2 More Days!

Today's weather: High = 0 Low = -2
Light snow

Finally, it looks like the semi-annual round of exams and marks entry are wrapping up and winding down. Buses are already shuttling out of the school full of students, and people are getting excited about the long break.

The ongoing cold weather only makes us wanna go somewhere warm. It's unique this year in the sense that we haven't had any temporary respites. Usually things will rebound upwards past 10 degrees between cold spells and we can look forward to this. But this year the powerful cold fronts have kept the temperature near freezing. It's very similar to what happened 3 years ago with the snow crisis in southern China. Weather experts point out that La Nina caused those kind of conditions, and we happen to be in another strong La Nina period. Because of that, the cold weather will stay in place until at least mid-February, and the potential for more snow and ice storms is very high.

Combine all this with the fact that I haven't had a decent break for years now (since early 2008 basically) and this upcoming trip means a great deal to me for rejuvination.

For that reason I am taking zero chances with any potential transport delays related to the weather or the annual nightmare known as Spring Festival mass migration. If we're in a similar weather pattern that caused the whole mess in 2008, then the thought of getting stuck in the cold with mass crowds of frustrated travelers scares me silly.

The plan is to catch a train to Hangzhou on Thursday, fly out in the evening to Guangzhou, thend spend a day visiting a friend. Guangzhou will be warmer and a nice transition climate. After that, I switch cities to Shenzhen and catch a cheap flight to Bangkok the next night. It's also a one-day buffer in case things go belly-up with the original flight.

Should that happen, meaning they cancel my original flight, then here's the back-up plan: I've got an emergency train ticket booked from Hangzhou to Wenzhou on early Friday morning, which is far enough south to be out of range of any ice storms. If it turns out I need to do this plan, then I can get things rolling while still at the Hangzhou airport. Whatever credit may be available from the first flight cancellation, I'll use that to book another flight from Wenzhou directly to Shenzhen. The idea would be to leave enough buffer time to make this work, both for getting to Wenzhou and also for connecting to the Bangkok flight.

So if you can follow all the logic on this, great. If not, just know that I will stop at nothing to leave the cold weather, noise, crowds, and stress behind in order to ensure that this much-needed vacation gets off the ground.