#4 - See a New Country

This is also the story of how left home on a trip to Thailand and ended up in Mexico. It’s been hard for me to write about this as the fact I missed out on the retreat in Thailand still cuts me up inside. To give more clarity, I won a photo contest last year winning me a spot in the VanCity Thailand retreat this October. I had never won something like that before and I was not keen to pass it up. I ended up buying a flight from Calgary to Chiang Mai that had a layover in China. Or so I thought.

When I found out my teachers had issues with their China visas I called the embassy to make sure I didn’t need a transit visa. I was told by the Chinese embassy, West Jet on the phone (the first leg of my flight) and the West Jet counter in Calgary that I was 100% okay and wouldn’t have any issues. West Jet even printed my boarding pass in Calgary for the flight from Vancouver to Kunming, China. However, when I arrived in Vancouver and tried to board the flight to China I was refused as I didn’t have a Chinese visa. I was under the impression that once you go through customs you have 24 hours in this city before you need a visa, on my ticket it said my layover was 17 hours. There was an issue in that the flight made a stop in another Chinese city to offload goods & refuel before stopping in Kunming. We were not getting off the plane, or going through customs, but apparently this counted as me entering China, and put my layover time at 25 hours. The next few hours in Vancouver were some of the worst. I was on the phone with Flight Network who kept telling me China Eastern would be able to switch my flights for me, with China Eastern saying they couldn’t do that but the Flight Network could. China Eastern was also adamant that because this was Sunday there was no customer service even though we were talking to China Eastern agents at their customer service desk. This went back and forth for about 5 hours. In that time, I had about 6 panic attacks, broke down in the food court and had an angel from Air Canada & her entire cabin crew try to help me out, got yelled at by China Eastern and hung up on by the Flight Network about 4 times. The thing that got me is that there were two other travellers on the exact same flight path in the exact same situation as me. We were all told in Calgary we were good to go and all had boarding passes. Eventually we all came to the same conclusion, we lost our entire flight path (return included), and either needed to get a Chinese visa to rebook (full price) or try something else. I am not sure what they ended up doing, or if they got refunded. I was told many, many times by flight network that the insurance I purchased through them doesn’t cover issues like that, it was clearly my fault I let myself fall into this situation.

So, I got picked up/rescued at the airport, spent a few days on the coast with my mum and bought myself a trip to Mexico. The flights were cheap, and I got a return flight to Calgary. (I had lost the entire flight trip even the Vancouver to Calgary flight) I booked myself an airbnb apartment in La Cruz and headed off on a completely different trip than I had planned.

This wasn’t my first time to Mexico so it doesn’t technically count as a new country, but it was my first time actually experiencing Mexico. Staying in a resort doesn’t scratch the surface on the local culture, food & entire vibe of where you are staying. I met an amazing energy worker who was running the Airbnb and she quickly took me under her wing. Right when I got there she took me to a beach then to a little restaurant to watch the sunset over the ocean. I quickly realized I was packed for a yoga retreat, and spent the entire week in the one bathing suit and yoga towel I brought. Just goes to show how little we actually need. Cat and I went paddle boarding for both sunrise (we were paddling with dolphins), and sunset (we paddled into the night and saw the Phytoplankton glowing as we paddled). I also had a fish jump onto my board and flop between my legs which caused me to scream and almost shit myself - We were the only ones without headlamps. I crashed a salsa birthday party (more on that later), took public transit around the area, went snorkelling and saw the biggest mantra ray ever, visited beaches tourists don’t know about, ate the best shrimp tacos I’ve ever had in my life and met some amazing and very welcoming locals. Not once was I afraid or anxious which is quite the feat for me.

To be completely honest it was exactly what I needed in the moment. I was really stressed about the disk out in my back and knew that given the chance to push my body in acrobatics I would most likely end up in worse shape. Cat and I had amazing conversations about love, life and our dreams. I had the perfect balance of exploring, eating and taking time to do absolutely nothing. I came home rested and pain free (this was before all the shit that happened in November) and with a whole bunch of new friends that I am so grateful I got to meet.