#3 Flights and Airbnb post Covid

Transcript

Alright, quite a simple adventure in Montreal today. So my Airbnb is, I guess, monk station is where it's nearest, but between monk and agrenole. And I found out at the airport that my metro card had expired. I looked it up. They last for four years. And I've been here a couple of days. I have not gone to get a new card yet. It's kind of thinking, like, do I necessarily need to? I'm going to talk this episode about the state of Airbnb and flights post Covid. Airbnb prices are bad in Canada. So I'm not sure how often I'll be back to Montreal. Because pretty much I just kind of want to go to Mount Royal itself. It's like a two hour walk from here, a little less than two. And for now, I'm still on foot. So I just hopped across the canal. And I'm going toward, I think it's called Verdun, Verdun, Verdun, station, but I'm just looking for a dollar store and possibly Tim Hortons to get a coffee. Because that one thing I did traveling this time, so I always have my one big book bag. And I used to just put all my stuff in it. And I had a slight amount of a system, but at like the airport or whatever, if I had to take things out, it was kind of a pain. One thing I've done different this time that has been excellent. It's worked out really well. Is bags within bags, the Russian nesting doll style, where all my clothes are in a slightly bigger bag that takes up about three quarters of the interior of my main book bag. And then my other stuff, non-clothing stuff in a smaller bag that's this bag I bought at Oyama Road near Ikebukuro. And I still have it. And it's kind of neat too, because it's like the gradations of importance, where the bag full of clothes, who cares what happens to that. I could toss the whole thing and it'd be fine. Where the other bag is much more important. I had to pass some people talking in French. See, I'm not quite sure what exact brand of French I learned when I was a kid, because there's obviously France French. And then there's Quebec French like we are here. I don't quite know what New Brunswick French is, a Katie in French, I guess. It's definitely a bit different, because for example, the word yes is we. And we learned it like that, we, we ain't no. But that person I just passed by said, it is like a duck quacking.

I mean, I guess it's like black someone has a southern accent. But it's the French equivalent to why. I feel like since I went to French school growing up and have my family's French, I'm allowed to make fun of French accents. I give myself that right. But I was at the airport in Fredericton and that's when I realized I need one more bag because I still had just some miscellaneous charging cables and things like that that I am using all the time that are not stashed away. They were just kind of loose. So I just get one more little bag. I think my bag system will be pretty perfect. So I'm going to the dollar store find a little bag which I'd rather go to like a thrift store by a better higher quality bag. But I don't know where one is. So the dollar store I'll do for now. And it could just be a fun thing to look for in Japan, because that's one of those things with like having just one bag, just living out of a single book bag. The thing that's weird about it is you just literally can't buy stuff. Because where's it going to go? What are you going to do with it? Buying that little bag. I know yeah, my road was like a treat. It's like oh, I actually need a little bag. Maybe I'll keep my eyes peeled when I'm in Japan. Upgrade my bags to cool bags from Japan. Man yeah, so it's been, I went and I get in Thursday. Yeah, today's Saturday, so I've been here two days. But I'm glad to report that four hour walk from the airport that would have been three if I didn't get lost. It's one of those things that like is clearly stupid, just a dumb thing to do. I would never recommend to anyone else that they do that. But I'm glad to report that I don't know as my body continues to deteriorate. It really is true 5:00 that once you hit 40 things go to shit. Just out of nowhere, all of a sudden. Like I always had, I noticed it on my old photos. Like I always had where my shoulders when I sit aren't even. And I found out later specifically, I have an unate degree tilt in my pelvis somehow. It causes my spine to curve and then just leads to all kinds of problems. But I never noticed them before because I was young and spry. Now it's like my right shoulder hurts a lot. But just because of the way the curve messes up your body, it's my left knee that hurts. I got to wear a knee brace all the time, wearing it right now. And the latest thing were my big toes. Just right before leaving like two or three weeks before, my toes just started hurting a lot. And I tracked it down to like your big toes kind of being pushed inward by shoes. And it causes like bunions. And it's just one of these things like I've noticed a lot of times. We're just tons of people have this problem. It's super common. But I don't know, just like nobody ever talked about it when I was younger. Or maybe they did. I don't know, maybe this is like what older people are always talking about their health stuff. And you just kind of glaze over because it's like, yeah, whatever old timer. And then you get there and you're like, oh man, all these people walking around all the time half the world is as on these weird problems. Or like with my shoulder, for example, when I used to see older people doing like jogging and stuff in the park. And I'd see them with like their hands bald, like their fist bald, and their hand pressed against kind of where your kidney is. And I thought it was because they had a stitch in their side. I thought that's where the pain was. But now I know it's their shoulder hurts because I do that same thing to ease the pressure on my shoulder. I'm just like, oh, there's that thing I've seen a million times. And now it's me. But this medical complaining is to say that I bought these little like rubber things you put around your big toes to put like a space between your big toe and your next toe over. And they definitely worked. I also have little things I wear at night too, just to sort of train your toes to go outward instead of curve in. And yeah, even after the four-hour mega walk, my feet feel fine. So it's like awesome. My shoulders, however, not as much. I remember saying last episode, like, I think I'm good and stronger. Not yet. Yesterday my shoulder blades were killing me. But I ain't dead yet. I'm still, I mean, I'm pretty pleased overall with the state of my health. I'm starting to get a little more worried of like, man, traveling just used to be so easy. And now there's just so many little things that I got to watch out for. On the one hand, I guess maybe reasons why I shouldn't just be galavanting around the earth. But on the other hand, if you just stay, I don't know, bed ridden all day, you'll deteriorate that way too. Got to find that happy middle.

