Traveling to Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Like all things dealing with Thailand, there is the awesome and beautiful then there is the challenging.
It begins with an email from my travel guru, whom I just adore. It said it was ‘auto-generated’ and let me know the gate at Seatac had changed from gate 7 to gate 10. Nice. Always nice to know changes. This item is a small dragon, but as we know dragons can grow.
I spent a fair amount of time dealing with our cell phones. We will be gone for up to a year, maybe more. So, there was no need to keep my ATT account which I was paying $170 for. (My Thai phone service is $11 per month for 20Gig) But I didn’t want to lose the number I’ve had since Eisenhower was in office. I discovered something called porting your phone which pretty much saves your number which you can retrieve later but also, via an app on your phone, forwards your calls to that number to your new number in Thailand. This was a concern because it had to happen at the last minute. Lots of google research and fretting but in the end it all worked out.
Having dinner with Diane’s choir the night before we stayed at a hotel near Seatac and took the shuttle the next morning at 6:40am and began hour 26-hour travel. We made it through the best TSA experience. We were looking for the line, which there was NONE. We just walked up and did the shoes-off thing and got to a breakfast place lickity-split. We dutifully made it to gate 10 and hung out.
It was approaching boarding time when we heard our names being paged overhead for our flight last call. We ran down to gate 7 (yes, the email was wrong) and were about to be the last peeps boarding the plane. The Delta agent asked, when checking us in “When is your return flight?”. I replied that February 28th we are moving on to Vietnam. “You have a one-way ticket?” When I replied “Yes” her expression changed from friendly to worried. “Do to have your Visa on you?” I could see her mentally crossing her fingers. I said, “In my checked bag, but I have a picture on my phone” I said hopefully. Now all three agents at the gate simultaneously turned their heads and looked at me with extreme worry written on all their faces. The doors were about to be closed. Then time stopped. So did my heart. It seemed the whole airport went quiet other than the sound of a ticking clock… Are we going to miss our flight? Do need to buy another ticket? What about our bags? Then, boom, she said “Just get on”. Phewwww!
From there we got our seats in Economy Plus where I spied a fresh baby in the seats in front of us. I froze in fear but had an uneventful 12 ½ hour flight to Seoul. I believe I fussed more than the baby did. I told the parents they ought to teach a class on child travel. We made it through customs without a hitch followed by a 5 ½ hour flight to our home for the next four months, Chiang Mai, Thailand. The airport and hotel were familiar, so we had no worries. The next day we started the process of recovery from jetlag and moved on to your new Airbnb.
We have a rule on long flights. Never have the first place be an Airbnb with self-check-in. A lot can go wrong. You don’t want wrong to happen after 25 hours of flight in a foreign country in the middle of the night. Also, it’s nice to have a smiling face welcome you and give you a hand with your bags.