Thailand Trip Review: Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Thai Cooking Class, Organic Farm Visit

Thailand November 2022
We first started planning the big trip to Thailand in January 2020. We chose this travel company based on the fact that they were based in Bangkok as opposed to the US. We started planning our 16 day trip, purchased our flights on Cathay Pacific (one business class and one business class reward companion ticket) to travel in November 2020. Our travel agent, Jack, was a delight to work with in planning our trip. We put down a 30% deposit. And then, COVID happened. Flights were cancelled and Thailand was shutdown for who knows how long. Jack stayed in touch us over the next year. In the fall of 2020, Jack issued a travel voucher for our deposit to be used in 2021. In September of 2021 on the hopes of being able to travel to Thailand, we rebooked our flights on Cathay Pacific (which is very challenging if you want to use miles for one ticket). I last spoke to Jack in early September 2021 with a promise to keep in touch about which parts of Thailand might open in November 2021. In early October 2021, I received an email from the Office Manager of the travel company letting me know that Jack had passed away. Our trip was scheduled for November 2021, and Thailand had announced that some cities would be open on November 1st for tourism, however, four of the eight locations on our itinerary wouldn't be opening until sometime in January/February 2022. And, you still had to quarantine in Bangkok for one week upon arrival. So, I sought advice from the travel company's office manager and she told us it would be better to reschedule for 2022. Again, we cancelled our flights. We were reassigned to Eric, a travel agent for a trip in October, November 2022. We weren't able to book flights until April 2022 with Cathay Pacific and the only reward travel dates available put us to a 20 day trip. Eric was great to work with in extending our itinerary. He then informed us that the travel company wouldn't be able to honor our whole deposit because the travel voucher had expired on December 31, 2021. I was very upset about this since they had advised us to postpone our trip to 2022 without mentioning we would lose our deposit. I contacted Zicasso to see if they could help me. I was helped by an amazing Zicasso Travel Care Specialist, Andrew. The travel company came back and was able to recover about 75% of our deposit and Zicasso helped out with the rest. I will always recommend Zicasso to anyone looking for a travel agency!