Anyway, enough of that ramble. Let's get to the actual ramble I wanted to do this episode. I just wanted to talk about Airbnb and airplane ticket prices and how that guided what I'm doing on this trip. So my basic Airbnb history is I lived in Toronto from 2010 to 2015 or 16. I definitely stayed for a year longer than I should have because I lived in this cool apartment with a bunch of guys and it was super sweet. And then they just kept moving out one at a time and starting real lives and getting real jobs and starting families and stuff. To eventually, it was just me and my friend Matt left. And then he left as well. So I was like, all right, we're out of here. And man, that's one of those things. Our rent was pretty good because it was like this legacy apartment. You know, we were there for five years. And the guy who got the apartment before us, you know, like he took over from someone else's lease. So our thing stretched back like at least nine years where they could only do by law. It can only increase the rent by a certain amount each year, whatever. So as soon as we left, the rent went from like whatever it was, 1500 bucks a to like 26 or something. Maybe it was only 22, but I think it's like 26 now. It's just bananas. The price just went crazy. Within a little Portugal in Toronto, sort of cool neighborhood.

So yeah, once everybody left, oh man, the beauty of being in a city again. There's a ramen 10:00 place and right across from it is a middle eastern place. Oh, there's a sushi place next to that. Man, I was dying. In my hometown, it used to have nothing interesting at all. Just, you know, burgers. Now it's starting to diversify a bit, but you really pay the small city tax. It's so cool to just have all these options. And just that you don't feel bad about getting food. Yesterday, I got a shawarma plate. And you know, it's like rice and tabooly salad and hummus. It's like healthy. It's not bad for you. Where if I went and splurged in my hometown, it's like, oh, I'm going to go to Taco Bell. I'm going to go to Wendy's. And then the next day, you feel like death. You got to rewind and you're like, oh, yeah, that's why it's not that much of a mystery.

So yeah, once everybody moved out in Toronto, it was clearly time to go. But 90% of my friends still live in Toronto or they're about. So I just, you know, inertia, hard to get going. So I stayed for an extra year. And I think that was just the, I don't know, Craig's list or something got an apartment for another year. Then I finally got myself together to go back to Vancouver. Because Vancouver is the first big city I ever moved to in 2004.

