Safe and Sound in Chiang Mai

They still serve food on international flights and they gave us lots of choices when we got our tickets. So we took Hindu vegetarian. It sure tasted a lot like chicken. I know they can make vegie foods that seem like meat, but I think this was the real thing.






Since we were so late, we got to see the sunrise over the Pacific.









It looks just like being in an airplane. I took two seats in the back because that far back there were just two seats, not a third. But it meant there was a space between me and the window. The space was nice, but I couldn't lean on the window to sleep. But with a little bit of muscle relaxant, I slept a lot on the plane. It was also 5:45 am when we finally left three hours late.



We were on the ground in Taipei for at most 40 minutes. 20 of that was waiting to get off the plane from Anchorage, and another 15 until the plane to Chiang Mai took off. That leaves about five minutes to ask about the Chiang Mai flight as we got off the plane, be greeted as though we won the lottery, and pointed to a lady with a Chiang Mai sign who quickly led us and four others to the Chiang Mai flight. Someone had to move for us. They'd already closed the doors and people thought the empty seats were available. Thanks China Air for making sure we got our connection. That probably saved us four or five more hours.

I’d already assumed that we were going to be rerouted through Bangkok because we were almost three hours late - arriving at 8:30 am Taipei time - and our flight was leaving at 8:35am. Given that we were in the back of a crowded airbus, I knew it would take forever just to get off the plane.

But they knew we were due and the plane waited for us. I didn’t even have time to email Grib to say we’d made the flight. I'd emailed from Anchorage that she shouldn't come til she hears from us because we were probably going to miss our flight.






Mrs. Lee was sitting next to me. We did a lot of hand stuff, but she didn't speak English, Thai, or Chinese. In the end she asked me to fill in her immigration form. She had a Chinese passport and she was born in Thailand. I really wish I could have spoken to her in a language she understood. I did get to show her pictures of Alaska on my computer.



Well, after emailing Grib to not come to the airport, no one was there. We decided it would be faster to just catch a song thaew since we knew that Bon had made arrangements for us to stay where we'd stayed last year.












We stopped at the airport post office and mailed the package we'd taken for the Thai AFS student. That was easy and we had one less piece of luggage to haul around.



Here, we're in a bit of traffic in the back of the SongThaew (Two rows - a pickup with two benches in the back.)

We got a room right next to our old one on the fourth floor. It's not as big, but otherwise identical, except we have a west facing view instead of north. Still lots of trees and we can hear the birds, and the fourth floor means I've gotten more exercise today trying to get the internet connection just right than I've gotten in a couple of weeks.