Well hi there.

This is a whirlwind kind of post, covering five, count em, five destinations. But the first was back to the USA, so let's call Episode One "How 'bout That Dumpster Fire?" Honestly, I was not too thrilled about going back to the USA. Not that I have dislike it, at least any more than normal (tipping, hating pennies with a passion, lack of public transit, etc). However because of <gestures at everything>, I was concerned about the immigration process for Ella. We usually enter through Detroit, and this is the first time we entered through Newark. So it was pretty much an open book what would happen.

I'm glad to say it was actually pretty straightforward. Actually, the easiest process so far. In the past I've had immigration officers ask us deliberately wrong questions to I guess "test" that we are who we say we are. For example, one time when I said we were passing through to Cincinnati, they asked me how the Bears were doing this season. I'm no American Football fan, but even I know the team is the Bengals, so I suppose they are waiting for you to correct him. This time, nope. He didn't even look at Ella's return ticket. Easy peasy, though maybe we just got lucky.

But backing up, we connected through Newark, at the height of all their dumpster firey-ness. So while we were in the air, our fight onto Cincinnati was canceled. Instead we were re-booked onto D.C., and then to Cincinnati. And then after we got to the gate, we heard our flight to D.C. was delayed. So I'm sitting there thinking oh great, we're going to be stuck in D.C. instead. When we got to the gate in D.C., United's stellar customer service came into focus - the flight attendant came on, and without any preamble, announced all the gate connections. But it was noisy with everyone getting their bags, and Cincinnati was the first one. So by the time I realized what she was saying, I missed it. I thought she would repeat it, but nope. So after getting off, I asked the gate agent which one Cincinnati was. She looked really angry, and gave me some attitude - "You all need to listen better, it's Gate A15."

Well fine. Mea culpa, I guess.

Since our flight left shortly, us and the other Cincinnati folks ran to the gate, only to see it was not Cincinnati. I asked the agent there, and she had said nope, this isn't Cincinnati. But she did say that behind this gate was the ground transportation. After finding an information board, turns out Cincinnati is in another terminal. Why didn't they just say "B7" instead, so we'd look for the ground transportation signs? I dunno. But yes, behind A15 are Dulles's famous AT-ATs to take us to another terminal. I thought "Ah we're probably going to miss it", only to find that it also was delayed. According to the pilot, it was due to a light that went out on the wing. So, hooray for faulty light-bulbs I guess, because otherwise we'd probably be stuck in D.C. for who knows how long.

Anyway, now in Cincinnati near midnight, or 5am our time, we were due for a long sleep. As expected, the time visiting the family wasn't so eventful - seeing the nephews, a lot of eating, and planning on when/where to eat next. But it was also the most Kentucky of visits. One day we went to Churchill Downs, although this time our gambling luck ran out - after losing $2, we've now broken even on horse racing thanks to the $2 win from the last trip to Belterra. To really step up the Kentucy-ness though, we visited Mecca - the first KFC in Corbin, Kentucky. I had always kept it in the back of my mind that we should go there one day, so Ella can have this "experience" for the rest of her life. I had visited many years ago, and it was honestly nothing too special. They improved it a lot in the interim though, and now they have a sort of proper museum to go along with it. I mean, it's still probably not worth going out of your way - but for a KFC zealot like Ella, it was worth the trip. We also combined it with a trip to The Glitz, a place I am not familiar with but the aunt and uncle are big fans of. Essentially a fancy southern, antebellum kind of restaurant/antique shop in the middle of nowhere. And of course, as you do, a stop at Buc-ees on the way back.

But mostly, we sat around for two weeks of putting on fat for winter. In fact, we even helped by cooking a Portuguese - Thai - Chinese meal. But soon thereafter, we were off to our next destination, Chicago. In truth we were just there to catch a flight, but we went up a day early to see the place. I've always liked Chicago. It's sort of a "what if" Cincinnati would look like if it kept its status as a large city. I like New York more, but as weird as it sounds, Chicago looks more "Americany" or at least "Midwest Americany" than other cities. Plus there is a metro, which you know I'm a fan of. With only one full day available for sightseeing though, we had to be picky and squeeze things in. For Ella, that meant the Art Institute of Chicago, which again, may as well be Mecca for her. I had never been before, but even I recognized some of the stuff there. I never would have expected stuff like that is in Chicago, I would have assumed the Met or Smithsonian. So it was nice to see that, for the experience that I have once in my life. The museum is huge, and we saw pretty much all of it, although we breezed through a few sections. It's pretty impressive overall, and even me, a non-art person, was saying a lot of "Wow"s. We spent the day seeing some other places around Chicago, without too much to say about each. So let's put in photos from the Art Museum, and then go rapid fire:

 

The Leaning Tower of Niles: Why is there a replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa? I don't know. But it was near our hotel, and worth a stop for a silly photo.

