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B & B Becoming Reality

Friday, February 11th, 2011

Skimmer & tubing al installed for the pool filter, should be taking a dip before the week’s out.

Actually everything should be pretty well wrapped up by the weekend.

Due to some restrictions on advertising here on Word Press, I decided to start a new blog for the Las Brisas B & B on blogger.

Shall continue this blog for my travels & personal trivia, while using the new one for the B & B + El Salvador news. 

http://wwwlasbrisasplayasandiego.blogspot.com

The site is a work-in-progress by a ‘puter illiterate dude so Y’all just have to bear with me—or not!

A Guy’s Gotta Do, What A Guy’s Gotta/(wants) Do!!!

Friday, February 4th, 2011

There’s an old saying (from WW1 I think) “Once they’ve seen Parree, you can’t keep ‘em down on the farm”. In reference to the doughboys from the country who served overseas.

Same holds true for this ole ‘Townships” farm-boy, who had the good fortune to see a bit of the world + on a whim decided to get a TEFL  certificate in fabulous Bangkok, thus making “the world my oyster” by opening employment opportunities most anywhere!

So in my case it’s “Once I saw Bangkok you couldn’t keep me in Canada!”.

I bought me a house (yeah I know that’s not proper English grammar) in Playa San Diego, El Salvador where I looked after mother, no one else to do it & Ontario nursing homes would all be closed (by the SPCA, if they were housing animals) until her passing.

Now I am free to return to SE Asia as my obligations have ended.

I know, yeah I know what you’re saying, “You just found your Paradise in El Salvador, what to Hell’s wrong with you?”

Had been renovating the house to make a private apartment for myself but now the plan is to use it as a B & B + give some private English lessons on the side (TEFL teaching in CA doesn’t pay worth a damn).

However after doing some number crunching, things turned up to be a tad short (another 8 months before will receive a social security check), time for plan B.

Renovations will be done by the end of the month, likely be the end of April before all the affairs are tidied up & taxes filed. As Canada will now direct deposit social security checks in a few other countries, the US being one & there is a cool US address company http://www.virtualpostmail.com that has UPS’s Mailboxes beat by a country mile, will just sign up with them & have checks deposited in my US account, from which I can get free transfers to an account in El Salvador, Canadian money & checks are worthless & NOT accepted here.

The new caretaker & his daughter, one of mothers nurses, whom I  kept on, as she is a smart lady with experience working in a hostel, are working out well.

Plan “B”: An X-pat Brit owns a hostel just down the road, an X-pat Canadian runs a small resort, down the beach a bit, my B&B will be priced in between, likely be used mostly by El Salvadorians from the city, my help is perfectly capable of looking after that & most importantly trustworthy so I can leave them in charge. So open the B&B, train the help + give them some English lessons until May.

Then it will be time to renew the licence on the Kia, change it into my name (es El Salvador things work differently here), trade my BZ ON drivers licence for the equivalent here & it’s Hasta luego Playa San Diego!

! had originally planned on returning to Thailand in October but had to put that plan on hold. Now, it appears, for a few reasons, my best bet is to head for Cambodia to gain some teaching experience. However as I still have a couple vehicles in Canada, I might as well stop by & deal with them + make sure the family grave markers have mothers information on them.

Flights SAL-YYZ are a tad on the dear side + there’s only one super expensive direct flight on LASCA, otherwise it’s AA with a plane change in MIA (am boycotting US airports due to the TSA pervs) so I checked out doing it by bus & hey it’s pretty cool with lots of choices & executive buses through CA &  Mexico. Of course once you hit the US border at Laredo Texas you have 2 choices, The Grey Dog or walk.

Don’t you just love 1st world countries!!

Going to cost, when all’s said & done, about the same as flying but think I’ll do it, taking around 7 days, just because I can + not called the busman for nothing LOL

Once I have finished my business in ON & QC, shall catch an Aero Svit   www.aerosvit.com   flight YYZ-KBP-BKK $634 (COOL) spend a few days renewing old acquaintances in BKK prior to heading over to Phnom Penh & a job search.

Sounds like a plan but as always, subject to change!