Not a whole lot to report today as it was mostly traveling. We started our journey with a speedboat ride from Cat Ba to Haiphong. We had a lovely seat up front surrounded by windows. Fun as it was, it probably would have been a good day to take a Dramamine – it was awfully bumpy! But we survived with our breakfast in its rightful place.

Next we were bombarded with folks trying to get us to take their taxis. Ray showed some stellar haggling skills, recalling what we’d paid for a taxi to get here last time and talking the person down to there. I thoroughly enjoyed the cultural mashup that was our ride to the airport: our Vietnamese driver with Buddhas and a Vishnu on his dashboard listening to Despacito.

The theme of today was arriving earlier than needed, I suppose. We got to the airport and had to wait for our carrier’s desk to open, then we had to wait even more for passport control to open. Thankfully there were no issues either place, so we were soon on our way to Chiang Mai, Thailand via Bangkok.

Bangkok’s airport is HUGE and BUSY. We made our way through immigration and customs with plenty of time to spare before our next carrier’s counter was open. Once it did open, they weighed our carry on bags for the first time and found they were too heavy so we re-consolidated our things and checked one bag. We were pleased to find the airport had a great selection of food and had some really yummy ramen before getting on our flight.

We got to watch the sun set from the air and see the lights of Chiang Mai as we landed. We grabbed a luxurious taxi and drove through the city which seemed so … clean! We were accidentally dropped at the wrong hotel, but thankfully it was just a short walk to the right one. Ray ran to an ATM while I stayed with our bags and returned with not only the cash for the hotel, but also a giant bottle of water and a Snickers bar. My hero!