I think everything went as smooth as it could and I slept more than I thought I would. I got a ride to the airport, which saved me 30-45 minutes of travel time and was much more comfortable than the hard seats on the train. It was a nice way to start a long day of travel. I slightly revised my approach to overnight flights and took a sleeping pill and two 3 mg melatonin pills shortly after taking off. That combination in addition to paying for an exit row seat which had tons of legroom and a pretty decent recline really helped. I was able to stay awake for the meal Asiana airlines served us at 1:30 am but then drifted off to 6-8 hours of fitful sleep before they fed us breakfast. The Seoul airport was pretty dead when we arrived at 5:00 am and the two hour layover allowed for plenty of time to clear Korean security and find my new gate.
I was looking forward to this flight as it would be shorter (just six hours) and would fly over land during the day which would give me something to look at. The seat chart also showed that there would be an empty seat next to me. I boarded and put my eye shades on and tried to sleep more during boarding. I was disappointed when I felt someone sit in the middle sea. As luck would have it, my seat mate was a large older gentleman who had mobility issues and extremely trembling hands. As a result, I was trapped at the window and almost had a cup of orange juice spilled on me. There wasn’t much to see as there was pretty solid cloud cover and the flight crew wanted shades down so people could watch the movies that they showed from the screens that retracted into the ceiling. On the plus side, I think I was able to sleep a bit more. In fact, I think I fell asleep before we left the gate and I woke up when announcements were made that we had reached cruising altitude. The transfer in Bangkok went pretty smoothly and I had a long layover so my brief confusion when figuring out how to connect to a domestic flight without exiting through the main immigration control wasn’t stressful. As it turned out the main immigration line was very long, while the one for domestic transfers was nonexistent. I was happy that I decided to do all the flights on the same day, which avoided having to leave and re-enter the Bangkok airport.
It was an interesting taxi ride from the Chiang Mai airport to my hotel. I was surprised that I still had enough energy to take a quick jump into the cold water pool and then met up with two of my traveling companions.
