and that other island off the coast that you can take a ferry to that it never went to. So somewhere behind those clouds, that's where I got abandoned by the bus.

For a final view of Jeju, I guess you can do worse.

All right. The only reason I'm even talking on the plane is because there's no one sitting right next to me, but it's still probably pretty weird.

So I'll stop.

I can't even why I turn this thing on. I should just go to bed. I just need to go to bed. But basically I got to the airport in Busan and the immigration office was closed. Maybe I could have found one in Jeju. I don't know. Maybe I could try to deal with this stuff ahead of time before the day late. I mean, surely. I don't know. You gotta assume people will understand, right? I mean, it's a fucking typhoon. I did try my best to get out of there in time. It's like, I don't know, I feel like it's good to take responsibility for things in your life. But I do feel like typhoons are not... Surely I get that one, isn't my fault, right? I mean, surely. You just never know, though. I mean, bureaucracy, bureaucratic processes are the worst. Because I don't know. I'm reading stuff about fines and I think that's fine. You can find me, I don't care. But then, like, not about South Korea specifically, but just other countries, even people that are one day past. Like, I got banned for three years. All this crazy shit. Maybe it'll be fine. I just, I don't know.

But since I couldn't deal with immigration and I wasn't, I wasn't even, you know, I don't have my next ticket. The lady in Jeju, she's like, I'll give you the ticket to Busan, but I can't give you any of the further tickets because of the date on your passport. I don't know how to deal with that. You got to deal with that in Busan. So that's like fair enough. So I'm not even on the other side of security. There's no value in staying in Busan, you know, I don't know. I thought maybe if I sorted it out with an immigration person, that'd be part of it. I'm like, hey, look, here I am. I'm in the airport. Like, I'm a mid-travel. This barely even counts as staying past the visa, right? But there's just no point. There's nobody there to talk to. I can't get across to the other side.

I still could sleep at the airport, but what the fuck is the point? You know? So I was like, I mean, I really don't have enough money on my T-money card to get into town. I might be able to take the train one time, but actually, I don't even know. I used my T-money card to buy a bottle of water in the airport. Maybe there's just enough on it anyway. I just thought maybe the place I stayed here in Busan. It's so nice and easy with the codes and stuff. Maybe I could just go get a room there for one night, just pop in the codes, but I tried and there's no availability, and the guy has a bunch of rooms available on Airbnb. They're all none of them are available because, of course, you know, people stay in those sharehouses for long terms. It's like, I guess maybe now's just the time to do a hotel, like, fuck it. If there's ever a time, treat myself. I already blew a fucking thousand dollars on these point tickets. What's another whack? Who the fuck cares at this point? It's my Christmas end, my birthday present. And I'm never quite sure if my credit cards are going to work, although they generally have. It's been a while since they haven't. But I started checking on the map, and there's some hotels pretty close to the Busan airport, and they were all 30:00 about $80 a night. And then if you just go across the bridge, across the river, it gets a lot lower. They're like 30 to 40. And there was one place that was $16 a night that had exclusively one star reviews. They don't even have proper locks on the door. Everything smells like smoke. The reviews were insane. Everyone just hated this place so much. But it's so hot out. Like, I've been doing pretty well because also on my travel days, I was momentably wear two pairs of pants at once because I don't have room for my second pair of pants. But it's been fine because I was in the air condition bus this morning, and then I've just been in the airport all day, and then I've been in planes. It rarely got very hot. But just outside walking, I couldn't have been walking for more than 20 minutes, and I'm already thinking like, oh, so I had my one pair of underwear that I wore yesterday, my last day in Jeju. Then it's like, hey, not bad. Only one piece of laundry. But then I checked it this morning, and it smelled so sweaty and so bad I just threw it away. It's like, dude, I'm not going to have just one gross piece of clothing in my luggage when everything else is fine. Fuck you. And now I'm like, should I do that with these clothes too? Just this 20-minute walk to here. Like, fuck. Maybe, I don't know. It doesn't smell the worst. I shouldn't have worn this is one of my favorite t-shirts. I don't want to throw it away. Yeah, just insanely hot. I was like, I'm not making it across the river. There's no fucking way because that's like, you know, it doesn't look that bad on a map, but that's at least another 40 minutes. I've never walked across that bridge before. I don't know if it's pedestrian friendly. Fuck it. So I saw this first place, the air sky hotel. It was the first one I saw on the map, and it said on Google Maps it was about 80 bucks a night. I was like, I mean, that's a lot, but this is what hotels are for, right? Like, fuck it. I just There couldn't be a better time. And then...

