Sunday 17 January 2016

Long overdue update and my maiden seaplane flight.

It's been a long time since I posted anything and I've actually got a few articles still in draft stage. All on the back burner as currently I've been on the road since last October. 1 Month in Japan followed by North America. It's been awesome so far. Food was great in Japan and there was such a diverse range of sights even in a small country such as Japan. I had the fortune of visiting Kamikochi, Matsumoto, Kyoto, Osaka, Kobe, Okayama and Tokyo in that month. When you consider the arm and leg that we get charged for mediocre Japanese food in Singapore, I just went crazy eating in Japan.

After Japan, I headed to North America, starting in the East coast hoping to avoid winter. Didn't quite work out as it snowed in Niagara. After  the east coast, I flew to San Francisco where I met up with a cousin to do a road trip where we drove down to Big Sur through Carmel, cut up to Las Vegas and the Grand canyon, down to San Diego and finally ended in Los Angeles. My cousin flew back to Singapore whereas I carried on with my trip, Greyhound-ing my way north to Portland, Sacramento and Seattle where I spent Christmas with another cousin and her family. Since I was so close to Vancouver, I took the amtrak over, spending 2 weeks in British Columbia visiting Whistler and Vancouver Island as well. This would also be the first time I tried skiing though it was really expensive at Whistler. In Vancouver Island I stayed in Nanaimo and Victoria but had to skip Tofino as I couldn't quite make my connection work. Transport within the Island is really spotty, you would only have 1 bus crossed the island the whole day. Miss that bus and it's wait for the next day. It kind of worked out in the end as while I was researching alternative transport options, I came across Seaplanes. This option lingered in my mind when I was leaving Victoria for Seattle and I ended up catching a direct flight instead of the Clipper ferry I had. This turned out to be a great choice. The staff, ticking off the namelist of passengers,who I chatted to turned out to be the pilot if the plane. Having heard that it was my first time taking a seaplane, he let me sit up front in the cockpit.  Talk about having the best view! Mount Rainer and the cascades were right in view the entire 45min flight.





Snowboard on Big Bear mountain,  California








Right now I'm on the southern leg of my North America journey. Having some epic fail on my flight on Spirit airlines which is why I have the time to write this so there are always some silver lining. Update more later.