10/31 – Another long travel day on our way to Chiang Mai

After a very long and fitful night – 1 nightmare about leaving our suitcases in the rental car, checking in, getting to the plane and not being able to make it back to the car for the cases; 1 nightmare about needing to pay for our flight today with a check – which I didn’t have; and finally a true nightmare when I woke up at midnight realizing that in my quest to rid ourselves of any extra paper, I had mistakenly thrown away our airport limo bus tickets! OMG! I literally ran downstairs at midnight, searching the garbage, where luckily, I found the tickets right on top. Phew. That would have been a spectacular nightmare!

The alarm came early (especially after that toss and turn night) and we both hopped into action – showers, organizing, final packing, the works. All done and handled when Takashi came to pick us up right at 7:10 as promised. Talk about timing! He dropped us at the bus pick up in no time, where we waited for our 7:50 bus. Again, it pulled up with 10 minutes to spare and left at exactly 7:50 – everything runs on time here. Amazing.

The ride was seamless, 1 ½ hours and we were deposited at the airport, checked in, through security and passport control in less than 25 minutes. That has to be a record. Now the hunt for a lounge. There are only 3 in this concourse, 2 of which are small and packed – and one, ANA, that says we can’t use before 11am. Well, we’ll just try ANA anyway. No go. So back to the packed lounges, both of which were full. Sigh. So we had to wait in line outside of one lounge, and were finally admitted. We would probably have been better off in the main concourse! No food – just little cookies and snacks; no drinks except coffee and soda and water – beer was extra (which of course didn’t matter to us as it was only 9:30am) – and it was really hot in there. Ugh. The chairs were comfy, and there was power to charge our phones, but still. Oh well – we only had an hour or so before we had to leave for our flight to Seoul, and it was good to sit and work on the computer at least.

The flight to Seoul was fast and smooth, with incredible views back over the airport as we took off. We had no idea that the Osaka airport was built on a totally manmade island. We knew it was on an island when we rode over the bridge on the bus – but learned the land was purpose built just for the airport. Cool! And the pictures were amazing.

Otherwise, the flight was unremarkable, including the lunch (a rather inedible meat and rice dish), no wine, only beer. Whatever, we have a lounge in Seoul. Landing 20 minutes early, flying over some great scenery of the coast of S. Korea, we easily make our way through security and passport transfer, then onto the lounge. Fortunately, the lounges in Seoul are far superior. We just hit the first one we saw as we came out of the transfer terminal, the Sky Hub, perfect. Had a big table, comfy chairs, beer and wine and excellent food. Including salad! Yay greens! We have been sorely missing our salads, so that was perfect. And we could snack on Korean dishes – although not too much as we had dinner coming up on the next flight.

Five hours later (yes, you read that correctly) we are out in the concourse, exchanging our Japanese Yen for Thai Baht (because we forgot to do that in Osaka) and waiting to board our last flight of the day. Same seats, better food (Korean Bibambap, that came with a little tube of hot sauce I am taking home!), excellent service, really good wine – and lots of blogging time!

This flight was also early – which is a relief because our body clocks are at 1am, while it is only 11pm in Thailand, and we are ready for a bed and shut eye. Immigration was a breeze- all electronic, we’re through and in baggage claim before our bags even hit the carousel. Finally our flight is unloaded, our bags come out pretty quickly and we are out the door looking for our ride to the Suaanpaak Hotel – a mere 3 minutes from the airport. We are staying here one night so as not to have make Micky come over at midnight to let us into the house, not to mention so that we don’t have to try to arrange everything at that late hour in the house itself!

The hotel guy is right there – with 2 names on his board – we give him ours and off we go – he runs us out to the waiting car and driver and we fly out of the airport for the seriously fast drive to the hotel. Once there, we check in, get instructions, then follow the hotel guy as he runs through the parking lot to the hotel rooms, runs us into the room where our bags are already waiting, fast talks us through the coffee (here), hairdryer (here), water (here) and then runs out the door. Um. Ok. It dawns on us that he has to go back and pick up the other person he was waiting for at the airport – thus all the running and rushing! Poor guy. Regardless, we are happily settled into and awesome, huge and well-equipped room with a bathroom the size of a normal hotel room – including really fabulous ceramic birds perched on the bathroom wall for our towels! Perfect for our overtired, over-traveled bodies!