What the hell is this thing? Samsung style or quick guide? Is this...

Maybe this cleans laundry. There's like little hooks in here.

And you can choose standard fine dust quick sterilization drying. Only crap. Well, that might solve my problems. Yeah, why I was upset when I got in here.

Is I think maybe, maybe all this solo traveling is starting to get to me, you know? I had to build up this muscle like it wasn't easy to do it first. Like when I first moved to Vancouver when I was like 23 or 24, it was real tough moving all by myself and not knowing anybody. And then I kind of got better at it, you know, slowly and slowly. I mean, like 10 by 10 years later when I moved back to Vancouver, it was still tough.

I guess I started training even in Toronto. I have a lot of friends in Toronto, but I moved out to a Tobacco, and I was kind of on my own a lot, and it's like getting used to it a little. Then I moved out to Vancouver, and still, you know, it was a little rough, and I did get a job out there, and I got some friends and stuff, and eventually, but at first I do remember having some times where it's like, Jesus, it's tough to be by yourself.

And then I went to Amsterdam after that with some friends, and then when they left, I had to bail out right away. I just couldn't deal with it. With being in a faraway land with nobody that I knew.

But then, you know, by the time I did a second trip to Amsterdam and then went to Japan, like that's where I finally felt like, yeah, it was pretty good at it. I'm just doing okay at it. But this has been a long time, because my thought was just to kind of go to Japan, and maybe one other little place, you know, I assumed I had a three-month visa in Korea, and then maybe go home. But then there's the flight prices in the middle of summer, which like as much as I'm complaining about how today's flight costs 650 bucks for a sudden emergency flight, and it's a lot of money just to get from Jeju to Taipei, but to fly home is like, add another thousand on top of that, if not more. It's just not doable. I'm just, I'm kind of just out here till the weather gets bad again. And then on top of that, it's like, oh well, maybe I can go to Japan again, so it'll be all right. But it's been a solid nine months I've been out here all by myself.

And yeah, when things get stressful like this, oh man, it'll be so much easier if there was another person, you know, just to shoulder the burden and help diffuse things and just help sort things out. Just everything is easier, man. People really are communal, you know, you're 35:00 not supposed to be by yourself like this. This is fucking weird. If I was by myself for nine months in the ancient world, I'd be fucking dead. You know, there's nothing in my biology that makes me, you know, that says, yeah, go ahead and do this. This is a good idea.

So I got into this hotel and I guess just that the lady working the desk or English was really, really good, which is also, I haven't unfortunately been able to deal with anybody with good English today. It's just made it a lot harder. I still haven't gotten into the details, I guess, of all this flight stuff. I did learn some things that are kind of useful. Interesting information, but yes, I mean, that was nice. Just like, oh wow, this lady just straight up speaks English.

And just she's very emotive and, you know, when I told her, like, oh, jeez, yeah, you're supposed, you know, I just gave her the quick rundown of this typhoon heading to Taiwan. Got my flight cancelled, and you know, I should be there right now, but instead, I'm not getting there till till Friday, today is Wednesday, and she gave me the, just the look of like a cartoonish almost look of sympathy, but that's, I'll fucking take it, man. That's what I need right now. I just need somebody to be along for the journey, hey, if just for a minute. There's a lot of motivational phrases written all over stuff in South Korea. This one is just on this glass by the, the washroom. The best preparation for tomorrow is doing your best today.

