Tuesday, January 24, 2023 until Thursday, January 26, 2023

Tomorrow we fly to Thailand and we must, for us, leave early for Schiphol Airport.
That's why today we pack everything we want to take with us.
We fly with Emirates and we don't know how strict that airline is with luggage. We are allowed to take 30 kilos of checked baggage and 7 kilos of hand luggage per person. With those 30 kilos we come out reasonably well, but that 7 kilos won't work, we'll see.
Some people pass by and we go to bed too late.

We get up early, the alarm clock goes off at 6 o'clock.
The last things are being packed, and we think we haven't forgotten anything.
At nine o'clock the taxi is waiting at the door, and at half past ten we drive to Schiphol where we are at a quarter to eleven.
The check-in desk is already open and we can check in right away. We have to take an old PC out of the suitcase and take it with us as hand luggage, but everything is going well, no worries about weight.
The security check is less smooth, Tom has a chain on and that always causes problems, we know that. But now we have a piece of cheese with us, and we have to unpack the trolley until the security lady finds the cheese, and then the problem is over.
We walk on, passports of course no problem.
And we buy two bottles of liquor, eat something and then we go to the gate. It's not open yet, so we buy a can of beer, €5.50, and wait.

Boarding is smooth and fast, the seats are spacious, the legroom is also quite spacious. The plane departs on time and it is remarkably quiet, little noise from engines and air conditioning. Also the food tastes good.
Close to Dubai, the plane is on schedule, we hear that we have to wait another 10 minutes due to weather conditions. When we finally land, 20 minutes late, it turns out that it is raining very hard in Dubai.

Once we have disembarked, we have to walk a long way for the transfer, but luckily we already have boarding cards for the second part of the journey, from Dubai to Phuket.
The hand luggage must go through the scanner again, one of the PCs must be removed from the trolley, the second must not, and we can continue. Then we walk to the gate where we have to board again. That gate is close to the gate where we boarded.
We still have time, there is plenty to do at Dubai airport and we buy a bottle of water, €8. Then a beer, €12 for half a liter of Heineken.
And it is still raining heavily in Dubai.
And the airport suffers, a lot, from leakage.

Back at the gate it is very busy there and also very wet. The plane is completely full and compared to the part from Amsterdam to Dubai, the seats are narrower and the legroom is less.
And there are a bunch of very busy French people sitting right next to us. Due to the weather we leave more than half an hour late.
We are tired and we can't sleep, but luckily the journey is going well. We land in Phuket with a half hour delay.
Because Pia has a Thai passport, we can use the priority lane at the passport control. The luggage arrives fairly quickly, Pia buys two SIM cards and we walk towards the exit where we look for exit 2. It was also quickly found, many people from TUI are outside and we are taken to our transport to the hotel in Ao Nang.
With four other people and a lot of luggage we are in a reasonably comfortable van to Krabi.
We're pretty fed up and we're losing all sense of time along the way, just like the four other people in the van.

On the way we see that the surroundings are beautiful.
At the hotel, the Krabi La Playa Resort, check-in is efficient and fast, and all luggage is taken to room.
After clearing our luggage and a quick shower, we take a look in the garden of the hotel, and we stay for dinner in the restaurant, tasty food and friendly service, not busy.
We walk to a 7/11 to buy beer, there is a bang nearby, it looks like a short circuit in an electricity pole. Then we first go for a walk through Ao Nang, busy, lots of catering and especially many Indian restaurants it seems. We also see a large and busy night market.
We are tired, but still go to the 7/11 and buy water there, beer is not allowed because the bang from earlier means that the cash register systems do not work properly. So no beer.

We are tired, very tired, drink a glass of cognac and go to sleep around 10 o'clock, more than 24 hours after our departure from Apeldoorn.

Written on: 2023-01-27

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