The Route 66 Sign: Another silly photo stop, but it was cool to see "the original".

 The Chicago Fed Museum: This was a nice surprise. Located on the first floor of the Chicago Federal Reserve, it's a small museum about money. I thought it was really cool, and they even pay you for going there - by giving you a bag of shredded money as a souvenir. I really liked the giant cube of a million dollars, which really encapsulates how ridiculous the existence of billionaires is.

The Tiffany Dome: In the Chicago Cultural Center, it's just a really pretty glass dome. Nothing there but a photo, but absolutely worth the stop.

Holy Name Cathedral: Gotta see a church for Ella! This one was pretty nice, I liked the wooden ceilings. We followed this group of people to some parts you're not allowed to visit, only to later realize it was a tour group we were not a part of. Oops.

Starbucks Reserve: Weird, I know, but it was right next to the Cathedral. These are the "premium" Starbucks, and there's only a few dozen in the world. Always interesting to see the coffee equipment, and the very overpriced bar making weird coffee cocktails. It had a curved escalator, which is pretty rare. I've only seen those before in Macau and Shanghai.

 The Bean: How can you not?

 Deep Dish at Giordano's: We gotta have one of Chicago's signature foods, right? I am sure a local will say "I can't believe you didn't try X!", which is fair. But now we have a good baseline to compare all other deep dishes to. But unfortunately, they did not have malort for the full Chicago experience.

 Not so bad for one day! But the next morning we had to say goodbye to the US and head back to Shanghai. We were able to visit some friends, again, mostly hanging out by walking their dog and playing video games. I guess our life is boring now? We did start to binge watch a Chinese show, which I honestly need to recommend - it's called "边水住事", or "Escape from the Trilateral Slopes". It's all subtitled and on Youtube. It's about a naive kid who goes to essentially Myanmar for work, and gets wrapped up in organized crime. Sort of like Southeast Asian Breaking Bad, and absolutely worth your time.

But the next destination was back home to Qujing, Yunnan. I have even less to say about coming back here, because I unfortunately got sick somewhere on the way. So I spent the week in bed, trying to stay away from people. I actually even had a bit of a fever, so maybe it was COVID or the flu. Regardless, it was not great, and I only got to spend 1 or 2 days with the family. It was a bit concerning for a while, since two days before the flight I still had a fever. Fortunately it broke the night before, and I was pretty much back to normal after that.

And then it was back to Bangkok, which is where I am now. Even though it's only been a few months since we visited here, it always feels good to be back. I'm sure part of it is being somewhere familiar, which aside from Cincinnati, may be the best example of a "home" that I have. But there is just something so refreshing about interacting with Thai folks, that kind of takes a way a lot of stress in the world. I know that sounds vague, but it's almost like I can breathe easier here. Ella and I were trying to put our finger on it, and I think one of the great things about Thailand is that the people constantly exhibit "micro-kindness" that just makes the day flow a little better. For example, in the mall, some older foreigner in a wheelchair got on the elevator. He told his partner, in English, "4", but she was unable to reach the button. One of the Thai people understood, and in Thai, asked the person near the buttons to push 4.

Or another example, I was on the train, when a grandma and grandpa sat on the two seats next to me. They also had a grandson, so I stood up and offered my seat to him. He sat down, and the grandma told him in Thai to say thank you to me. So he stood up and wai-ed (a Thai bow) to me. I could go on, such as when the train driver leaned out the window to wave at these kids on the bridge - but there's just a sense of relaxing, whimsy, and be cool to each other I never see anywhere else. I mean, there was a giant crocodile mascot family wandering around the mall. Why? I dunno. I guess they were promoting something, but they were also doing 3 Stooges like comedy while they were. 10/10.

Since being back, we've had been at an appropriate level of busy. Our main goal was to find a job for at least one of us, so that person could have a work permit and the other a spouse visa. Fortunately we both were able to land something in a pretty short time, so no worries on that front. We also got an apartment that is pretty close to both, so it seems life is pretty settled. We did have a chance to do some traveling, surprisingly to places we haven't been before. But this entry is becoming long enough, so I think we'll leave it here for now.