I don't know if that's exactly applicable, but it sort of is, I guess those are the best, right? The best hotel motivational speeches. You want the ones that's just sort of kind of relate to everything, even if they don't actually relate that much. But yeah, just that she was sympathetic to the cause, but she said they only had one room left, and it's this suite, which I'm in right now, and it's ridiculous. It's gorgeous. It's this enormous room. Like, it's as big as three of my rooms so far. It's like at least two and a half times bigger than the Segwapo room, and it's three times bigger than all these little, maybe four times bigger than the little sharehouse rooms. Yeah, probably actually. But she said that's all they had left, and it's $130, and I was like, oh, man, I already didn't want to spend $80. That's a lot, and I was like, oh, man, I don't know. I feel like I should at least just go check around or whatever and go look at some other places. Oh, and not actually, that was the deal, too. She's like, it's getting a little late in the night. It's the last place. You only need it for the night. $130 was the deal. I don't know how much this fucking thing is supposed to be infinite amounts, but she also said like, oh, yeah, and it's just you, right? Because obviously you don't rent this room by yourself. You share this bitch with somebody.

So when I said like, yeah, I don't know. I feel like I really should at least go check other places, and she's like, well, there are other hotels around here. I don't know. Google, Google claim the real hotels. She was like, I don't know. They're not really. They're not really. They're kind of bad. I don't know if that's true or not. But then I was like, yeah, I mean, well, I mean, I was just going to sleep at the airport. That's what I got to do tomorrow, regardless, because I can't leave and Shanghai. It's like, I could, I could just go sleep at the airport. So again, I don't know how much of it is that she actually gave a fuck or if this is just kind of part of the hotel thing of like, like, if you just got the one room and nobody's going to rent it, you know, it's late in the night, this room's going to be empty tonight. I'm just not usually ever a haggler. My dad loved haggling and going to like markets and talking people down. I do not do that, but I don't know, because I inadvertently did today just because I'm just desperate and I just don't want to spend. I mean, I don't, I want to just take a break and have an actual sleep tonight before getting back on the journey. And then maybe it won't even be so bad again. It's just like one night overnight in Shanghai, not two consecutive nights overnight in airports, but I just didn't want to spend that kind of money. So she said, well, how much could you spend? And she said, like, the average, the normal room price is 90. So everything again, that sounds about right. Sure, Google Maps is probably not updated or whatever. 80, 90, those are close enough. She's like, could you do 90?

Yeah, I can do 90. I mean, that's one of the things too, probably. I mean, by the look of me, else, gruffy, I probably don't exactly look like I'm Johnny Rich pants. Maybe she thought I was Balkan at the 130, because I legitimately didn't, big, really didn't want to spend that money, 40:00 where it's purely just that I just don't want to spend it. I got the money. I could do it, but it just feels bad. This whole day has felt bad. I'm just being the, I mean, I don't know, hopefully that typhoon just, you know, I did read a bit about it. They're going to like, possibly shut down work and school and stuff in Taipei. Hopefully nobody gets hurt.

The actual people in the way of the typhoon are the ones with actual problems. I'm just kind of like in the washing machine getting clunked around, you know, it's really, it's just not that big a deal, but in my stupid little life, you know, little storm and a teacup. It's definitely been a day of getting, getting kicked around a bit. So yeah, just that this lady was nice and she gave me a deal on this hotel room and it's, it's absurd, man. It's like these, the park a floor and it's got its own like living room with the fancy table and these fancy pants chairs and a fancy pants couch. I mean, I could sleep on that fancy pants couch by itself. That'd be enough.

And then it's got a divider and a big double bed and huge TV. Holy shit. I mean, everywhere has the TV, even the little place in Jetchan had a TV. Oh, this one's a Samsung. They're not an LG. I've been seeing nothing but LG all day today at the airport. Again, I mean, I guess everything's Samsung here. They must have a Samsung deal. There's robes. I haven't even really looked at the washroom properly. Oh, man, it's like a jacuzzi tub. The fancy toilet with the, oh wow, it's got the the washlet, the bidet except it actually works.

