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Sunday, December 5, 2021

I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night!

Quite a  few things to talk about today. 

We made the decision to move Max down to the parking lot in the city itself. More for a change of scenery than anything else, but it's also slightly cheaper and of course it's closer to the shops and we were due to stock up on a few things. Our LPG was getting low, so we also needed to fill the tanks.

Many fuel stations in Albania (and much of Europe for that matter) also sell propane. But there was a place we had driven by near the first campground we had stayed at here that was a car wash and LPG, and it also had one positive review on the park4night app.

Well now there is a positive review and a negative review!

When we drove up, I saw the pump where they do automotive propane. This is normally where I would fill Max's propane tanks. They also had a big weight scale setup where they would typically fill other types of tanks by weight. The guy spoke zero English, but I understood that he was insisting that he could only fill my tanks by weight, so I didn't argue with him, although I had to remove each tank which isn't really a big deal. So he would charge by the kilogram, even though there was a sign there clearly saying the price per liter of 80 lek which is about standard.

I knew one tank was totally empty and I was guessing the second tank might be around 3/4 empty. So he does each one, and weighs them empty with the hose attached. Then fills them and writes down the weight again. At the end, I'm watching him do you the math, but it doesn't add up and he shows me the price on his calculator and it's some ridiculous amount like 25,000 lek which is around €200. I laughed at him. I may have been born at night, but it wasn't last night!

He kept on insisting, then I spotted a meter over by the far side of the hose that had the total amount of liters that he put in the tanks! It was 33 liters which should be pretty accurate since the empty tank would take about 18, and the other one about 15. I pointed that out to him, and told him that the most I'm paying is 2,640 lek (which is 33 liters x 80 lek per liter). Eventually he laughs and shakes my hand and gives me change for a 5,000 note as if the whole thing was a game. Funniest part was that he gave me 100 lek too much in change!

We've encountered this type of thing buying fuel in Mexico, but never where they have tried to charge me ten times more than what it should have been. The guy was a little greedy!

We got Max parked up and we were the only motorhome there.

Photo taken from our side window.

Ruth had been saving a few bones for the dogs, and this poor thing was happy to take advantage of that. She's got a bad leg, and she's got puppies somewhere in the bushes in behind us.

Around 4:00pm another motorhome pulled in. Then another immediately after that. The second one was right hand drive, so it's likely they were from the UK. But we never got a chance to find out. They pulled into a spot, and 15 minutes later they pulled out again. 

We went out to get some groceries. On the way to the store, I got a WhatsApp message from our dentist! He says "I was expecting you on Thursday, but you didn't show up". 

Well, he had said that he expected Ruth's aligners to be ready on Thursday, but he never gave us an appointment time or anything so we had been waiting to hear from him. We were actually really close to his office, so we just walked over there when we were finished doing groceries and sure enough he was there at 5:00pm on a Saturday afternoon! 

He took 45 minutes or so and carefully explained to Ruth the procedure. Really neat stuff. When the aligners are in, you can hardly notice them. 

The lower one is installed, but you can hardly see it.

The aligners have to be changed every two weeks. She has four for the upper, and eight for the lower. So the treatment is finished after two months for the upper, and four months for the lower. 


It even comes with a 3D printed mold that shows what her teeth will look like when the treatment is finished.

We paid the 73,000 lek ($875 CAD, $685 USD, €600) in cash, and that was that. He wants us to come back in April or May to do a final inspection and make sure that everything is okay.

So now, we are just waiting for that water filter package to show up and then we can carry on to Greece. Still no further updates.

Then we went for a walk in the downtown area where they have turned on all the Christmas lights...



We don't often get out in the evening, so that was kind of nice.

And one last thing... I saw a news item the other day that bothered us.


Sometimes tourism is not a good thing. 

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And in Canada...

16 comments:

  1. A cable car!!! That is really sad. I'm amazed at what you can accomplish without speaking much of the language.

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    1. It really is sad, Kilimanjaro already has enough people on it's slopes in normal times, it doesn't need more! We are so upset about this new venture, it will change the mountain forever! I am so glad that we got to climb it when we did.

      Somehow we can always make ourselves understood, especially when we know that someone is trying to rip us off.