So, let's talk about Lisbon.

After our Spain trip, we had to return here to wrap up a few things, and get our stuff out of storage. Because our life was total chaos, we actually did surprisingly little touristy stuff while "living" here - I think we went out a day or two at most. But coming back gives me a complicated feeling. This place put me through hell, so part of me wants to never see it again. Ella was of the opinion if we lived here, we might as well see the city. I knew she was right, and I'd regret it if I didn't see anything - Lisbon isn't a big tourist destination for nothing, after all.

And we can start by introducing maybe the most touristy area, the Alfama district where we used to live. As I overheard from a tour guide once, its name is actually Arabic, which means "hot spring". (I looked as hard as I could, but the last hot spring here closed in the 70s - too bad). But I can believe it. Lisbon is a hilly city overall, but this district and the surrounding ones are particularly so. According to one random person the internet (so you know it's reliable), there is still hot water underground, but isn't commercially viable to extract. I would say, you don't have enough Taiwanese or Japanese living here then. Tell them there's natural hot spring water below their feet, you'll have a bathhouse open in no time. Alfama is the oldest part of the city, and Lisbon itself is one of the oldest cities in the world. So there is no sort of rhyme or reason to the roads, because they were probably laid out long before the USA even existed. They wander wherever they want, and are small even by European standards. Most of the "big" roads are one-way out of necessity, and probably 80% of the "roads" are narrow alleys that even a bike barely fits in. The rest of Lisbon isn't really like this. As my understanding, Lisbon had a big earthquake about 200 years ago, which pretty much wiped out the city - except Alfama. Hooray! Lisbon still gets earthquakes now and then, but nothing serious. Plus, building codes have made just a little bit of progress. I guess this narrow maze of alleys and unique look are why it's popular with tourists. The streets are cobblestone, so when we lived here, we would regularly hear the click-click of rolling suitcases down the street.

But you know I gotta talk about transport - our place was about 5 minutes walk to the old train station called Santa Apolonia - kind of like Hua Lamphong for my Thai folks. It's still used a lot, and you can get pretty much anywhere in Portugal within a few hours. For trains to Spain and beyond, you need to go two stops up the track to the shiny new station, literally 5 minutes. Santa Apolonia is also the terminal for a metro line, and in general, it's fast to get around the city. Many of the interesting spots are on this (blue) line or the green line, which is an easy transfer. Actually all the metro stops are quite close, sometimes only a few hundred meters. So we've actually been doing a lot of walking, because some of the other cool hangout areas are only about 20 minutes away.

Speaking of hills, the other method of transport in Alfama is the tram system. I really like these, as they haven't changed in a hundred years - kind of like the ding dings in Hong Kong. Locals use them probably just as much as tourists, cause when they go by you can see a very bored salaryman playing on his phone, while all you see next to the back window is a sea of cameras. They are pretty iconic, being made of wood, and zipping through the small alleys. They've become sort of the symbol of the city, and they're commonly featured on T-shirts, mugs, etc.. They're actually a lot of fun to ride, banking back and forth, rising up and down, sort of like a budget roller coaster. Still, I think Lisbon is pretty blessed for transit. The downtown core is quite compact, so often times it's faster to walk than to use the metro.

When we arrived, it was pretty late (or dinner time, if you ask the locals). We just ate dinner and went to bed, and planned on going out the next day. But actually, Ella wasn't feeling well, and we were tired from traveling all over, so we stayed in the next day too. And the following day we got our stuff from storage and did a bunch of errands, basically "closing out" our life there. Now that that was all done, it happened to be the first weekend of the month, which is when a lot of tourist places in Lisbon have free hours. We sat down to plan out a strategy in order to see the most free things we could, so here's what we came up with. I'll keep it down to just a picture or two each, but there are a lot more on Facebook.