Yeah, this place is ludicrously gorgeous. I'm just gonna zon-cat and go the fuck to bed. But I don't know. It's like, maybe it. It's kinda like, I kinda wanna just go back down and just say to her like, maybe again, this is just me being desperate for a human interaction. But I just kinda wanna go back down and be like, whoa, that room is crazy. But I don't really have a reason to go down.

Just treat and buy something from a happy to see your convenience store. But yeah, it's coming on to 10 o'clock now. I just need to go to bed. My flight's time is it tomorrow. It's not till a bit late. But obviously I wanna get there early-ish to try to sort out immigration stuff. Yeah, it doesn't leave till 3.50. So that's good, I have time. But yeah, no, I think I just need to hop in the shower and go to bed.

When the fuck is this? Expedia travel services, China-Eastern Airlines changed your identity, and no fucking shit. Cancel it, cancel it, cancel it, cancel it, yeah, that's okay, right? All right, well maybe this is something. China-Eastern Airlines Credit, $312.40 to be used before June 19th, 2025.

I was really honestly thinking I wasn't gonna get, and I wasn't gonna even happen. So okay, maybe China-Eastern Airlines isn't so bad, maybe it is just a typhoon combined with, like, they definitely, their pipeline to Expedia is not good, but, again, if it wasn't for Expedia being the middleman, I wouldn't really, I mean, their website is like, it's a Chinese airline, I don't know, maybe I could have figured it out, but I doubt it. So, I mean, if I've got a credit, I'll try to use it, surely, I don't know. When I leave Taipei, surely, I don't know, maybe I can, I don't know whatever, who the fuck cares. At least I got a year to figure it out.

Tip, use your airline credit before the expiration date. Is that really a tip or is that just totally fucking obvious?

The way to why I turned on the internet was not for that, it was this thing. Samsung Styler. What is this thing?

The Samsung Air Dresser, not quite a home dry cleaner. Home dry cleaning machine. Okay, so it's really for a dry clean only suits. What is this bad boy cost?

Ooh, $1,300 Canadian. I don't know, maybe I'll try it out and whatnot. Put my sweaty pair of pants and my t-shirt, like it doesn't seem like that's really what it's for.

But I mean, whatever it does to my clothes, it can't make them worse, right? They're fucking gross. If it just fucks them up, I'll throw them away, who the fuck cares.

Anyway, I'm starting to feel a bit better. I mean, you know, this place, I mean, for a one night emergency stay that was walking distance from the airport since I didn't have any money left on my t-money card, I'm not sure.

You know, it was like, again, if I went into Busan, it's like, where am I even going? I don't know. I don't know. For a one night stay, I mean, it's really not that bad of a deal. It's walking distance from the airport. It's actually right by a station, too. If I do have, I'm sure I have enough money on my card to at least take one ride to the station.

There's a little breakfast thing from seven to nine, but I don't know. I'm not sure if I'll make, oh, maybe. I just, I just don't know. They do have an airport shuttle, but I got a book at a head of time, and I didn't know what time.

I'm doing anything tomorrow. I just have no idea. My brain's too frazzled, so I just told the lady, like, oh, it's okay. I mean, I'll just, I got a little money on my t-money card. You guys are right next to the station. They offered to be this close, and it's really not that bad of a deal for this crazy place, like just to be here. I think this is the fanciest hotel I've ever been to. I was at a pretty fancy one in Montreal once, that me and my friend got a deal on. But this is like legit fancy. This is where you bring your mistress type of fancy.

I mean, Google's the best. Air Sky Hotel, Busan checkout time, noon. Yeah, so I should get out of here well before noon, but good to know. But I'll remember this fucking place, like just for a one-time deal, walking distance from the airport. My credit card was no issue, and the lady was so nice and gave me a deal.

Like I wonder, if $130 is, in fact, like the late night, probably no one's gonna rent this room tonight deal.

Then who knows? Like, again, I don't know. This thing is so nice. I can't imagine how much I would do it. Like if you just are a money guy, and you just got the money. Oh, shit. Oh, looking out the window. I didn't even...

There's this subway going right by. Something called the T-plex is across from me.