30th wedding anniversary surprise

Nov 7th was our 30th wedding anniversary and we have never made a big deal about anniversaries and have even forgotten them a few times with no negative consequences.

However, having a woman put up with me for over 30 years seemed worthy of celebrating her courage and patience! So before we left the US I decided to book a room at the Four Seasons Resort just north or Chiang Mai. It is supposed to be the BEST accommodations and restaurants and after staying there it sure is. Keeping a secret from Beverly is VERY hard and so covering my tracks became an obsession. Once I reserved the room I realized she would see a charge on the credit card so I called Thailand and ask our friend Siriporn to confirm I reserved a room for her as they wouldn't accept her credit card. Then told Bev of the situation and she responded "that is really weird". So I had to elaborate on how the resort refused to take a Thai credit card etc. One bullet ducked....

The next challenge was to convince her were were going away for the weekend to celebrate and the destination was to be Chieng Rai which is about 3 hrs north. Since we could not check in until noon and the resort was really only 12 miles north of Chiang Mai I had to come up with lots of delaying tactics. The night before she had insisted we go out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary so when I asked her to bring nice clothes to go out again the next night I got a fair amount of push back about eating our too much etc but I persisted and she packed some "nice" clothes.

So, Saturday morning came and I needed to kill time until noon. The resort was willing to allow an early check-in of noon instead of 3 PM. I kept finding things to do and prepare in order to kill time and she kept asking why I was dragging my feet and not leaving much earlier than we would normally depart. Of course I explained that we had no need to hurry and no appointments etc...... There were some funny moments when she noticed we were actually on the wrong road to Chieng Rai and I made up a lame excuse that I wanted to go by the villages we support even though it was out of the way. Also she was reading a brochure for resorts in Chieng Rai and spotted one that looked very nice but made the comment that we should not stay there as it was too expensive. (I'm sure it would have been less than the Four Seasons but I agreed with her sentiments)

The resort was incredible they heard it was our 30th anniversary they gave us an upgraded room Upper Terrace Pavilion and a complementary bottle of wine. The staff was very well trained and just very nice and easy. It was luxurious but very tasteful and comfortable!

Here are some pictures of the room and surroundings..


Just fore the fun if it I took a time lapse video of the sun rising over the rice paddies and a walk through the room:



All in all a very successful surprise event!