Day 119! Well, it’s another travel day! I’ve taken a bus to Chiang Mai, a van, hitchhiked out of Chiang Mai… so it’s only fair now we check off flying too. Unfortunately we ran into some VERY annoying hiccups at the airport. But you’ll read what happened soon enough!

Well, I thought I was getting better. But I woke up early in the morning with some intense shivers. I didn’t have a fever though, so hopefully that’s a good sign.

But by the morning my shivers were gone and I was on the mend.

Ben, Mina, and Sam set out to do a bit more shopping. But I wanted to rest more, so I stayed back at the hotel. I also snagged a quick breakfast at a nearby (cheap) food stand!

I also went to the nearby 7-eleven, took out money from the ATM and grabbed some more water and coconut water to hydrate more.

While I was back at the hotel, here’s a picture of what Ben Mina and Sam were up to at the shopping mall!

This 50 Baht meal was superb! It’s been a bit since I’ve had a pad see ew as well and I enjoyed it very much.

Ben, Mina, and Sam got back from shopping and then we stayed in our hotel until just before noon, when we had to check out. It took another half an hour to find a Grab driver, so we sat in the lobby while we waited.

The ride took over an hour to get us from our hotel to Suvarnabhumi Airport (BKK). Luckily our flight was delayed an hour so we weren’t in the biggest rush.

But… this is when some very frustrating things happened.

Since we were flying on a budget airline, they’re sticklers to the rules and definitely try to nickel and dime you when they see the opportunity.

So, they made me check my backpack because it was too heavy… oh well. Couldn’t finesse it on the flight this time (even though there were plenty of people with large heavy bags on this flight)! I might need to just get a smaller backpack and put some things in it so I can just carry on my bags.

I had to pay just under 500 Baht to check my bag, which was quite frustrating. But this was nowhere near the frustration that my cousin Sam went through.

When booking this flight he accidentally put Sam (instead of his full name) and his last name in the first name box. So his ticket said Sam Last Name Last Name. Because of this, the name on his passport didn’t match the name on his booking. So they wouldn’t let him check in. It was wild, I understand there are rules… but apparently “the only way around this” was for Sam to buy a new seat! Allegedly the flight was overbooked and that played into it too… but wow. I was blown away with the absurdity.

I lent a helping hand putting on my inner Karen for him. But no matter how much we proclaimed our displeasure, emphasizing that obviously this booking was him…

Now, we had two possible options. One, Sam buys a new ticket but this really was a ridiculous. Or two, we all go back to Bangkok and take a night bus to Chiang Mai… also not ideal since we’d be wasting all four plane tickets, having to take another taxi back into the city, and then sleep on a bus. ALSO, my bag had already been checked and sent through the baggage tunnel… all and all, not a great situation.

In the end, we had to fold and Sam had to buy a new ticket for over 5,000 Baht ($160).

We were all frustrated and annoyed, but on the bright side were all still together!

But before we made it to security, I had an interesting and strange interchange with a 15 year old trying to travel solo. The airline was needing him to have an adults signature to fly solo and they just so happened to be near me and ran over to ask if I could help. I said yes, hoping I wasn’t going to be liable for this kid I didn’t know. But he seemed very nice and just wanting to catch his flight.

It’s strange how the universe works though. If Sam hadn’t ran into the troubles he did, I wouldn’t have been in that part of the airport to help.

We waited for our flight at the gate and decided on a hostel to stay at in Chiang Mai! But more on that soon.

Our airplane was on the tarmac. So we got on to a bus that took us to our plane. I always love getting to walk up the stairs into the plane. It just feels more special!

The flight was very uneventful and we all slept for the majority (if not all) of it!

We also lucked out big time with our seats and had the most amount of leg room I think I’ve ever had on an airplane! Somehow the exit row seats were still left when we were checking in.

Just over an hour later, we landed in Chiang Mai! This was my first time coming to this airport, which I thought was a nice experience.

I always get a bit nervous checking my backpack… because if they lose it, that’s all my things for the next very long time. I could always buy more things if it was lost, but it’d be a major inconvenience.

We called another Grab and made our way on a 15 minute drive into the old city. For the first two nights of our stay in Chiang Mai, we decided to stay in the Revolution hostel here. This is a very social hostel and it’ll give Ben, Mina, and Sam a quick taste of the more party hostels.

Thankfully, we have our own room of four so we can escape the party if need be!

Our hostel had a free dinner tonight, but we had just missed it. So we went on a medium length walk to the north side of the old wall, where there was a food market happening.

We started off with cheap smoothies, then dove into spicy soups (that were very cheap as well), and then I finished it off with another even cheaper smoothie!

Since being in Bangkok, I’ve been missing out on the street food markets. So it was great to get back into the swing of it.

Also this was my cousins first real street market experience and they thoroughly enjoyed it. They’re going to start getting a real taste of Thailand very quickly.

We then made our way back to the hostel where we met two young guys from England. We chatted with them for a little bit and then got pulled in by the hostel reps to a game of tipsy bingo…

We had a sneak peak of the bingo card and let’s just say, it wasn’t really geared towards us. Me at 18 or 19 probably would have loved it. But we decided to sneak out of playing and ended up playing cards for a couple hours instead!

It was a long travel day, so our energy was pretty low on the social battery. Also being sick isn’t helping that either. Tomorrow, I’m sure we’ll meet some new friends! I’m looking forward to seeing what we end up getting up to.