The trip up to Chiang Mai taught me one good lesson; at the very least, double the margin of safety when estimating the travel routes in Thailand. Timetables are often optimistic and things tend to go wrong. To get to the airport, we had to take a boat, a taxi, a ferry, a bus and then a taxi, which meant five different legs of transportation. I was certain that I had made a highly conservative estimate of when we needed to leave the Sanctuary to make our 4pm flight, but I was mistaken.
After the ferry arriving at shore 50 minutes behind schedule and the taxi we had preordered not showing up, we were suddenly in such a time squeeze that there was no way we would make the 45-minute-cut off for check in. After a heated discussion with the travel agent that screwed up the taxi, they got us into a minivan together with a German couple. We told the driver to “hurry hurry!”. Holy shit, did he take that seriously! The following 45 minutes felt as if we were taking part in an action movie and there were moments where I thought we might not survive. We arrived at the airport 20 minutes before departure, and luckily they still let us get on. Filled with adrenaline and gratefulness, we boarded the plane to Chang Mai. Sometimes lack of structure can work in your favor.
After the ferry arriving at shore 50 minutes behind schedule and the taxi we had preordered not showing up, we were suddenly in such a time squeeze that there was no way we would make the 45-minute-cut off for check in. After a heated discussion with the travel agent that screwed up the taxi, they got us into a minivan together with a German couple. We told the driver to “hurry hurry!”. Holy shit, did he take that seriously! The following 45 minutes felt as if we were taking part in an action movie and there were moments where I thought we might not survive. We arrived at the airport 20 minutes before departure, and luckily they still let us get on. Filled with adrenaline and gratefulness, we boarded the plane to Chang Mai. Sometimes lack of structure can work in your favor.
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