First Stop: Vancouver YVR

Nice place to take a long walk! Vancouver International is one of the most beautiful airports I've ever seen. It has a warm feeling with lots of polished wood, water features, plant & tree life, and all kinds of indigenous art.

I've never been here during Chinese New Year and it's even more beautiful with red lanterns and symbols throughout.

My original stopover was to be 4 hours so even with the delays from Regina there was still a comfortable margin. Two more delays in Vancouver resulted in us leaving 90 minutes late, which I realized would make it near impossible to catch my connecting flight to Hanoi 😢, originally scheduled out of Hong Kong with only a 1hr 15min stopover.

Perhaps Cathay Pacific Airlines will also have delays?

Boarding this flight took an hour. Most of the travellers were of Asian and East Indian Heritage and of the folks I met, most had done this flight before. They knew the organized chaos of imaginary "boarding pass zones" in the crowd. They started lining up way early.

This was my first of what will surely be many times glomming on to friendly strangers or at least observing & copying (real life copying & pasting?) them to find my way.

All annoucements in YVR are in Mandarin, English and then French. Our flight crew - all kind, friendly and efficient - did the opening announcements in these 3 languages and then offered translations in Cantonese, Hindi, Japonese and a couple of other languages! I may have to rethink my stong opinions about Air Canada.Les mer