March 6, 2014 

Eron and I are off on our newest adventure; The Kingdom of Thailand. We have been thinking of coming here since 2009. However, as luck would have it, every time we started planning a trip to Thailand; protests against the government would begin and we’d end up going somewhere else. Well, the same thing happened again when we started getting things together for this trip; this time around we weren’t letting the protests deter us. We knew the protests were primarily restricted to downtown Bangkok and a few select suburbs. So, we just planned around them; we would fly into Chiang Mai in the north, meander our way through the country, and fly home from Phuket in the south. If the protests quietened down we could still visit Bangkok, but we could also avoid the city all-together.

Well, suffice it to say, the “Travel Gods” are indeed a fickle bunch and are not to be trifled with. Our first clue as to their true nature was when we arrived at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) to find out our Cathay Pacific flight would be delayed by over an hour. This immediately put us at risk for missing our connecting flight from Hong Kong to Chiang Mai. However, the Cathay Pacific staff at YVR assured us that arrangements would be made. So, we checked our luggage (straight through to Chiang Mai) and proceeded with the flight.

March 7, 2014

We arrive at Hong Kong’s big shiny new airport – and yep, we missed our connection to Chiang Mai. Luckily, the Cathay Pacific folks were cognizant of this and had booked us to Chiang Mai via one extra connection through (yes, you guessed it) Bangkok. So, those fickle gods of travel decided we were to set foot in Bangkok whether we wanted to or not.

So, we end up at the Bangkok airport anyway….

The Cathay Pacific folks told us all we had to do was check-in with Thai Airways and they would get us to Chiang Mai. When talking about impromptu connecting flights between partner-carriers, things NEVER go this simply. We walked up to the Thai Airways counter with our ticket vouchers and were told that, “Yes” our vouchers were valid; but, “No” they knew nothing about us and we weren’t on their passenger manifest. Additionally, since our luggage had been checked in for connections through Cathay Pacific flights; they weren’t sure whether our luggage would be off-loaded in Bangkok or transferred directly to our final destination. Needless to say, at this point we weren’t very sure we were making it to Chiang Mai today… and we were resigned to our luggage being sent to the same place dryers send single socks to.

Well, it seems that those travel gods are only mischievous rather than truly evil. The nice folks at Thai Airways managed to sort things out, get us on an afternoon flight, and even promised us our luggage would get there with us. Lo and behold, they weren’t kidding; we arrived in Chiang Mai (only about 5 hours behind schedule) and our luggage actually showed up on the carousel as promised!

The rest of our first day in Thailand was much less stressful. Our taxi got us to our hotel, the Yindee Stylish Guesthouse (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g293917-d1637270-Reviews-Yindee_Stylish_Guesthouse-Chiang_Mai.html); without any side-trips to a, “same but better hotel” and we were welcomed by the very genial proprietor,”Jas”. We spent the balance of the afternoon wandering about in the “old town” area. And we enjoyed our first Thai dinner in Thailand at a local eatery suggested by Jas; Kanjana (http://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g293917-d3665386-Reviews-Kanjana-Chiang_Mai.html).