Chiang Mai — lantern festival

My introduction to Chiang Mai was a rollercoaster. My flight landed after 10 pm, whereas the check-in time at my hostel finished at 9 pm.

Upon arriving at the hostel I was presented by an intimate solo guitar concert. Two of the guests were taking turns playing the guitar to a handful of other guests in a very intimate environment.

Despite feeling like I was crashing a private party, I couldn't bring myself to leave the lobby. I lingered enjoying the music until I discreetly introduced myself and joined the audience.

The music oscillated between myazaki movie's soundtracks and personal compositions. When they finished I thanked them and went up to my room following the instructions I had received from my host.

To my surprise, there was someone else's stuff on what should have been my bed. After a good half an hour of asking around if anyone knew who's stuff that was I gave up, stored everything aside and layed on the bed. Not even 10 minutes later a girl appeared, she looked as surprised as I was. Together we tried contacting the host to no avail. On one hand it was late and me being the guy it would make sense for me to go out looking for a bed somewhere else instead of her, but on the other hand I had all the instructions from my host confirming my booking whereas she just assumed that that was her bed because it was the only empty one when she arrived...

Not wanting to kick her out I offered to sleep in the lobby hopping we could sort things out with Ton the next day, but she found a hostel available nearby and left. The next day I found out that there was a problem with booking.com and agoda that made all bookings made through them not valid. Luckily I had booked through Hostelworld. I still felt guilty about the whole situation though.

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