And I hadn't been back in like seven years. So I was like, all right, let's go, let's go back to Vancouver. And that was the first time I ever used an Airbnb. And it was just, just some guys random spare room down by his fucking water heater way out in Richmond. But yeah, it was, it was awesome. I was like, yeah, I like this. I don't mind just staying in someone's weird random room. And I think I was only there for a month. And then I got a job at Trees Organic on Granville. So it's a pretty long commute, but literally just a straight line straight down to Granville and Waterfront.

And then I got an apartment. And I guess that was kind of the one to punch of I didn't mind the Airbnb at all. And the apartment just wasn't that good. I just had to jump through so many hoops to get this apartment. I liked the neighborhood because it was like by commercial drive. But the building itself was terrible. The roommates were nightmares. I had to prove I had a job. And then I got this place and you know, again, you're locked into the lease too.

And it just kind of sucked. And there wasn't really any particular benefit even because I also didn't have a credit card. I've never had a credit card because I just have no credit history besides I guess little things like paying off power bills and things. But that standard route of you're going to go to university or college, they give you a credit card and they hope you run it up. And then you build a credit history positively or negatively from there. I never did. And my jobs are so sporadic. But I thought this time for sure, and I don't even really need one. I only needed it for flights and stuff. But I thought man, this time I got an apartment. I got an address. I got a landlord. You can call to confirm where I live. I got a job. You got a boss you can call to confirm what a charismatic employee I am while I'm selling expensive cheesecake to people. And the bank still wouldn't give me the credit card. They just would not give me a credit card. It was insane too. Because I remember this is just how robotic banks are. This was the bank of Nova Scotia in Canada. I had over $10,000 in the bank. So they wouldn't give me a credit card. But the guy's like, however, you do have quite a, you know, enough of a balance that would you like to speak to someone about investment portfolio? And he's like, no, no, I would not. Like it's clearly just the stuff that came up on his guy's little computer screen. Computer screen says, no, you can't have a credit card. But computer screen says you have enough money to get some mutual funds. Like, fucking give me a credit card. You fucks it. It's so annoying. It's like you're not even talking to a person. So anyway, from there, I got like a prepaid credit card. And then they shut that program down because now it's like your debit card can double as a credit card. And that's good enough because I really just use it for flights.

And now I guess Airbnb, what was I doing before? PayPal, maybe I'm not sure, anyway. Anyway, that planet, the seed in my mind, that Airbnb seems to suit me pretty well and renting an apartment does not.

So, as the year lease was about to come up on that place, coincidentally, my friend Matt, that's when he was about to get married 15:00 and he's like, hey, before I get married, I'm going to go to Amsterdam. Let's gather up some people. You want to go to Amsterdam? And I was like, yeah, fuck yeah, I want to go to Amsterdam, I've never been overseas. And in fact, since my lease was up like that month, just perfectly worked out, I was like, in fact, I'm going to buy a one-way ticket to Amsterdam. I ain't coming back. I'm going to go fucking travel the world. Oh, I'd already quit my cheesecake job, too. I held on as long as I could. There's only one person I didn't get along with at that job. And just if I can be frank, if someone doesn't get along with me at a job, it's not my fault. It's on them. I go so far out of my way to just make sure everything is cool and just to be polite and nice. You know, we're all already at a shitty job we don't want to do. It doesn't need to be worse. And I got along with everybody else except this one idiot. So that one idiot was being an idiot one day and I just quit. I'm fucking out of here. Fuck you.

And it's one of those things that you think is going to be a lot more satisfying than it is, you know, where it was me and said idiot one morning. And they were just being a piece of shit. So I was like, you know what? I'm just going to leave. I'll leave right now.

I've already decided. I'm quitting. As soon as a manager person comes in, I'm just telling them I'm leaving. I'm done. But if you want, I can go right now. I can leave right now and you can just run this place by yourself all morning. How would you like that? And all idiot face could do is just be silent and not talk anymore. I'll red-faced and embarrassed because the, you know, the fucking jig was up.

