I had already been to Thailand in August of 2024, and so had Caleb. Stephanie, however, had not been. She had been feeling some reticence about me being gone most of the summer again on another around the world trip. Lately, she prefers to travel more in the traditional American mode, taking a vacation once or twice a year for a week or two, during the standard school holidays. This is a bit of a departure from her more adventurous former self. Never one to take on outlandish trips of her own accord, she had at least been willing to go along with me on peculiar ventures to see where it would all lead. Someday, I will post more stories of our small plane and road trips from the 1990s. Whether due to life circumstances, hormones, or just a different way of dealing with middle age, she just isn’t comfortable with or interested in doing the same kinds of exploratory travel that has my interest lately.

I would always prefer that she went with me. But if she doesn’t want to go, I still do. My goal, then, is to try to adjust what I am doing however I can to 1) maximize her willingness to participate and 2) reduce her discomfort with me traveling when she isn’t. When preparing for this trip, then, I set out to minimize the length of time we would be apart, while building a “traditional” vacation for her that she would be excited about. I found the answer in meeting Stephanie and Caleb for a couple of weeks in Thailand in the middle of my longer journey.

We have loved all of our exchange students, of course, but I think it is safe to say that Vun and Max have been Stephanie’s favorites. We all got to see Max in 2024. Why not head to Thailand to visit Vun’s family, and see more of that beautiful country? I was able to find Stephanie and Caleb round trip tickets from DFW to Bangkok, via Seoul, Korea. When you insist on selecting your location and dates, you don’t get to control the price. Thailand is a popular destination, so it was difficult to find bargain flights there during the summer. I did the best I could, which turned out to be taking advantage of a $500 discount on cash flights offered by one of my credit cards.

I asked Stephanie to get an idea of some places she would like to visit while in Thailand. I knew we would spend a few days with Vun’s family in Kanchanaburi. Stephanie quickly determined that Thailand also has an area of culture and nature in the North around Chiang Mai, and several popular beach locations, like Phuket and Krabi. Since her time would begin and end in Bangkok, we would see a few of the highlights there, too. Stephanie wanted to see Vun, go to one of the beaches, see Chiang Mai, and then spend a couple of days in Bangkok. She also did not want to be gone longer than about two weeks. Thailand is over a thousand miles long, from north to south. That’s about the distance from Portland to San Diego, or El Paso to New Orleans. Flying from one side of the country to the other is the only way to avoid travel time of 24 hours or more. Even after we cropped one location out, we still had a busy itinerary of about three days each in Kanchanaburi, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok, plus travel time. The beach resorts would have to wait for another trip.

With the outline set for Stephanie’s trip, I had only to make my itinerary line up with her flight. That wasn’t too difficult, as I tend to travel with a list of things I would like to see and do, rather than a hard schedule. The timing of Stephanie’s flights made it so I had to go from Vietnam, to Thailand, to Cambodia and then on to Sri Lanka. All things being equal, it would have made more sense to go Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, then Sri Lanka. I missed out on a speed boat ride from Southern Vietnam to Phnom Penh, but that was a small price to pay for permission to make the big trip.

The other price to pay was the increased cost of this more traditional type of vacation. I was able to redeem some credit card points to make Caleb’s and Stephanie’s trip a bit more affordable, in addition to the $500 flight credit mentioned earlier. Nevertheless, we spent more money on the two weeks they joined me than I did in the more than two months I spent traveling alone. For more information on how to leverage credit card benefits to enjoy more affordable travel, see my future article on that subject here.
To read about our experiences together in Thailand, just click the tiles below to get to pages on our time in Kanchanaburi, Chiang Mai, and Bangkok.