And we're off!
Trip Start
Aug 16, 2009
1
25
Trip End
Apr 20, 2010
Where I stayed
Diamond Plaza Hotel
Surat Thani, Thailand
Sunday, August 16, 2009
1. McNeill Mann. After a summer spent moving several times, leading a Wilderness Leadership course, working on her house in Prescott, driving from NC to CA, and generally wrapping up loose ends, she boarded a plane in San Francisco at 12:30 AM on Saturday, August 16th. After 20 hours of travel and a layover in Taiwan, she arrived in Bangkok, Thailand at 11:30 on Sunday morning.
2. Kevin MacDonald. I spent my summer in Thailand, working for a company called Rustic Pathways. My job involved leading trips for American teenagers in the northern part of the country. My contract ended in early August, so after about a week spent on my own exploring Chiang Mai (the largest city in northern Thailand), I boarded a train in Chiang Mai at about 10:30 pm on Saturday, August 15. After an uncomfortable night of tossing and turning in a fold-down "bed" on the train, I arrived in Bangkok's main train station at about 7 am on Sunday morning. After a fair amount of haggling, I managed to arrange a taxi ride across the city to the airport. I hung out there for several hours, and at about 1:00 in the afternoon, I bumped into--surprise, surprise--McNeill!
At that point, McNeill and I jumped onto a plane headed for Surat Thani, a small city south of Bangkok on Thailand's gulf (eastern) coast. A minivan van delivered us from the tiny airport to our hotel, where we both enjoyed some rest in a luxurious room compared to the rooms in our near future. Thailand is basically on the other side of the world from the U.S., so McNeill was seriously jet-lagged. Exhausted, she conked out at about 7:00 in the evening.