The bluff was called.

But instead of feeling even remotely like, haha, that shows you instead. It's just like, why did you make it have to come to this? What's wrong with people? Why are people dicks? Why did it have to be this way? That was about to quit anyway. I had another six weeks in me at best. Why'd you have to make it so shitty?

So yeah, about a flight. And I got an Airbnb a few days before my friends were arriving. And then we got a big fancy Airbnb. It was super awesome. That is one thing. Traveling with people. I think that would be the biggest benefit is being able to split prices with people. Like a lot of these Airbnb's I'm staying at. They would accept two people if I had somebody else to split the bill. It would make all this stuff much less financially painful. But yeah, when you got three people. I mean, I think we were only there for four days, the three of us. Like these people just moved out and just let us live in their Amsterdam house. And it's like, this is pretty fucking red.

But the Amsterdam trip, you know, I'll say that story for some other time. Basically, because I'd never been out of North America, the, you know, culture shock. I'd heard of culture shock, but I didn't really understand what it was. In hindsight, I didn't really fit in in New York. And I think it, it might have been a bit of that. I think like the differences between America and Canada, though relatively slight. I think I was feeling that. I was just uncomfortable a lot. But that was a case where it took a year and a half for me to leave. In Amsterdam, like nothing bad happened. Everyone was relatively nice to me. There's nothing I could pinpoint. It's just everything felt off.

Just you wake up in the morning and everything around you feels weird and feels different. And it wore me down incredibly quickly. After my friends left, I don't even know if I lasted two more weeks in Amsterdam.

And instead of the original plan, once you're over there, it's like, hey, it's so easy to get to England. It's so easy to get to France. So easy to get to these places. I didn't go to any of them. I just was looking at flight prices. And it's like, oh, look at that. Just to get a plane ticket to go all the way home. I found one that wasn't that expensive and it just felt right. It's like, I just got to do this. And later I went back to Amsterdam and it went a lot better the second time. And then Japan, et cetera, et cetera.

I'll ramble about all those as I go. But my ticket back to Canada, I believe it just dropped me straight back in Toronto, if I remember right.

And I was like, all right, cool. Well, again, all my friends still live in Toronto. My eventual plan was to make my way back to my hometown for Christmas or whatever. 20:00 But I figured, what's the hurry? Let's take it a little slow. And that's when I just started grinding my way around Canada with Airbnb.

Because I could just find places, if you rent by the months, that would be cheaper. And they would suck. They'd just be holes in the wall. Toronto was especially tricky. It's just an expensive city in general. But I found a place in northern Scarborough where people were packed in sardines. My bed was like the normal bed, but the next to me was like three sets of bunk beds. And there's another room like that. And then downstairs, there was more. It was absolutely insane. It was a two bedroom apartment. Let me think here. So, geez, there must have been nearly 20 people in there. It definitely had the capacity. I don't know if it was necessarily full.

But I stayed there for like a whole month. And yeah, it just wasn't that bad. I think North Americans were like extra just spoiled. Like, oh man, how can people live in these conditions where they're all packed in? And so many people live in a household. And yeah, dietta. It's like, man, it's not that bad. It's like, you don't get to have your den, your big TV and your video games in a pool table in your basement or whatever the fuck people have.

You don't get to have anything. All you get to have is a place to go sleep. But as long as your routine is just to go outside every day and live your life out in a city and then you just come back to sleep, it's totally no problem.

I just found a little beach, but it really is little. It's literally 30 meters from side to side. I think it's better than nothing.

So yeah, I started doing that. Toronto and Montreal always used to be very affordable. That's when I started. I've been doing Montreal before because I have family here, but I started exploring it more on my own.

I'll probably do another episode while I'm here, just about my Montreal thoughts in general. But yeah, that's where I really developed my own like kind of like, oh yeah, I do really like Montreal. And out in Vancouver, there was always, I could always find something somewhere.

