Should Have Gone to Australia

Australia was an option...but the cost would have been about 50% more so Phuket, Thailand was the destination of choice. Even considering the events going on in Bangkok, we thought we were good. You see, we conciously made the decision to fly from Tokyo to Phuket direct. No amount of preperation could have prevented this mess though.

So while the flight from Tokyo has no obvious problem, the underlying issue is that the actual aircraft needed to make the trip is locked up somewhere else in the world leaving Thai Air only the option of flying into some rural military airport near Bangkok. We could have taken this option...but how we get from this military airport to Phuket, we have no idea.

So we sit here in the airport...trying to make last minute arrangements based upon a few other ideas...but no luck. The calls are now attempts to recoup the money we've spent up to this point. So far Thai Air seems to want to help but I'm hearing rumblings about how it could take up to 6 months to get our money back. Not happy about that...but I think we'll be able to manage that one. The hotel on the other hand, Kata Beach Resort & Spa, is not providing us a full refund.

So rather than spending the next 9 days on the beach, we'll be spending it on the phone, in cold rural Northern Japan, trying to get a refund on a trip that just maybe wasn't meant to be. Maybe this will make us better travelers.

Here's to looking ahead and deciding where we want to go next.