Well, that was a frustrating day!

It started off with an email from Turkish Airlines saying that they had cancelled and rescheduled our Kuwait to Istanbul flight originally on April 4th, to exactly the same time on April 5th.

I looked at all the options, including keeping it at April 5th, but we decided we were actually better off  changing it to April 3rd. So I did all the changes online, and it seemed to accept everything. 

Until I looked a little closer.

On the original flight booking, I had paid for extra legroom seats. But that part of the booking looked like it hadn't transferred over as it now looked like we didn't have seat reservations at all.

So I had no choice but to get on the phone. After several attempts, I finally got through to the right department and they said there was a glitch in the system, and even she was getting an error message when trying to confirm the seating. She said she was sending an email off to their technical department, and I was to call back again in 3 hours.

During that time, I tried once again to book our Pegasus Airlines flight from Antalya to Paris on May 1st. I had tried several times over the past two days, and when I clicked the "buy" button, an error message was coming back saying the system wasn't receiving a response from my bank, and to either try again later or contact their call center. 

I eventually tried their call center, and it was going to cost more money than booking online. I figured it must be their system that is the problem, because I had used the card at the grocery store a couple of times and it worked fine. Not only that, but the price online had now gone up from where it was earlier!

In frustration, I tried booking a similar flight (not as convenient flight times, but around the same price) on Sun Express Airlines, only to find that my card didn't work there either!

Now it was time to phone our bank. Always a last resort for me, because it's such a pain having to answer all the security questions, as well as trying to listen to them coming from someone who's first language is not English.

When I finished answering the security questions, her tone immediately changed, and she said I had to contact the fraud department at a different number.

So, I called there, and eventually got through to someone else. Of course you have to explain the whole story again, and then he said I had to answer the security questions (again!). Normally they seem to ask three or four questions, but this guy asked a total of about 8 different questions. It was almost like he was going to keep going until I got one wrong, which I guess I did. He said "Sorry, we have not been able to confirm your identity, so you have to call your home branch". 

I hung up totally frustrated, and a few minutes later got an email from Scotiabank saying that my card may have been compromised, and that I should call the fraud department! Umm. I just did that...lol.

Of course our home branch in Ontario is closed at that hour, and we would have to wait until evening to make that call.

In the meantime, our credit card was totally blocked now. And nobody has been able to tell us why. All of the charges on our statement (both posted and pending) are accurate and the charges are valid ones that we have made. The only anomaly is that our "available credit" was over -$10,000! As in negative.

By now, it was almost lunchtime. Time for a break from this nonsense.

We hopped on the local transportation and took it downtown, back to the same street food stall where Ruth enjoyed the shrimp a few days before.

Delicious!

This time it was a little different though. Must have been a different cook. There were only four pieces of shrimp, instead of five. Still nice big fat juicy shrimp though! And there was also dried shrimp. And, it was much more spicy. We like spicy, but this was almost too much. 

Then I saw a barber across the road and I was getting due for a haircut. 200 baht ($5.60 USD, $7.55 CAD). The guy was really meticulous, and I am happy with my haircut!

Then we walked back to the condo, staying on the beach most of the way.

The tide was all the way out.

Looking back at Hua Hin pier.

Another busy day for the kite surfers.

Taken from the bridge at the shopping mall near where our condo is.

In the evening, I made the phone call to our home branch as soon as it opened at 9:30am Ontario time. I got a guy who at least seemed sympathetic, and he asked me some more security questions that I must have passed because he said all he needed to do was to call the fraud department and my card would be unblocked. This morning, I think that has happened because the "available credit" now shows the positive number that it should be. I will know for sure when I try and book that Antalya to Paris flight again later.

And I called Turkish Airlines again to see if the seating problem had been resolved, but it still hasn't been and they said they have emailed the technical department yet again and I have to call them back today... yet again!

A little bit of a frustrating day. The first cold beer sure did taste good!

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4 Sensor Tire Pressure Monitoring System.

And in Canada...

Solar Charging Power Bank.