So a lot of mick mansions in the greater Vancouver area. People would buy these houses that are just must have been incredibly expensive. They look like smaller versions of the fresh princess house and split them up and rent out the pieces. There's one place. It was, I think it's called Port Moody or Port Coquitlam. It's port something where there's like a relatively new branch of the sky train in Vancouver that headed out there.

And then from the end of it, you could take a tiny bus. They didn't even know a full-size bus up the mountain. And it was just suburbs. It didn't feel like being on a mountain. But it was so crazy because the weather was literally different up there than it was in the rest of Vancouver. But that was one of my favorite places where this is like my ideal kind of Airbnb is I started walking up the hill and it was beautiful just like walking up and down through these like amazing west coast trees. Like what's the end or maybe the Ewok planet in Star Wars? Like I think it was filmed in the Pacific Northwest. So it looks like that. Beautiful.

And then you get up to this fancy pants neighborhood in this fancy pants house. But where I stayed, you know, there were other rooms that were kind of more proper rooms. This was one of the weirder Airbnb's I'd ever been in where just the way the guys house was laid out, these rooms had other ways to get in. And then they had like a stairway that could you could go down the stairway to get into these rooms as well. So he padlocked the doors. So the stairway went to nowhere. And I basically rented the space under the stairs. I go down the stairs and I had my little Harry Potter nook that was actually quite large and there was just a bed down there. And that's where I slept. And there was no windows and it was great. It really made me realize like if I ever build my own house someday for some goddamn reason. I'm going to have a bedroom that does not have windows because you know, sure you can close the curtains and stuff. But it's not the same. It's not the same as when there's no possibility of light entering. Man, I had some good sleeps in that room. It's just like fuck, yeah. It is so goddamn dark in there. And it was so affordable. Like places like that, I don't remember anymore specifically how much it was. 25:00 But it was certainly no more than my rent used to be and I'm pretty sure it might have been less. And that was the beautiful Airbnb world that I was in before COVID.

I just go to Vancouver, go to Montreal, go to Toronto, go back to my hometown. Then I went back to Amsterdam to kind of have a better experience the second time. I did the Japan trip, came back to Canada.

It's like this is great. I am a son of privilege. I got a family that's willing to finance this dumb shit that I like to do.

So it's a little, sure there's some shame. Oh, I'm not living the normal life. I didn't go get a degree and get a career. But I mean, I guess it's like classic third generation stuff, right? If like you have the grandparent generation that established things, maybe weren't especially well off but got the ball rolling. Then you get the second generation that got fancy degrees and became doctors and lawyers and whatnot. And then the third generation that is disconnected from the source of the wealth and just fucks around. And that's me. I've made my peace with it. I'm willing to carry the burden of the shame because I mean all these jobs too, like I don't know. I mean nobody wants to hear the job philosophies of the guy who doesn't have a job. But basically it's just like, I mean, even just dumb stuff like when I worked at the cheesecake shop or whatever, pretty much any job I've ever had, there's just no need for it to be me. You know, people need jobs, right? Other people want these jobs. Why should I take your job that you might actually need?

For me, it's like it was performative. Literally having a job was just so I could feel like less of a bum.

It's kind of a weird situation but anyway, that's where I met. And now I do this. I just wander around and make podcasts about it apparently.

But then COVID hit and I mean kind of luckily I guess I was in my hometown when it happened because you know they were shutting down borders between provinces and everything for a while.

And Frederton, New Brunswick for all of its faults is really good when there's a global pandemic because it's the middle of nowhere, no one passes through it. I knew some people that got COVID but nothing serious. I never even came close to getting it. So it was a good place to hunker down.

And I was glad that I was there because again not to dwell on the negative but my poor father passed away not from COVID just from cancer. And I just know I wouldn't have been there. There's almost no chance you know just because of going around to different cities and stuff.

Who knows where I would have been. So instead I was here. I was in fact the last person to see him. I mean to be honest in a weird way COVID worked out okay for me. I got a lot of I don't know. I got to be around which I just wouldn't have been.

