Getting There

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Travel Day.

Up early in preparation for the much anticipated trip. Most of the packing complete already. It’s always those last minute things that take up the time. Important things like making sure the i-Pod has everything you want on it.

Anyway, packing complete, bags in the car and off we go. Out onto the freeway and road works! Of the 70 to 80 kilometres of trip to the airport, how many of these are at 100 KPH – about 5. Mostly road works but of course there’s that marvelous feat of engineering that was mostly there before the works were commenced but that we now need to pay for every time we use it. I’m of course talking about City Link.

But I’m on holidays – Yay! Enough of the negative.

Got to the car park. No problems. All is go. A quick ride to the airport with United parking who have always provided excellent service and dropped me off exactly at the terminal I needed to be at. Now of course, since the upgrades by the Melbourne Airport Authority, what-ever they’re called these days, there’s one single dropped off and pick-up point. Anyway, I digress into the dark side again. So, shit!!! where is that International Terminal. However, with my unerring sense of direction and reluctance to read signs and directions, we head off in the correct direction – to the wrong place. Never mind there’s a sign over there which points us in the direction needed. Still I don’t want any-one to labour under the mistaken idea that I read or followed the sign – it was the only way we could go.



The failure of technology.

Anyway we arrived at the Thai airlines counter at pretty much the time we planned to be. At the counter we were faced by three possible entrances to the desk. The Royal Orchid Service, you know - First Class, line, had there been people in it to create a line. Then there was the "people who understand technology entrance". That would be the people who understand modern apps and have the right phone to go with it line, again, had there been any people in it to create a line. And then there was the sheep race line and yes there were people in the line. You know the one that goes up and back and up and back and…. After a while of standing there I made the comment that it’s a shame we don’t know technology as we could have been in the non-existent pre-booked line. Oh, says Cheryl, “I think I did that when I booked the seats.” “Umm, okay so why are we here” says I. “I don’t think it worked” says Cheryl. “Why not?” asks I. “Well I had trouble with the web site.” Any way we asked the lady who was patrolling in front of the counter and was helping dopes such as us, including booting people out of the pristine empty lanes into the long line. She checked up for us and was able to confidently advise that our seats were booked but that we were not pre-booked. And as it turned out neither did we have the seats that we thought we’d booked, in fact nowhere near the location of the seats we booked.

Anyway a great opportunity to observe those around us. For example the gentleman in front of us who was channeling Ozzie Osbourne (of Black Sabbath fame) – the hair, the rings, the jewellery the clothes except for the fact that his name was Ian Grubb.

From there around to customs and into the line that disappeared into the distance and almost out of site, through inspection of our carry on bags where, despite emptying just about everything out of my backpack onto the trays so I would get through easily, and walking through the metal detector without so much as a beep I got wanded and frisked. Meanwhile, Cheryl who took about 5 minutes to get through the metal detector because it kept beeping, then having everything taken out of her bag because there were fluids detected, got to walk straight past the man with the wand. In the course of emptying her bag there were many things such as containers of hand cream, tubes of potions and who knows what else spread across the counter because they were all in doubt. Perhaps they thought she’d suffered enough because there were no liquids and all her containers of potions were of acceptable size and returned. By the way her problem with the metal detector; well into wasn't metal from an operation it, wasn't some other sort of surgical device, it wasn't a belt buckle or metal on her shoes, she happened to move her sleeve and presto a metal bangle. "Aw damn I've been caught with that before" was her comment.

From there a stop at duty free, a bite to eat and a walk down Terminal 2 to Gate 8. After a bit of a wait we got onto the plane and taxied out at 3;15 on schedule.




The Flight Over.

The flight itself was good but seemed to drag a bit but that was okay as we had a jolly good singalong - reference the happy gentleman and friend getting out of his seat to lead the singing. Some of the passengers were so excited they had to be restrained in their excitement. You'll notice in the photo their level of excitement and the level of restraint required.

Arrived at Suvarnambhumi Airport in Bangkok just before mid-night and on to the domestic terminal at a distance of 1135 metres. Over a kilometre! Yahoo!! Great for the step count and good to stretch the legs after the flight. The flight to Phuket International airport was uneventful with great seats and not many passengers.




The Ride to the Resort.

After arrival and luggage collection we proceeded out the front of the airport to find the driver with our name. Instead we found a lady with our name and an entire list of other names as well. We were told our driver would be along shortly.

So after spending 15 minutes (perhaps it was 10) or so watching people being dispatched, a car pulled up with wide wheels, low profile tires, front air dam, rear spoiler and a sports exhaust system. My immediate thought was “It’s raining and some-one is being picked up in a hot rod”, followed by “some-one’s in for a surprise” followed by “I hope he doesn’t drive how his car looks and sounds” “followed by “I just know that’s our driver”. Sure enough, the lady with our name bought him over to us!

In fairness to the driver he didn’t drive like a hoon. However, I did learn a bit about the road rules here – particularly speed limits. For example: if the speed sign says 80, the speed to drive is anywhere between 80 and 100 kph. However, if the sign says 60, the speed to drive is 110 kph. At 50 the speed to drive is 100 kph. I originally thought that this was driving and ignoring the advisory speed limit but subsequent trips have borne out the validity of this conversion table.

The driver was one of those talkative teenage types (not that he was a teenager). Me - "Have you had much rain?". Driver - "Nuh". Me - "Do you have many of these late night pick-ups?". Driver - slight chuckle "Yup". Me - "At least there's not much traffic". Driver - "Nup". Me - "So is this your own car?" Driver - "Yep". Me (in desperation to be the sociable tourist) - "You've done a great job to make your car look good". Driver - "Yup". I gave up after that. I really must work on those open questions! I give him the benefit of the doubt though that he didn't have much English and his English is far superior to my Thai. He did make Liam look like a real chatty person though.

Anyway we arrived safely at around 4:30 Melbourne time, were shown to our room and quickly crashed into bed for a well deserved sleep.

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Photos

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Our Plane, well as much as can be seen of it.

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The happy passenger and friend.
I took this over my head without even looking.

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The enthusiastic crowd on the plane.

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Hours into the trip and hours to go.

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Almost there

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Suvarnambhumi Airport, Bangkok

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Live plant display in Suvarnambhumi Airport, Bangkok.