Bearings in China

A good start to this trip. Landed late at 10:30pm, much confusion and difficulty getting to my room in town, but made it there smiling at ~1:30am. First question I got asked, "have you eaten, you must be hungry."

First day was a trip to The Golden Temple, a lush and stunning hill on the outskirts of town studded with 1600's stone and woodwork from the Ming Dynasty. Very quiet, peaceful, almost otherworldly. After a pleasant morning and early afternoon there, I bused an hour or so to get downtown and got to see the heart of the Yunnan province. Looked like most other large cities with much thought going into efficiency, a little into style, and almost none into history. I got home at 8:30pm and started struggling to keep my eyes open. I'll chalk it up to jet-lag and go to sleep for 10 hours. Goodnight!

Pre-departure discoveries

In my search for the cheapest way to get across the pacific ocean, I've discovered something quite odd. Plane ticket prices seem to go against intuition in a variety of respects. For example, when searching for "flights from SF to Hong Kong in October," I can find one for $250 that makes one stop in Shanghai. My intuition then tells me flying from SF to Shanghai must, necessarily, be cheaper, but when I change only one parameter so it's now "flights from SF to Shanghai in October" the lowest I can find is $290 and it makes a stop in Vancouver. Just to take it one step farther, I should look up how much a flight from Vancouver to Shanghai is in October (and find out where it stops along the way).

What a weird algorithm this must use. Yet, the thing to do mmustbe to find the $250 ticket going to anywhere that stops at where I really want to go before connecting.