Now there's some lady sitting by the side of the water, staring principally into the distance. I'm ruining the calm with my podcasting. I'll just keep moving along. Just keep moving along.

So I guess things kind of opened up as far as Covid goes. I mean, arguably two years ago, but especially a year ago. You know, a lot of my friends started traveling and stuff, and it's like, hey, I'm going to Vegas, and I'm doing stuff. Everything seems to be okay. Or like pro wrestling was a good way to tell. On the WWE side, it was crazy. They just had no crowds. They put all these greens up that had fans on their webcams on the screen.

There's another person sitting staring principally. This is the place. This is the place you come to contemplate your Montreal life.

The shoreline near Verdun station. It was like a panoptic con. It was fucking creepy. And then AEW wrestling, they made these little pods. It was pretty cool. They had their own stadium in Jacksonville. So they set it up in these little family pods where you and your family could come in, go in your little like four person area. Then the next family would come in after, and the next, so you were never in contact with each other. And then each pod was kept individual. So they actually had some crowds, and it felt a bit like pro wrestling supposed to feel. But nowadays, turn on wrestling. It's just big arenas full of people. I mean, everything seems okay. You still hear about Covid cases, and bad things can still happen. In the back of my mind, I'm like, I hope I don't get Covid.

But clearly, the world is relatively back to normal.

But the place I wanted to go, the most, was Japan. And it was very slow to open. And I wanted to give it some time. I think it opened last October, about a year before now.

And I just figured it would be good to give that first wave of travelers, like let them go forge the path. I didn't really want to, I mean, everything was exorbitantly expensive, of course, as it still is. But, you know, I didn't want to be the person to go there, and like, have to... I've got my Covid boosters and stuff. I believe I'm all up to date with things. But what if something was wrong? What if I didn't have enough stuff for the date was too far out or something? There was some real crazy stories. If you want to look up the YouTube videos of the time, when Japan wasn't open to tourism yet, but there were people that, you know, were citizens there that had to get back in. And they'd put them in these hotels for days and days and days, quarantined in a hotel. And you'd hear some stories about, like, people who would be milling around in the fucking... Why did it? It's like milling around in the hallways of the hotel, even though Japan loves rules. They do not need you breaking rules. They'd be milling around, talking to their neighbor, and then they would get fucking, as they extradited. Once the word exported, ejected, removed from Japan, and sent back where they came from.

It's like, dude, what did you fucking think was going to happen? Why do you think, like, the country that would set up this system, where you have to get tested all the time, and you have to prove that you're in your hotel room, and they just hang food on your door knob. And do you really think these are the people that are going to be relaxed and cool about you milling around, talking to your neighbor, it defeats the whole purpose.

Fucking idiots. I mean, it must have sucked to get booted out for that. But I mean, what? Again, what did you think was going to happen?

Well, I can see, it's weird. It's like, I don't feel the rain. I'm even holding my hand out, and I don't feel it, but in the water, I can see it. I can see the rain droplet effects. It may just quite overcast today, so hopefully it doesn't rain on me.

But I got an umbrella and a little disposable raincoat tucked away just in case.

So yeah, I gave it an extra year. I'm pretty sure at this point, they don't even request your vaccination info or anything any more in Japan. Things seem much more relaxed. I haven't heard any horror stories. Everything seems to be going pretty smooth. So I was like, all right, let's finally get going. Let's get moving. But I thought I would basically just get back to the same type of crap I was doing before. Hop right back into the old routine. I thought I would me and or my way across Canada, because I also have, this is just such a dumb assumption that I thought like being closer would be better, but it's not. As far as flying goes, distance does not matter. Location of origin matters. Like for example, I have a friend from Newfoundland who... We became friends in Toronto. She moved back to Newfoundland. And I was like, one of these days I should go out there and visit because I've always been a bit curious about Newfoundland. And I thought since I was already in New Brunswick, I was already in that general eastern part of Canada. Like, ah, I'm close, right? But every flight you have to double back. You got to double back to Toronto. Then go to Newfoundland. There's just no direct flights. I was like, oh yeah, that makes sense. So this was a somewhat similar situation where I thought I would meander here to Montreal and then hang around here for a month and then meander out to Vancouver and hang out there for a month and then fly because it's obviously cheaper if you leave from Vancouver, right? Vancouver is closer.