Medeiros and Almeida Museum: Basically a Victorian (but not because I don't know enough about Portuguese history) era home that some rich doctor lived in. He must have been lonely, because this place was huge, the size of a museum itself. This was surprisingly cool, and we had the place pretty much to ourselves. Everything was very beautiful, and there was even a room indoors with a fountain and Italian marble statues. Also a very amazing collection of clocks, because why not. I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. 10/10

Calouste Gulbenkian Museum: This is apparently a quite prestigious art museum, closed for renovation. However they moved a lot of things into a temporary gallery that opened just after we left, so that was fortunate timing. Also I think a rich guy's private collection, I saw some art done by several of the Ninja Turtles. It was only a small collection, but overall kind of nice. They also had a modern art exhibit which was so weird and creepy I didn't want to take a single photo. Basically, it was architecture where parts of it had been cut away to reveal like, muscle fibers or organs underneath. I'll put a photo of the most tame part, as the rest was just gross. The classical art, 7/10. Modern art stuff, 0/10.

The Pepper Palace: A mix of a lot of soso things with some really impressive things. I didn't dislike it, it did have some really cool photo ops. The rest of the museum was kind of soso. They had a lot of peacocks in the yard, and a 50 cent coffee, which was pretty great. 6/10.

Lisbon Military Museum: We actually lived around the corner from this place, but, you know, life, chaos. An old barracks, I was surprised to find out there is still a military presence there, so some parts are off limits. It started out kind of interesting, with a bunch if cannons. But then for some reason, the upstairs is like a French palace. Ella remarked that this place actually was more pretty than the Palace of Versailles outside of Paris, which is more of a dig at how underwhelming we found that place compared to here. Still, it was surprisingly cool, and they had some really impressive things there. 9/10

Prazeres Cemetery: Perhaps an unconventional pick, but sort of nice. Ella really likes churchy architecture, a cemetery is full of little examples of it. These are more like small tombs (mausoleums?) than grave stones, so it was interesting to see the different styles. But it didn't really do it for me, the only thing I appreciated was benches of cats and the great view of the Lisbon bridge. 3/10

Basilica of Estrela: Of course there's a church. Being a basilica, it was very impressive. Still, there wasn't much to do except to take a few photos and say "Yep, there it is." If we hadn't just come off of seeing some of the most beautiful churches in the world in Granada, I'd be more impressed. Still nice though. 5/10

The Geographic Society of Lisbon: Online I saw some amazing photos showing "mappy" things, which I couldn't pass up. We got some bad news when arriving though, as the door guy said they are closed for renovation. However, there is a library that is open to the public, and we could visit that if we came back after lunch. I was a little disappointed, but no problem, the library will have some interesting stuff. So we killed time by going to the world's largest Zara, while I inspected the quality of their sofas. Going back, the librarian was pretty much the nicest person in the world. She said they had a few things in the library, but the really cool stuff is in the museum. She said that she would call her colleague and see if she couldn't get us into the museum anyway. We insisted that we didn't want to trouble them, but she insisted right back. A few minutes later, she had us moving through the back hallways of this ancient building, to see some amazing globes and maps. 10/10

The Lisbon Cathedral: Another €5 cathedral, that according to websites should be free on that day, but for some reason wasn't. Ella went, and thought it was pretty good. Later she said you can just tell them you want to go in and pray, and they'll let you in for free - although that doesn't give you access to the museum parts. Based on her attitude, I'll say 6/10.

The Church of St. Dominic: Maybe the oldest looking church I've ever been to, at over 1000 years old. It almost looks like it was carved out of a cave, I suspect from the many centuries of wear and tear. It actually burned down, collapsed, and who knows what else. I really liked it here just because it looked so different from the other glitzy churches we've seen. Plus it was right in the city center. As far as churches go, it's a winner. 8/10

Dr. Anastacio Gonclaves House: What is it with doctors having really nice houses that are now museums? As far as I can tell, he was a doctor in the Ph.D way and not the medicine way, as he was an artist/architect that decorated a lot of this house himself. Overall just a nice old house that is more family sized. The lower levels were a lot of cramped hallways and small rooms, which made the large open studio on the top floor more amazing. The museum workers were EXTREMELY nice here, and had so much enthusiasm to explain everything and anything. One even asked us to come outside to the street so she could point out other buildings he designed. Normally 6/10, but the staff made it 8/10

Well, that just about covers it! The last night we got to spend some time with friends who used to live across the street from us. They made our crazy stay in Lisbon much more special, and honestly leaving them will be the hardest part. But with some wine down by the river and a few beers, it was a perfect way to end our time there, and our travels for now. I'm not really sure where we'll end up next, although Bangkok is certainly at the top of the list for now. It would be nice to get back to some place to stability after all of this, and Bangkok is as close as anything Ella and I have to home. Until then, bye Lisbon, bye Europe. We'll be back, but next time just as tourists.