My first contact with Thailand

After a very long break that I moved from a quieter town in one at the seaside after a long waited vacation that I spent in Asia and many beautiful days with 43 degrees, it’s time to tell about the two weeks in Thailand and if you find my lines useful, feel inspired in choosing this destination. Because my husband and I have been quite active in Thailand, I have much to tell here, so I’m thinking to structure my experiences in parts, I don’t know exactly how many will be, but I hope you will not get bored. I wrote about planning my vacation here.

Therefore, three months of waiting in agony followed, with booked flights and hotel rooms, “obsessive” trip research and apparently nailed planning. During this period I read so many reviews, I have seen many videos and pictures of the places where we were going that even now I can not explain why in our heads was chaos on the day we left. I didn’t remember the name of the hotel where we had to accommodate and made jokes: if the plane wouldn’t have stopped to the destination, we sure arrived to other places. A lesson for the future: it is better to book plane tickets early for a good price, but an excessive research could be unhealthy.

In the plane to Doha we had the first surprise. A couple of rows ahead us, a single mother “was struggling” hard to calm down her baby (she actually did nothing for it), a girl about 2 years old who had cried for about 5 hours, exactly the flight time between Bucharest-Doha (we flew with Qatar Airways). For some “suffering fellow” the story hadn’t the same impact: they watched films with headphones on and listened to music and they were not aware all the time of the child and sometimes the mother’s desperate cries. I sought a different approach: I tried a glass of red wine to fell asleep … or … anything. It did not work. Do not get me wrong, I really like children, but it was my vacation could not start with a child walking and yelling throught the aisle. Yes, it could.

Details:

Here we were in Doha, at midnight, half asleep, looking for smoking area for a desperate husband living on the edge between life and death, then running to another terminal, which, of course, was at the other side of the airport to transfer to Bangkok and begging Divinity not to send the 2 years old girl accompanied by her mother in Thailand (I forgot to mention that they were Asian and, why not, they could have lived in Bangkok). Fortunately it was not so.

About the company with I flew, Qatar Airways, I can only speak at superlative: spacious and clean aircraft, well mannered staff, very good food. After another 6 hour flight with the largest aircraft that I’ve ever flown (about 500 passengers) I landed to Thailand airport. I changed a small amount of euro in local currency – bahts – because we had to pay visa fee and exchange rate at the airport was embarrassing. Visa procedures lasted very little. We had passport photos with us (if not, you take photos there, for a fee), we filled in one form, we filled others on the plane and with visa in passport and cigarettes in the pocket (I don’t smoke), we were looking for smoking area again. This time I received threats from my husband: if he did not smoke in the next two minutes, I was going to lose him. I didn’t think too much how I was going to lose him, but I thought I needed my hubby for the next days and the only smoking area was outside at 43 C. It was the first Thai air impact. We felt we could not breathe and needless to say my husband didn’t finish his cigarette and back inside to air conditioning. That was just the beginning, we were going to get used to the sun and air conditioning, both in excess.

Upon landing in Bangkok it was already 12:30 pm and had to wait for another 5 hours until another transfer to Krabi region; we were going to fly with Thai Airways local company. There was a flight of one hour, smooth and very pleasant, and we landed in Krabi, an airport small but cozy where we were waited by a driver from Transfer Company that I contacted and who would take us to our destination, Ao Nang. After 30 minutes driving, we arrived at the Ao Nang Beach Resort, it was dark, very warm, we knew we were near the beach, but we had to accommodate first. We were very tired, I did not sleep at all on the plane, and actually I had not slept for 36 hours. When I went out on the balcony I saw a wonderful landscape, we were at 30 meters away from the sea, with a little effort I could jump from the balcony straight into the water.

I checked the neighborhood, we ate at the Ao Nang Beach Resort hotel’s terrace, which I later found out that was a center of entertainment in Ao Nang, then I slept all night with the air conditioning turned on as in Thailand whether you die of heat or cold or you get spontaneously accustomed with a mix of hot and cold. Although the slow mode was on, this was unimportant as long as the device size in the room was as wide as the wall and being positioned close to the bed. We didn’t die and here we were the next morning with that view from the balcony:

So our way and first contact with Asia went. I’ll write back soon with details and stories. Meanwhile, if you have questions about my vacation in Thailand, I try to kindly answer them. See you!