But my assumptions got tested because that was not really an option. My old method of getting an Airbnb and staying for a month is just gone. It's not that you can't, but it's so expensive. These little holes in the wall places that I was staying. I guess it's like those are the places that were the most inflexible, the little cheap places that I like to stay at. Because again, I would take anything as long as it was just somewhere I could sleep. I did not need any frills. So I got to assume when COVID hit, like those are the places that they're not just going to wait. They're not just going to wait for four years for the world to open back up again. 35:00 And they just converted into places. They just converted into normal apartments.

So looking at Airbnb now, there's still lots of listings. But it's like fancy pants. It's like that one I was saying me and my friends get an Amsterdam for the whole house.

All kinds of stuff like that. If you want to spend $150 a night, fill your boots. There's all kinds of stuff.

But it used to be that like $30 a day was a lot for me. I could always find somewhere under that and on very rare occasions with discounts. Or sometimes if it was like, you know, the low season, like the middle of winter where people aren't traveling. You can get places crazy cheap under $20 a night sometimes. There's bananas. Nothing like that exists anymore at all. Vancouver, for example, I wanted to stay for a month. I only found one place. It was way outside the beaten path, even a little more so than the one I was describing before.

It was only available for an entire month. Not flexible at all. I had to get the whole month. And that month was over $1,000. And like my monthly stuff, again, it was variable. But I don't know that I ever really went above $800. And then it would go down from there. I'd find places for $700 or in crazy rare cases. I could get mostly because it's like the winter time and there's no tourists. And places would be like available for a month for like $500. Like it could happen as long as you're flexible. And you don't worry about staying central. These places were around.

Now this morning the outskirts of Vancouver was the only one. It was still over $1,000. And that was the cheapest and the only one. Everything else was way above that.

And I was like, this is just, I'm not even that excited at this particular moment of going back to Vancouver. I've been to Vancouver many times.

I don't really want to spend a bunch of money to go to Vancouver. Fuck it. I'll just stay in New Brunswick for a while. That's the case. But then I was like, yeah, but good old Montreal, right? Montreal always.

For whatever reason was a bit cheaper than the other major Canadian cities. And it's not much different here.

I really couldn't find much.

So it kind of ruined the whole plan in the sense that I was like, you know, if I'm going to spend all this money, I'm not going to spend it in Montreal and Vancouver. Let's just get the hell out of here then. Let's just force our way out of this continent, get over to Japan, and whatever other stuff around there I might end up doing. If it's going to be expensive no matter what I do, I certainly don't care about Canada. You know, I'm from here. I've been here a lot.

So I put that on hold for a bit. It's like, okay, that Airbnb plan wasn't going to work. But the good thing is then that got me examining flight prices. So let's shift gears from Airbnb for a bit over to airplane prices. So flight prices are never good. There's really no good way around it. I never did find any way to squirrel my way through necessarily. And that's mainly just because I'm Canadian. Canada is an enormous country, very few major cities. And not that many people compared to its size, we just don't have cheap flights. It just almost doesn't exist. Apparently on the west coast there are some like of these like really budget airlines that are trying to get going. But even that, like I did find this one weird flight that was like Montreal to Vancouver on some random date for $70. I was like, well, that's crazy. That should be several hundred dollars. So just out of curiosity, I did book it and I'm like, okay, it's weird that the one piece of this puzzle I have booked is just a random Montreal to Vancouver flight. But I thought, I don't know, it's the start. I guess we'll see what happens. But that flight just got canceled. I think what it was, it was like a flight going to Japan ultimately. But it was picking up most of its passengers in Vancouver. So the Montreal to Vancouver leg was not full. So they were willing to just sell the tickets at any price to try to fill things up. But then it obviously didn't work because they just canceled the flight anyway. So yeah, I mean, these things, it's not impossible to find stuff in Canada, but it's very rare and then they just cancel it anyway. It's not anything you can count on.

