Part of being in Chiang Mai was having time to decide what was next. We had extended our lease until September, but then what? We decided that we wanted to travel again — exciting — but where? Spoilt for choice, we started watching travel vlogs, reading blogs, and came to the conclusion: time for a road trip! Which then… sorry, nope, I won’t bore you with all that—fast-forward to us deciding that spending time in a van was the way to go. Considering we’d just sold ours, this made total sense… right? I’m not entirely sure what logic we were using, but once the idea took hold, we ran with it! (Or rather, drove with it ;-)) Where do you do that? G’day mate… Australia, of course! We had already been lucky enough to experience the East Coast portion back in 2017 {1,2}, with a short 10 days in Tasmania, and we had always said we’d love to go back. The timing seemed right so we set the wheels in motion! See what I did there? 😏

Like most people, our past few years have been filled with turmoil, stress and uncertainty… a pandemic sure makes you reconsider life choices. Spending time in Canada allowed us to see family and friends, get some things sorted and the van sold. Our last few days in Calgary included visits with my Mom, cleaning the apartment, a trip to the storage unit with John C. and packing for Thailand. We know, Thailand, again!? 🙂

While in Thailand, we had made the huge decision to go back to Canada for the summer and sell the van. We had a pretty decent flight: BKK-NRT-YVR-YWG. Paul had used our eUpgrades with Air Canada to change an economy flight to business class via the latitude-attitude technique. Since the first leg from BKK-NRT was on ANA we were in economy but the next 3 flights were all AC business class. AC is one of our least preferred airlines but we couldn’t let these e-upgrades go to waste. There was a small delay at NRT, the plane arrived late, there were some “mechanical” fixes but all in all it was better than expected. Canada didn’t require PCR tests for fully vaccinated people anymore so it was nice not to deal with that again in Vancouver, also no quarantine. There was still random testing and for various reasons the main airports in Canada imploded so we weren’t sure what to expect. The security lines weren’t open on time, if at all. They were also understaffed so long line ups and delays on arrival for those getting connecting flights. Luckily we weren’t selected for testing and had loads of time to get our connection to Winnipeg, but many people missed theirs.

For those of you that have followed our story, you know that we came back to Canada in Spring 2020 due to the uncertainty of covid. We had purchased a van thinking it would be a great time to get started on building our van life plan. Unfortunately it wasn’t, life happened, and we needed to make a change. Without having a home base, we had been dependent on family for places to stay, parking the van and storing boxes of our stuff. John, Bill and Tracy had already done so much to help us, we can never repay them other than offering our continued thanks, but this wasn’t a long term solution. We debated settling down somewhere so we would have our own place to stay when in Canada. Various locations were on the table and we even looked at some properties. The van, while awesome, added to the need to have something sorted out.

Well, here we go again… same, same but different! Several friends had gotten in touch and were all planning on heading to Lipe for February and March. We hadn’t seen Bram, Alyssa, Rob, Laura or Pascal for some time so we were excited to see everyone. We got in touch with Mikkel and Nok to arrange our stay at The Reef… after last year we had to get the balcony room again!

To get from BKK-CNX we had booked a flight with Thai Vietjet as the time and cost made it the best option. When we purchased the tickets, our credit card was charged twice. We made several attempts online to get it solved but nothing seemed to work. Luckily, when we checked into our flight they were able to give us an email address and we eventually got it sorted. Funnily, we had paid a little extra to book our seats so we weren’t at the very back of the flight… imagine our surprise when we boarded the plane only to find we were in the very last row. Apparently planes were switched and we paid for the privilege of being at the very back by the bathroom. Thankfully it is a very short flight. 😨

Winter is Coming… Again! Well, it is getting near the end of summer in Canada which means winter is coming! Seems to happen every year. The US border showed no signs of opening up so we decided it was time to head elsewhere. Bill and Tracy had been kind enough to let us spend the summer with them, but it was time to give them back their home. Naturally, our thoughts turned to Thailand and Chiang Mai… which has really become our home away from home.

What? Wait Manitoba? Yep, you bet and what a wonderful time it has been. We spent the month of May in Creston getting vaccinated, helping Paul’s Dad with building a deck, seeing our friends Pati and John and trying to get organized for the continued van build. We had a quick trip to Calgary to see my Mom. She ended up spending a night in hospital with her heart so we went to make sure she was okay. Our family situation was handled as much as possible and we needed to locate a place to live and work on the van.

With the resurgence of COVID in Canada, they had made further entry restrictions. For Canadian citizens we had to have a negative covid test result within 72 hours prior to arrival, take another test on arrival and go to a quarantine hotel for a minimum of 3 nights or until we received a negative result. If you received your negative results in less than 3 days, you were not reimbursed for unused nights and still paid the full amount of $500/night BUT then you were allowed to move to your final destination using air, train or any form of public transportation! Once you were at your final destination you had to quarantine for 14 days with another test on day 8. I wouldn’t consider myself political but I have to say these restrictions were useless and were only so the current government could say “hey we did stuff”. Our quarantine in Canada cost almost as much as our 15 nights in a 5 star hotel in BKK… CRAZY!!! Anyhoo, back to the story…