Hello! It's Eric aka "Anomad"

You might remember me as the guy who was stopped by immigration for several hours in Finland a year ago on his way to Steem Fest for no reason whatsoever than being Mexican and the possibility of me wanting to stay, missing my onwards flight on purpose and stay and live in Finland - as if, Finnish people and Mexican people are so different I'd die within a week.

Perhaps you know me as the dude who missed his Chiang Mai flight from China because he couldn't access his Gmail account - because it's banned in China - and couldn't show proof of forward plane ticket, hence had to spend another $220 to buy another ticket to Thailand and another forward ticket to Vietnam - which he didn't use.

Or maybe you've heard of me as the guy used to blog a lot about traveling with a low budget but lately he only posts about life and rants around on steem. This is maybe because his role on steem changed and now focusing his time on travel posts is not as helpful as trying to encourage the community to write about certain topics and overall trying to build community.

Well, it matters not what do you know about me for, because I'm here to provide another story, yet another misadventure, a different sort of Odyssey for us to laugh at my expense - don't worry, I don't mind, I always look back to these stories and smile about them. Everything that happens implies experience, every misadventure means I learned something.

I like writing my rants here, they are some sort of therapy and at the same time, doing so allows me to relieve my anger and not punch anyone - something I've been successful at lately, not punching anyone. So here it goes, rant begins in 3, 2, 1...

This whole Asian trip started on the wrong foot

As I already shared with you, I had to spend $220 usd that weren't on my initial budget. Added to that, if you don't know me, well, I always travel with a tight - if not exact - budget, meaning that every extra expense means that I have to cut expenses on a future day. But for this trip my whole budget was extremely exact, to the point where I didn't have return tickets.

I was hoping that after SF, I would spend the rest of November and half of December traveling around South East Asia. Meeting my steem friends, getting to know this part of the world which I always wanted to, spending time working on steem related stuff and overall, trying to go back to my nomadic lifestyle that I love.

But this trip was not one for that, and I would find out about it as my time in Asia unfolded. After Steemfest (which rocked) was over, a series of unfortunate events both irl, on steem and back home started to unfold. That, combined with the low steem price, me having very little Fiat, my general hatefulness towards being in a country where not a single person fully understands English, the similarities Thailand has to Mexico - the negative ones, that is - and dunno, a general tiredness both mental and physical, pushed me to make the decision of going back to Mexico. I'm just not up for traveling any more and I don't want to push it; actually, the only reason I wanted to stay was because I was already coming to this side of the world for Steem Fest, so it felt like a waste of money to come all the way here and leave so early, so I wanted to push my time here. That was a mistake, making good decisions for the wrong reasons.

Anyway, I decided to buy ticket back to Mexico.

I bought my ticket from Bangkok to Vancouver with just one layover in Guangzhou, China. Then the plan was to buy a ticket from Vancouver to Mexico City. If you travel frequently you'll see how it is possible to find cheaper flights if you cut your trip in half or three separate tickets, some times you save 10-15% of the overall price.

Well, this time it backfired for me. After buying this ticket to Vancouver, my card was blocked - screw you HSBC, this is not the first time you do it - and while trying to access my bank app I made the mistake of doing it while being angry and mad as fuck, so I mistyped the password 3 times, making it effectively blocked. I couldn't access the rest of my money and my family back home couldn't help me unblock it due to security and privacy reasons - fuck banks, go private keys.

Anyway, I already had my Vancouver ticket. I couldn't wait to get out of Asia. Don't get me wrong, nothing wrong with this continent, it's just that my mind and body are not up for dealing with what it means to backpack in Asia this at the moment. Having the ticket was a win, I'd be close to home soon.

I didn't have more money not a way to buy a ticket but something would come up, it always does, I always find a way. At least until now, that is.

I remembered I still have some splinterlands alpha packs stashed there, nice. I sold them and used that money to buy a ticket from Vancouver to Mexico City. I used my brother's card to do this, together we had around 25 bucks left in his account but now we had a ticket back home, both of us for two days in BKK. Not bad, doable.

Then, the 20th came. We were ready to hop in to the flight that would take us to Guangzhou. Oh my, imagine that, flight delayed. Imagine my shock. Gotta love Murphy's law.

Well, guess what? China Southern made us wait five hours - and they would've made us wait more if it was up to them and we stayed quiet - and then reallocated us to a flight to Shanghai - where I'm currently writing this.

But guess what? Even though I gave myself a 12 hour window thinking ahead of delayed flights and general China crap well, the flight got delayed overall 11:30 minutes, meaning that I will arrive thirty minutes before my Vancouver to Mexico City flight departs. Hm, doable, right? Just gotta let the flight attendants know so they can help me go through the lines faster and shit, I've done that before, it's doable, besides it's Canada not China, I'm sure they would help me there.

Guess again. The Shanghai - Vancouver flight also got delayed. This means that I got double fucked. Because now I'm not gonna make it to YVR in time, gonna miss the flight I bought less than 48 hours and now I literally have no money left to buy another ticket - even if I had, buying a last minute ticket is expensive as fuck.

So we'll see what happens. I'm going to arrive in Canada without an onwards ticket, no money and yep, you guessed correctly, only summer clothes! Canada in the almost Winter, that should be fun.

This all sounds too ridiculous to be true, but it is.

I'll handle it, I've always had, I always will. Writing about it makes all the rage go away and it let's the peace of mind come, it's my catharsis. I'm already feeling better.

It's not like I don't have some crypto or assets I can sell, but I hate selling. I don't want to sell more steem - I think I won't have to, I hope - and I'll sell some (or many) splinterlands alpha packs to get myself out of this mess. It's not pretty. I'm not 25 anymore, I can't keep traveling like this, with a tight as fuck budget and no plans but where my feet take me. It's long overdue, I'm gonna stay in Mexico for a while before thinking of doing any long distance travel.

Rant over. Got it out of my system. If you kept reading til the end, please let me know why did you keep reading. I would like to know if my writing style still has that special something that makes people keep reading, even when it's about dirty socks, rants or travel adventures.

By the way, I can't upload pictures with this Chinese airport internet, so I'm just including a random pic of me in an airport - from which I already have the URL. I hope it works :P