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  2. Yay! Finally I see the city...a bit of it anyway. Beautiful lights. Well, you did say that area was like Mexico a few times...hence the guy overcharging. Good thing you wise to that game.

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    1. I don't know where you were when we were showing other pictures of the city, they are there on the blog.

      It only happened to us a few times in Mexico where someone tried to rip us off but they never got away with it there either. This is the first time that we have had a situation like this here in Albania.

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  3. Sad about the cable car. Glad u got there before it was built. Don hope it will help the common villager. Pretty christmas lights. Good thing you are an aware traveler so you didnt get taken advantage of.

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    1. It really is sad about the cable car, we think this is the worse thing that could have happened to Kilimanjaro. It will most likely employ a few of the local people but most of the money will go to the government and some of that will probably end up in someone's pocket not doubt. We are very glad to have climbed Kilimanjaro when we did.

      Yes, as a traveler anywhere you need to be aware of the currency and the exchange rate otherwise it can be easy to get ripped off and it this case it would have been a large sum of money compared to what it should have been!

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  4. Cable car? Not for love nor money up a mountain that high!

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    1. The cable car will not be going to the top of the mountain, it will only be going about half way up but it is still a travesty to even have it there at all! :-(

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  5. I am glad the dentist sent you a message at last! I will be interested to hear if Ruth's teeth get sore, like mine did with braces. I would imagine that aligners are a bit more gentle, but I still wouldn't be surprised at some soreness. I also wonder whether they make her lisp like my plastic retainers do. I only wear my retainers at night now, thankfully, so I don't have to worry about lisping, but I hated the first four months when I had to wear them full time.

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    1. We are glad that he did too. I guess it was just a communication error. I honestly thought that we would have sent us a message giving us an appointment to pick them up and to give me instructions on how to use them and care for them. Anyways it all worked out and I got the aligners and the info to go with them. :-)

      I can't really say if they are more gentle than regular braces as I have never had to deal with them but yes, they are fairly gentle. I do feel some pressure but not much. I notice the tenderness the most when I remove them to eat. Yesterday I was tried to eat some peanuts and I found that they were too crunchy and hurt my teeth so I just won't eat peanuts until the process is all over. I haven't tried eating pork or steak yet, so not sure how that will go. When I first had them in I thought maybe I was going to have a bit of a lisp but it seemed to go away fast. Kevin said he has only noticed me lisp once. They are really very thin but very strong, I doubt that they are as thick as what a plastic retainer might be. We will update on the process as we go along, just so people know how the progress is going.

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    2. Yes, there were definitely some "too hard" foods I couldn't eat comfortably, like peanuts. At least with aligners, you take them out to eat, so you won't get stuff stuck in them or break brackets eating certain foods! Sticky foods were definitely no-nos. I don't eat beef, but I do remember some of the folks on the braces forum I frequented saying that steak was a no-go in braces, but that may only apply if you have brackets. If it is tough and chewy, it could be uncomfortable to eat even with aligners, since your teeth will be a bit sore every time you change to a new aligner. I will be interested to see how the top ones work for the one tooth you have that is a bit rotated, as even after 14 months in traditional braces, I still have one slightly rotated tooth that bothers me since it is one of my central incisors. I would consider a short stint with aligners if I thought they would do any better than traditional braces did on that tooth. Not sure why it was so resistant to moving; my ortho tried several different things, but it really didn't want to budge!

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    3. Yes, that is one of the nice positives about these clear aligners, you really can eat just about everything without having to worry, unlike traditional braces. Also cleaning the teeth is the exact same as before, you don't have to worry about all the wires in the way. I had a pork chop last night and I had no problems eating it. It just seems to be hard crunchy food that hurt my teeth.

      We will let you know how things go with that upper tooth as I progress along with the aligners. It is fairly minor and who knows how long it has been that way. Sorry that you had issues with that one tooth when you had your braces.

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  6. LP gas fill up. I am liking Albania more and more. It's almost like home in many ways.

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    1. Chris, we know you and Juan would love it here! :-)

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  7. A cable car on Kilmanjaro....what are they thinking...glad we went up there before all this.

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    1. We agree with you, we think it is a terrible thing that they are going to do! They obviously are only looking at the money aspect of this and not the impact it will have on the natural and environmental aspect of it, with having so many more people on the mountain! We are so glad that we were up there before all this goes down too. :-(

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