Category Archives: Travel

For you Novavax fans out there — you know who you are: FDA Authorizes Updated Novavax COVID-19 Vaccine to Better Protect Against Currently Circulating Variants https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-authorizes-updated-novavax-covid-19-vaccine-better-protect-against-currently-circulating

Opinion
The Checkup With Dr. Wen: When to get the new coronavirus shot? That question and more, answered. When is the optimal time to get the updated shot? It depends. (DePayWalled)
https://wapo.st/3TcZeB1

Star Tribune reports Ladan Mohamed Ali plead guilty Thursday to federal charges connected to an attempted bribe in the Feeding Our Future Trial. Ali, also admitted to stealing $80,000 of the cash the defendants gave her to bribe the juror. — MinnPost

Did the media learn nothing from its disastrous coverage of Trump and Clinton in 2016?
Rebecca Solnit
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/06/trump-clinton-harris-election

Stonehenge tale gets ‘weirder’ as Orkney is ruled out as altar stone origin
Weeks after revelation that megalith came from Scotland, researchers make surprise discovery
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/article/2024/sep/05/stonehenge-tale-gets-weirder-as-orkney-is-ruled-out-as-altar-stone-origin

Meanwhile in Amsterdam:
Amsterdammers left bemused at plan to tackle flowerpot ‘jungle’
Authorities in Dutch capital launch ‘Operation plant pot’, saying excessive pot placement threatens accessibility
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/sep/06/amsterdam-plan-to-tackle-flowerpot-jungle

Thai Chef Makes KHAO SOI From Scratch!
https://www.youtube.com/embed/gwV9SJtewCY?si=YiXS2AO6x1HFRBtn

It was just a year ago today

On March 6, 2020, I got on a plane in Bangkok for one of those long days that stretch across the dateline and the Pacific. We switched planes in Narita, and thought we had time to hit the lounge, but headed for the gate and that ate up the available time. We got asked twenty questions by a rather irritating official before we were allowed down the elevator to the gate. We had been traveling since the end of January through airports and border stations in Seoul, Bangkok, Myanmar, Laos, and Cambodia without hitting quite that level of questioning. They also only questioned me, and I’m not great at responding to COVID-19 questions. Let’s just say that Bangkok was a model of decorum compared to Japan. We thought we were fleeing from close to the epicenter of the pandemic — little did we know that we were flying into the heart of it instead.

The flight was nonstop from Tokyo to Minneapolis, but getting off the plane in Minneapolis was like time had warped somewhere over the Pacific. Signs warning about COVID-19 had vanished. Temperature checks had gone too. My traveling companion had to report for jury duty on the Monday after we arrived from S.E. Asia. After Someone picked us up at the airport, we wondered if we’d left the frying pan for the fire. It turns out, we had.

It’s the future, stupid!

Well! I came back from over a month in Asia on March 6th from Bangkok via Tokyo. When I first arrived in Bangkok, I was a little amazed at the signage and the temperature taking of everyone getting off a plane at the international terminal. I was a bit taken aback by being screened by temperature at all of the ‘posh’ shopping centers I went to in search of a spare battery for my Sony camera. There was hand sanitizer everywhere. There were security guards applying hand sanitizer to escalator handrails.

What was it like when I got off the plane in Minneapolis? Nada. Zip. Zilch. Although, the airline ticket agent in Bangkok did check through my passport to make sure there were no China visas, and in Tokyo Delta or the airport had a clown-car team asking ‘security’ questions. Getting off the plane at MSP was like a blast from the past. “These people do not know what’s coming!” I thought, “I haz seen the future, and this ain’t it.”

Well, sadly, for once, I was not just another ignorant, know-it-all tourist, I was right.

An Incident in a Hotel Bar in Cambodia

Several of us gathered in the bar at the hotel bar in Siem Reap, Cambodia at the end of the Road Scholar tour. I think it’s called destressing, but one person drank a wee bit too much, like a double martini or more too much, although she was having some trouble finding her mouth, so I was kind of aware she had had too much. There was also a bit of slurring.

When the last three of us left, she walked into a glass door, but only the edge, and got around it with a little difficulty. I had my camera and a drink to take back to the room while we packed for an early flight to Bangkok, but as we went down the three steps to the main level, she crumpled. The two of us kind of stood there watching it in shock. One had offered her hand to the drinker, but it was ignored. Both of us were carrying a drink, of course.

Two Australian men ran over to pick her up before we had shed our junk to help and got her standing with some very careful lifting. Some jokes were exchanged about Minnesota, but the woman’s white pants were turning red on one leg.

The Australians helped her into a chair, and a cloud of hotel staff appeared. They lifted the pant leg and displayed the 2-3″ of skinned shin that was bleeding. They started trying to clean it a bit, and then a kit arrived with gloves and bandages and cleaning materials. After cleaning it, they carefully covered and wrapped it.

After the bandage, two of them, one to each side stood her up and we navigated to the elevator. I think an additional one or two of the hotel staff went up with us, but in the elevator, I noticed that the other pant leg had some red on it as well. While it was possible it was from the skinned shin, I suspected another skinned shin on the other leg that we’d missed outside the bar.

The hotel staff often suggested the emergency room or a doctor. Let’s just say that the injured person was not in a state to make a decision, and while I ain’t a doctor nor do I play one on TV, I’ve taken enough cooks in for stitches to know that they can’t stitch a skinned shin. The woman’s slacks had also not ripped.

After we’d gotten her into her room and sitting on the bed, I said we had to check the other leg while we still hand bandages. So, they rolled up the other pant leg to display a 1-2″ skinned shin on the other leg. The called down to have the medkit sent up, and they repeated the process on the other leg.

We had the hotel staff, after the bandaging was complete, call the front desk for a wake-up call. Most of the group had an early bus ride to the airport for a Singapore flight, and we wanted to make sure she was on it. When the call and the bandaging was done, we left to walk from one end of the hotel to the other.

The corridor stroll ran past the tour group leader’s room, but it was starting to get late. Fortunately, there was music coming from the room, so we knocked. I still had ma drink in ma hand, of course, to explain that there’d been an accident and that he’d have to take a bit of special care with the woman and her bandaged legs to make sure she was on the bus to the airport. I figured she would be sore as hell and maybe a little hungover when the anesthetic effect of the alcohol wore off.

Anyway, we packed, slept for what seemed like ten minutes, and checked out of the hotel around 5 or 5:30 am. We’d asked for a box breakfast, but the front desk offered us a real one — which we declined to head out to the airport. (There’s a custom thereabouts of watching the sunrise over some old ruins outside the city which requires tourists to get up really, really, really early, eat a brief snack, bus the Angkor Wat, explore the grounds and temple, and then come back to the hotel for a ‘real’ breakfast, which we had just done the day before.)

As we exited the hotel, or at least hovered near the door with luggage, the doorman asked if we had a taxi. I was going to call a Grab, but he ran out and got a tuk tuk before I got it ordered. They piled our luggage between the motorcycle and the fifth wheel, we got in, and were off for the airport in the morning dark. (I don’t think I saw any fifth wheel tuk tuks outside of Cambodia. Most of the tuk tuks are either three or four wheel open vehicles, but in Cambodia I had noticed the ones that just attached to the back of the seat of a motorcycle.)

All in all, we were incredibly impressed with the hotel staff.