There were many good byes said on Monday with our group of 10 women who spent the last 12 days together all heading off in different directions. What a great group!
Our songtaew arrived at noon to take us to the Chiang Mai Airport for our 2:50 departure. We traveled with Thai Airways to Bangkok and then transferred to Jet Airways and flew to Delhi, then Brussels and then Toronto. It was Air Canada from Toronto to Halifax.
Thai Airways was great. However, I cannot say the same for a Jet Airways. Jet is a low cost, Star Alliance carrier based in India. Leg room was limited,the flight attendants didn't smile and were rather abrupt and worst of all, many of the passengers were rude.
A woman sitting behind me tapped me on the shoulder and asked me to put my seat upright when it was obvious that I was trying to sleep. I watched a man bully a young woman when she was trying to put her bag in the overhead bin. He admonished her, in a very rude tone for moving his bag. If that wasn't enough boarding and exiting was a zoo, a regular free for all. Very few people paid attention to the boarding announcements. Consequently, when the announcement was made for "those traveling with young children or needing assistance" most just pushed ahead. When trying to exit people literally pushed past us as we were getting our carry ons out of the overhead bins.
Needless to say, I will do my best to avoid Jet Airways in the future.
In spite of the long flights and airport waits; about 40 hours in total, we survived. Quite frankly, I can't wait to get moving again. I so enjoy being retired and on the road.