Travel Itinerary Complete

I finished making all the travel itinerary reservations this week for the December trip. Timing of each segment and connection possibilities led to some variation from what we thought would be an easy plan.

Our plan of flying from Bangkok to Hua Hin ran into a slight problem.  No flights available!  And not because they are all booked.  They just don't do them anymore.





Plan B would be the express train. Problem: the return trip to Bangkok via train are at really inopportune times.





What are Plan C options? Rent a car?  No thanks. Hire a cabbie?  How could we tell if the one we hired isn't a NASCAR wannabe?





This trip will be during high season and during the Christmas and New Years holiday in the west. We researched everywhere we could think and finally came across a highly rated company, with a good safety record who can pick us up at the hotel in Bangkok and take us right to our accomodations in Hua Hin and then do the same for the return trip.  We will be allowed to stop wherever we like along the way if we see something we want to check out and the costs for the 4 of us is just a little higher than the train and transfers would be if we took it.  Booked it!

Now that we know when we will get back to Bangkok we were able to book our flights to Chiang Mai. The same company that is taking us to Hua Hin and back gave us a good price to also pick us up and take us back to the airport in Chiang Mai. So....our travel map is complete.  We can get there from here.  All the t's are crossed and the i's are dotted.  Of course, as they say in Thailand, TiT (this is Thailand) so we head out with a plan in place that we know can change at anytime.

Is this serendipity or something else?  We told Steve and Lisa about all the plans for the itinerary and found out that on our flight from Seoul to Bangkok all four of us will be on the same flight.  Their itinerary from Japan to Bangkok is going to take them through Seoul and we are booked on the same flight.  That will make it easy to find each other in Bangkok.

Busy and Crazy Week

This week was exciting and busy. I began by trying to find out all of the official documents that we need to apply for our retirements, social security, and the Thai Retirement (O-A) Visa.



Some want official, embossed documents along with a lock of hair from each of your children. Others want a copy of the the documents and make it easy to comply.


Anyway, I went online to get some official documents of our marriage license, paid the fee, and they showed up in the mail within 3 days. That surprised me but I won't complain.


I went online to get some official copies of my birth certificate and will order them as soon as I find out how many I actually will need. No problem there.


Then I went online to get some of the official copies of Lin's birth certificate and found out that this is going to be a little bit more difficult. They require that she has to get a notarized request that she is requesting an official copy of her birth certificate. Okay, that is a pain but understandable. We can do that and then fax it to them, right? WRONG! Nothing can be done online or by fax. You must either come in to the office or send everything by snail mail.
It's a good thing that we have a year to get this done. Snail mail.....seriously.....you've got to be kidding. Other than sending some care packages to our family in Japan we haven't used snail mail in.....forever.




Then on a happy note, we booked our flights to Thailand for this coming December/January. Yep! It's official now....we are going to Thailand!




We also met with the retirement counselor at the university to make sure that everything is like we expect it to be. Got a few more questions answered and we are very happy with how things are going.

One year, 4 months, 19 days