On Monday morning, it was once again time to work on logistics. Saturday is our big travel day to start debrief and we still have no lodging for our week long debrief. We also have not been able to book transportation because all of the bus tickets more than double our transportation budget. My logistics team member Logan and I have heard rumors that you can get a train ticket for $7 a person so first thing, we went to the train station. From there we learned that you needed a passport for each person to get their train ticket. Half of our squad is two hours outside of Chiang Mai, and we need their passports to buy them a train ticket to Bangkok. Logan and I decided that we have to make the four hour round trip to Chiang Dao where we can grab the rest of the passports, get back to the train station, and buy 50 train tickets, all before the train station closes. I then got a taxi over to the nearest bus station, and we talked to every counter and there's no buses to Chiang Dao. We have to go to the bus station on the other side of town to get there. We decided to take a minute to figure out how we were going to get to the other station and get all these passports. Then a lady flags us over from one of the counters and asks us where we are trying to go. We told her the whole situation and she gave us 50 bus tickets to Bangkok for ½ price so that we could afford the trip, as long as we could pay in cash. We ran over to the nearest ATM and were finally able to get all the bus tickets needed to get the squad down to Bangkok!!
After we purchased the tickets, we headed back to Bella Goose to continue our search for a debrief location. We had run out of options and were starting to ask boarding schools that were out of session if we could use their space for the week. We reached out to youth camps and summer camps to see if anyone could host us. Then we found campsites that were big enough to host all of us and we decided that we would just have to have debrief in our tents. We had 4 days before we were supposed to be at debrief. We spent the rest of the day and still no one had agreed to let us use their space for our week of debrief.

The next day, Logan and I were at the search again and finally he found a place on Airbnb that was big enough to host us, but Logan didn’t have service so he sent me the link since he had WIFI and had me reach out to the location. It was a big farm space in the middle of nowhere. It turns out they had no one booked for the week of our debrief, and we were able to rent out the entire farm. This was Tuesday night, and we would leave Saturday for debrief, cutting it so close. Our debrief contact was also able to provide us 3 meals. In total it cost $7 a person per night for us to be lodged and have 3 meals a day, which was slightly over budget but we were desperate and able to make it work! Our original budget was $5 a person per night. Our debrief host was very excited about us coming to stay at her farmhouse and would send me videos of the area every morning, afternoon, evening, and night. In between the videos she was sending would be pictures of the area, and what our food would look like. She was so sweet!

Next on the never ending to do list was to book our transportation from the Bangkok bus station to our debrief farmhouse. Thankfully, I was able to find a taxi service that could take us pretty easily. Then we started calling hostels and Airbnbs in South Africa for our upcoming country change. We would land in South Africa on the night of January 2nd, in Johannesburg, and then needed to take a 15 bus ride to Jeffreys Bay. Due to the crime rates and our hosts warnings, it was deemed too dangerous to drive at night so we would need a place to sleep the first night and then a bus to take us the next day. This meant contacting hostels and bus services while also working around a time zone change. We contacted all available hostels, which were all too expensive. There were also guest houses available, but way too small to accommodate all 50 of us. Eventually we landed on a campsite that we could stay at for the night, and we would all just have to pitch our tents for the night. There were no available buses to take all of us from Johannesburg to Jeffreys Bay so Ari, one of our mentors, was able to book a flight for us. The flight would take off at 7am, and in accordance with the World Race travel policy, we would have to be at the airport 4 hours before takeoff. Meaning we have to get back to the Johannesburg airport at 3am, and wake up to take our tents down at 2am. Logan and I decided the campsite was unreasonable at that point, and we would just sleep in the airport. All the most important items we had to get down before debrief had now been planned for and we were good to go for our travel day from Chiang Mai to Bangkok for debrief!

December 18- December 22 2023