The end....back to work!

Our last day in Pai.........we rolled out of bed around 6am and took our bags to the AYA travel center in Pai. This is the company that provided motorbikes and our bus trip from Chiang Mai to Pai. If we haven’t said this yet…….this company was terrrrible!!! Late, rude and apathetic was not my Thai experience at all……but this company was by far the biggest pain in the butt. Which was exaggerated later in the day…..but that’s for later. We dropped off our luggage to be taken in a van back to Chiang Mai while we drove the 130 km, winding through the mountains on our motorbikes. It was a gorgeous ride! Fresh air, trees, great views and just a little fog. 

It was VERY chilly up in the mountains so early in the morning!

 

The views were amazing!

We arrived in Chiang Mai around 11:30…..and this is when things got interesting. AYA travel services took our bags from Pai to Chiang Mai, like they agreed to when we dropped them off earlier that morning. But, when we went to return our bikes and get our bags……….we were informed that our bags came to Chiang Mai, but they were not taken out of the van…..so they were now headed BACK TO PAI!! This is a 3 hr trip by van……which wouldn’t allow us to catch our 3:30 flight from Chiang Mai to Bangkok without losing most of our luggage. So, we waited impatiently at the airport while AYA tried to get our luggage back to us in time to catch our flight. There was never an apology or anything of that nature from this company. They were rude and incompetence was shown on all levels. Anywho……Anne and I are trying to get AirAsia to allow us to board late since it was already  2:55 and last check-in was suppose to be 2:50.  As we were heading back outside to check on the situation…..we see this crazy blonde girl running frantically with bags all over her flung in every direction. What a relief!!! We get our luggage without having to change flights! Needless to say we arrive in Bangkok a little weary from the day. But it’s Bangkok and it’s our last night on vacation!!

We check into our hotel, get showered up and decide we need to fill our hungry bellies. Unfortunately we get sucked in by a local taxi driver and he is going to take us to a “good and cheap” restaurant.  The place he dropped us off at appeared to be neither of those things.  So, we started walking back towards our hotel to look for some street food, which has never steered us wrong!  We enjoyed our last filling of Pad Thai and enjoyed hours of conversation and laugh to help celebrate Anne's birthday!.  We didn’t want the night to end because that meant when we woke up, Lance and I would be leaving to go back to Vietnam!

And just like that, the dream was over. We arrived back in Hanoi and the second we walked out of the airport our hearts were deflated.  It was cold and rainy, unlike the perfect weather in Thailand….we were greeted with annoying taxi drivers, and a honking mess of cars.  It was great to be back! Not!  We spent the afternoon sleeping our misery away.  The next day…..back to work.

Back in the swing of things….

Our first day back at school was a long one and that night we had to go to teach our 3 hour night English class.  The first couple weeks back we felt our anger and disgust towards Hanoi has multiplied.  We felt more annoyed and agitated towards every honk, every flash, and every motorbike, car and taxi. It took all the will power we could muster to not scream!  The only thing that kept us going is the fact that we only had a month until our next excursion!  We were very excited that Miss Emily Hofer and Lance’s brother Ben had bought tickets to Vietnam to join us over the TET holiday break in February!