little highway girl

I made it to Georgia.

Left HK in the middle of a Typhoon 8 (IDK what it was, but they started cancelling Monday flights, so it sounded pretty serious). Reached Istanbul on time as per schedule.

Istanbul was redoing their airport last time I came through here in 2022. It is the headquarters of Turkish Airlines which services a large chunk of Eastern Europe and Western Asia (and Africa, and all the major world centres).

It's freaking HUGE. And shiny. And new. But there are not enough seats, signposts, or information about what to do and where to go and what needs to be done. And nobody could tell me if I was too late to make my flight, so I didn't really have time to look at everything, although I really wanted to...

Sometimes I have to remind myself that almost everything I can get in a major airport, I can find back home in Sydney, home-made and better quality.

Made the flight to Georgia, got off, met the driver who took me to the place where the tour group was today.

( after 36 hours in Georgia )

I spent most of the day in the room, listning to an irregular rumble that never quite seemed to stop...

..around 5:30pm, I realised that it was the elevators.

I called down to the front desk and they promptly moved me...to a room at the back corner which smelled like it had previously housed a smoker. You're not allowed to smoke in the rooms, sure. But someone who smokes like a chimney had inhabited that room not too long ago, and I could smell it.

I called down to the front desk, they sent up housekeeping, who sprayed perfume through the room. Not helping! And then they moved me yet again - about four rooms along and there's no smell and no elevator rumble...

What a drama. And I'd slept pretty well last night. It was just during the day that I was listening to that rumble and thought at first it must be construction work, only to realise after hours that, no, it's probably the elevators.

Bad design, as my dad the architect would say.

At any rate, I'm moved again.

NOW can the drama be over? Please? Pretty please?

I'm feeling better still - more energy, but the slightly congested nose and throat again. I stopped taking the phenylephrine after last night. And looking through the drugs the doc gave me, there's an anti-histamine, and an anti-inflammatory, and when I tried taking the metformin (another anti-inflammatory) last night...let's just say it got unpretty.

Tonight and tomorrow is to make sure I'm back to (near-)fighting fit. I should have been in Georgia, by now, meeting the rest of the tour...

*sigh* Okay, no dwelling. Just resting.

Still feeling not-great, but ( medication is a wonder of the modern world and nobody can persuade me otherwise )

Ugh. Alas, for I have caught a bug. Virus. Thingy. Whatever.

Runny nose, blocked ears, exhaustion, sore throat.

Luckily, I had some antibiotics to take for it, so that's made things a little easier, but I suspect it's one of those longer-running, harder-hitting viruses.

Going to ask the halfbro for thoughts on a medical centre that I could maybe get seen by a doc and possibly get some stronger antibiotics? Also take a test, in case what I have is one of the worrying ones.

Probably doesn't help that I'm in Hong Kong (and was in Singapore) where it's very hot and humid, and so I start sweating like crayz when I'm not standing in a breeze. I mean, that was likely anyway, but the feeling of my eyes and nose and ears and sinuses all being stuffed up is not fun.

I'm also vaguely worried about the next leg of the trip which is two booked tours where they'll exclude me if I'm not healthy.

So, mostly rest while here in HK. That's the plan. It's just hard because it's so hot and blech and no respite. But the air con wasn't great in Singapore - it just felt cold and hard and sharp in my throat. So what with one thing and another, it's all a bit much.

I've been sick while traveling before - ironically, I was also on a tour that time. But it was pre-covid and people didn't worry quite so much about pandemics.

I've been vaxxed - covid 6 months ago, and flu more recently - but it's just the stuffiness that's not feeling great right now.