I took the melatonin right away last night, and I slept until Stori woke me up for our weekly call with the parents. Normally Stori’s call is first, at around 7 am Hong Kong time. Then I follow her at 5 pm Seattle time. But with us in the same house, we shared a single call.

After the parents’ call, Stori went into her room to make another regular weekly phone call, and I packed up my suitcase and played around on the iPad.

Once we were all done and packed up we took the bus in to Central. Our flight to Chiang Mai would depart at 4:45 and we wanted to make sure we didn’t have to rush at any point. We checked our bags at the airport express station, which is a cool way to do things, then headed up to the Shake Shack for lunch. It was really busy, which might not have been such an issue if it wasn’t also drizzling outside where much of the seating was, so everyone was competing for dry seats. We ended up sitting right next to this family, on the middle of three tables, which happened to be only half wet. I barely felt any sprinkles as we ate, and Stori didn’t mention anything so I hope she also stayed dry.

After lunch we got on the train to the airport. As a Hong Kong resident, Stori could go through the simple departure line, but I walked up to the “visitor” station and handed my passport over. He handed it back and pointed me over to a different line which turned out to be an electronic passport thing. But it kept saying it couldn’t read my passport, so eventually the woman helping me walked back to the first guy to ask what was going on, and this time he pointed me at the table at the back of the room with “departure cards.” I don’t remember filling anything like that out in my Europe travels, so I didn’t expect to do anything fancier than just leave. Once I got that filled out I joined Stori again.

Our flights were business class, which gave us access to one of the airport lounges while we waited for the flight to board. When we had checked in the woman said “Gate 23” so we went in the opposite direction of Gate 219 where our flight would board and looked for the lounge. When we got to Gate 23, I saw an arrow saying lounges were further along, but Stori stopped us before we just kept trekking. If the woman said gate 23, it shouldn’t be all the way down the terminal. We pulled out our phones to find the lounge on a map. I got a name, Bauhinia, and a second opinion that it was near gate 23. Now that we knew the name, we didn’t walk far before seeing the stairs down to the lounge.

Once we entered the lounge it was worth the previous confusion. It had very few people, soft music playing, and a fancy buffet of local foods complete with on-call chef apparently. We claimed a back corner and took turns getting some more food. I set an alarm for an hour so we could have time to travel to the gate well before boarding began, and we just relaxed. I did some Thai flash cards and watched some tv.

Getting to the gate was uneventful. Once boarding began, they just casually walked around saying we could line up now. I don’t think they ever announced anything over a PA. Our seats were row 1, but other than that, the separate line, and I guess the food we ordered, there wasn’t any difference to business class vs coach. Our seats were red, but not different in any other way. But I did appreciate the extra leg room from not having a seat in front of me. The flight was pretty short, and there wasn’t anything to see until we were beginning to land.

When we landed in Chiang Mai the interesting things started happening. As we descended the stairs from the gate and on to immigration, there were some people telling everyone to go one of two ways. I think it was the difference between locals and foreigners, but I also wonder how they could tell without checking passports. We went one way and instantly guessed at which line we were supposed to join. Once we got to the front of the shared line someone checked our passports then pointed us at an open line, which happened to have a big sign “Chinese Passport” which neither of us had. It didn’t seem to matter, though. They had given us the arrival cards first thing on the plane, so I knew we were okay on that front. The agent looked at everything, took my picture, and stapled a card in to my passport. Stori mentioned that the pages that were stapled in her passport included her Hong Kong visa, so hopefully that doesn’t cause any trouble when exiting and she doesn’t lose any pages.

We grabbed our bags and exited in to the reception lounge where we were supposed to meet a shuttle to take us to the hotel. We looked for a sign with our names but saw no one. So while we waited Stori tried to use the ATM, which didn’t like her. I tried my card and it worked fine. We still hadn’t seen any sign with our names, then Stori said to look for a sign at “Door 11” so I walked out the door to look. I saw no one, but when I tried to go back in the guard stopped me. I was stuck outside now. I walked around to the other door in case the sign was there. Nothing. I went back to the first door and waited for Stori to look my way. When she was about to follow me outside I waved her to stop, explaining that she shouldn’t leave yet. She went back inside and I waited. Pretty soon I saw someone walk up holding a sign with Stori’s name on it, so I waved her over. As we were both outside, we couldn’t go in to get her attention, and she didn’t have internet so I couldn’t send her a message. I realized though that she had turned roaming on in case the shuttle people called her, so I sent her a text and we waved her over once she noticed it.

We got in the shuttle and I couldn’t find a place to plug in my seat belt, so I just held on to the grip. It was a short trip, so nothing crazy. We walked in to reception and someone brought out two bags from the trunk, which didn’t include my CPAP bag that had the passport inside. We hurried to wave down the shuttle before it left, and grabbed my last bag. Once we were signed in someone showed us to the room, which is just what they say, a “hotel apartment.” It has a living room, kitchen, fridge, and washing machine. We got the air conditioning set up how we liked it and walked next door to the shopping mall for a look.

It was a little past eight by now, and the mall closes at nine, so things were slowing down and there wasn’t a lot of people. We stumbled in to a grocery store and bought some drinks, which let us break the 500 Baht (15 USD) notes we got from the ATM and gave me a chance to try some of the drinks I’d seen in the tv ads.

On the way out of the grocery store Stori pointed out a drink stand and asked if that was “Pink Milk” on the menu. Pink Milk is another one of the drinks I’ve seen on the Thai tv shows, but it’s not from advertisements. It’s the menu item I was most determined to find, and we found it the first night! From watching the woman mix it together, I had the recipe a little off when I made it at home, but the taste was pretty much the same, so I’m glad I wasn’t completely ruining it back in Seattle.

At this point we discovered what looked like an indoor street market. It had a ton of stalls with different foods. We walked around a little bit before I circled back to get some skewers of meat. Back with the pink milk I had tried saying “นมเย็น” which I knew was the Thai name of the drink. She asked me “Pink Milk” and I nodded. So either I did a good enough job that she understood me, or she was just a really good guesser. So this time at the “street” market I wanted to order the skewers in Thai as well. When I tried to ask for pork they looked a little confused and told me which one was beef. They then explained the rest of the items, in English. Now that I knew which ones I wanted, I tried a second time to order beef and chicken. I kept getting “beef” wrong, but I think they figured out “chicken” since that’s one I know very well (my tone was probably horrible). Once they had the two skewers in a bag I tried asking how much it was, but looking back I’m certain my pronunciation was atrocious. Eventually one of them responded in English, and another in Thai. I honestly don’t know which one of the two I understood first. When I got back to Stori she actually went and ordered the same thing as me.

So, I guess for a first night, a lot happened.