After a long day of travel, I’ve reached Chiang Mai, Thailand. I’m here for an NLP conference, but I decided to show up a couple days early and play tourist.
The travel was really grueling. The first leg was an over 12 hour flight from San Francisco to Taipei, most of which I spent sleeping. The man in the seat next to me was really unpleasant. First he tried to take my window seat and seemed really shocked when I wouldn’t let him have it, acting like asking was just a courtesy and my giving it to him was a foregone conclusion. Then he was really rude and demanding to the flight attendants. I did feel bad about accidentally dumping a cup of water on him, although it really was his fault …
The hour layover in Taipei went pretty much without incident. The terminal really took me back – it’s been a long time since I’ve been in that airport. I should visit Taiwan again.
Flying into Thailand, I was actually able to see the flooding. It was a little distressing. The layover in Bangkok was less pleasant than the one in Taipei. Part of the problem was just that it was really long. I landed around 11 and my flight to Chiang Mai wasn’t until 15:50. Also, I was early enough that they didn’t know which gate I my flight was out of. So I wandered around for a while in search of power and wireless, since they said my gate should be determined around noon. I found neither, but did find a place to sit and watch some Doctor Who. Around 13:00, I went to check my gate, only to find that it still hadn’t been decided. I figured I’d go through security anyway and maybe find power and internet inside and possibly get food. After I got through security, I discovered that they had picked a gate, found it and then went to get food, since the domestic terminal is very small. I was surprised to discover that there was no Thai food in the terminal and that at least 50% of the people in the domestic terminal were foreign. I guess Thailand has a lot of tourists, and they all route through BKK. I got some chicken nuggets (McDonald’s strikes again!), cup noodles and green tea and managed to snag one of the only two outlets I saw in the entire airport. Still no internet though, so I watched more Doctor Who until about an hour before my flight was supposed to board and then headed to my gate.
Once I got to my gate, there was no indication that I was in the right place, so I asked one of the women at the counter. First they checked my ticket, which of course didn’t have a gate marked down since it hadn’t been determined when the ticket was issued. So they called someone on the walkie-talkie (apparently it’s not in the computer) and then took more than 30 minutes to confirm I was in the right place. While I waited for my flight, I watched even more Doctor Who. I rewatched “Blink” and I’m pretty sure that the guy next to me thought I was mad. He kept glancing at my screen. The flight was apparently delayed, but they didn’t actually tell us anything. We started boarding about 10 minutes after we were scheduled to take off, and we didn’t actually start taxiing until about 16:40.
The flight to Chiang Mai was really short and relaxed. I grabbed a taxi from the airport to my hostel, but it turns out that 1000 baht bills are way too large to use to pay taxi drivers. The people at the hostel also couldn’t break my 1000 baht bill, so I ended up having to borrow 100 baht from a girl at the hostel. After showering and discovering that my failure to bring an adapter with me actually is a problem, I spent about an hour wandering around the city looking for a three-prong to two-prong adapter. I finally found one at the third 7-Eleven I came across, and then went back to the hostel and then out again to the Sunday night market. I ended up getting really lost while there and spent more time than I wanted. My feet are now killing me, and I think I’m going to get a foot massage from the billions of massage places around.
Pictures of my hostel room and key (sorry the photos are terrible – I left my camera at home on accident and had to use my phone):
The night market entrance – I think all the glowing stuff was for the festival, but I’m not sure:
So I spent most of my trip watching a lot of Doctor Who. I’ve almost finished Season 3. It’s actually kind of weird because (1) I’ve started talking in a fake British accent in my head and (2) I’ve actually watched enough stuff that I’ve started recognizing some of the actors. There was Mark Gatiss (who was naked! He’s got freckles and chest hair – hehe), the guy who played Sebastian Wilkes (still a smarmy bastard), the actress who was Sally Donovan, and the kid from Love Actually. An episode from Season 2 also had an actress from Love Actually.