Zed A. Shaw, Painter

I had booked a flight from Bangkok to LAX in April as a return trip on Xiamen Airlines, which goes through Xiamen China. Then coronoavirus and a new H1N1 outbreak and I waited to see if it'd get better, but it's too risky to have flights canceled. I had to cancel it and rebook.

I watched the prices almost every day and pretty much if you go to the west coast of the USA then all of your cheapest flights go through China. The alternative is through Moscow to Europe, which was reasonable going to Amsterdam. Today the price dropped to the lowest yet, $410

So, I decided to go through Amsterdam instead, and leave on TAP Portugal. With credit card points and everything it ended up being the same price as my previous itinerary, and I get 5 days in Amsterdam. I guess that means I'm doing *another* Accidental World Tour:

I'll doing a shorter one, going through Osaka, Kyoto, Bangkok, Phanat Nikhom, Chantaburi, *maybe* Chiang Mai, Amsterdam, then Miami. Then after that I'm in Orlando for a week for:

But I can't imagine how this is going to gut the Chinese airlines. They let me cancel no questions asked, like they really wanted me to cancel. I'm betting it's incredibly hard to run an airport right now, and canceling is better for them.