June 26th :

I left Vancouver in my rental vehicle to get to Seattle to catch my flight. It’s not that we don’t have flights out of Vancouver, it’s just that it’s a hell of a lot cheaper to fly out of Seattle. My rental vehicle had GPS on it, but after I stopped by at the small town of Sumas to pick up some shipments for my client (yes there’s a lot of that going on in order to save money on duties and taxes - ship it to a location right across the border), my GPS lead me to a dead-end street. I was sitting in my car listening to the damned machine screaming “Turn right in 0.2 miles.” at me while I’m looking at a cut-off streeet with a large red fence put at the end, with nothing but fields beyond it.

After that small incident, I finally got to Seattle, and checked into the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Seattle, on Pike St. and 6th Ave.

It was my first time at a 4 star hotel, and I had a great time.  I checked in at 4, so I figured I’d do some playing. I wasn’t going to leave the downtown area - I was too tired to drive far. So I took a brief walk around the neighbourhood in Downtown Seattle.

After that, I drove out to Pike Marketplace (which I found out later that I could have just walked), and after checking it out, I had a quick fish & chips dinner at this place :

After that, in the evening, I went to some bars, chatted with some locals but no hot women were found… I’ve heard some bad things about the nightlife in Seattle, and the bartender tried to tell me how there are some other parties if you drive 10~20 mins away but I was not going to go through so much trouble. I called it a night at 1 AM.

June 27th :

I left the hotel, and got to the airport. My flight to Dallas was not delayed by much so it was quite smooth. However, the flight in Dallas got delayed a lot - 3 hours to be precise.

Dallas was an interesting place for me. It was my first time in a Southern state since I was a child. The people I met (or rather, just sat beside) at the bar had a totally different attitude. While the people in Seattle were very happy to meet me and willing to chat with me like people usually do in bars, these people had a very cold, odd attitude towards me - the only Asian guy in the vincinity. It just confirmed to me the rumours of racism remaining in the Southern states - something that is very hard to find or experience in more open-minded places like Vancouver or Seattle. The exceptions to this would be Dan and Jennifer - we actually tried to see if we can meet up briefly and have coffee at least, since they live in Dallas, but my flight was  scheduled within 2 hours so we couldn’t pull it off. Although, if I had known of the delay, we could have made it work!

Once we got to San Jose, we couldn’t land. After two failed landing attempts (which spooked some of the people in the plane, as it’s uncommon to have a plane pull up sharply right before touching the ground), we ended up having to fly to Panama City, and stay the night. It was local time 4AM when I got in there.

June 28th: 

The hotel that American Airlines put us in wasn’t anything fancy. If anything, it was rather grungy and messy, and the shower knob was a bit loose. The heat in Panama was unbearable, especially without my shorts, which were in my luggage.

The bartender at the hotel bar (which I obviously hit the next day as our shuttle wasn’t til 3PM) taught me some Spanish, on how to order beer. “La cerveza, por favor” is “A beer please.” and “uno mas” is 1 more, and “dos mas” is 2 more, which I said more often once I had a drinking buddy, Phil from California who was on his honeymoon.

On the flight, I made friends with a very kind and beautiful lady named Madeline, who was from Tuscon Arizona, traveling with her two children. She was fluent in Spanish and came in handy at the hotel and at the airport once we landed! Here is a photo we took once we landed, with her husband and her mother-in-law greeting the family.

My client found me outside the airport, and we drove back to the place we are staying, and I finally got a comfortable setting to stay in and relax for a bit. I developed a severe headache due to the several beers I took in while I was in Panama that day as well as the additional ones I had once in San Jose. I guess the long trip with very little rest and comfort took a small toll. After taking some pills and getting a massage from our maid (who also happens to have massage training) I fell asleep.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 11:52 pm and is filed under Costa Rica Trip. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.