But that piggyback idea did get in my mind. Like, oh yeah, what about this? What about flights leaving from places besides Vancouver? 40:00 Because Vancouver has an enormous Asian population. So the flights from Vancouver going to Japan are actually very popular, you know? It's like, yeah, maybe that's actually not a good place to leave from. Maybe that's not the best plan.

See the water again? And now it is placid. Whatever that rain was, it passed.

I've been walking past a lot of hobo encampments. You know, just random tents and stuff. Can't tell if there's actually people in them or not. Maybe I should make my way back to civilization.

So yeah, just out of curiosity, I started checking, like, I don't know what if I did put, like, Montreal to Japan. Again, in my dumb brain, I just assumed that would cost more because it's farther. But that's where I found some cool, weird flights that I never considered of just like strange, like, layovers and transfers through the United States. I was like, oh, that's interesting. You know, just these weird, whatever, just weird flight websites with just dumb names that just scour different airlines and arrange stuff. And they were pitching me stuff like you could leave from Montreal. Go down to San Jose or Las Vegas or something. Have a six or seven hour layover and then go to Japan and it would be cheaper. And I started examining these because I'm like, that's cool. I'm not in a hurry. I already had it in my mind. I was going to start doing this travel podcast. It was like, it could be a fun episode. It could be an adventure. The weird layover.

But I hadn't really settled anything. I was just looking at different stuff and experimenting and exploring. Each day was different. It would always be a random, different route. With different times they were leaving and different arrivals and all different weird shit, different amounts of layovers. But they did toss me one that was Montreal to Calgary to Japan.

And I was like, oh, that seems kind of, if I had to pick one, that seems better because I'm staying in Canada the whole time. You know, I just don't have to go through the technicality of going through American customs and stuff, which would probably be fine. But I mean, if I could avoid it, I would certainly be pleased to.

That's weird. I'm still down in the woods. I feel like I'm in Huckleberry Finn or something. There's another tent, but I can hear the cars. Cars are definitely nearby. I'm only visually in the woods.

But yeah, then as I was dicking around on these whatever weird websites, like I don't know what they're called, they're like flying dreams and I don't know. It's super key weed. It's for stupid names. It seems weird anyway. Why do these flight websites have these dumb names? But there was a flight for Montreal to Japan for $200. I was like, what in the name of fuck is going on here? Because all these flights were over $1,000. And if you really scrape to try to do these weird layover plans, it would still be like $800 or $900. So it's clearly something wrong here. But I was thinking how my friend Katie, she took a bus once from Toronto to Boston, I believe it was, because mega bus or whatever the bus company was. It had this weird promotion where if you were really on top of things and you were the very first to like five or ten people to book a given bus route each month, it's only a dollar or some crap like that. So her and her friend managed to do it and they went to Boston for a dollar. So I was like, would an airline have a thing like that? Seems unlikely given just the price of fuel to get to Japan, $200 is not going to cover anything. But I was like, whatever dude, just book it and worry about it later. I was like, I'll figure this out later. That's such an insane deal I gotta try.

But then as I went to go book this flight, it's like, oh, last second change. The new updated price is $936 or whatever. And as I got right, you know what? These websites are weird to me out at this point. What is the deal with those? I decided I better stop and just take a step back and do a little research. And pretty much immediately I found there's this website trip advisor. I've never really used it before. But man, it's good. It's been around forever. And any random situation or weird question or problem you might have about traveling, TripAdvisor probably has a thread where somebody talked about it and gave some kind of answer that could be useful. I highly recommend TripAdvisor. 45:00 And TripAdvisor had no word of a lie dozens. Probably over a hundred different threads about these fly kiwi or dream flight and whatever, just any of these, whatever they are. Cheepo air.