Month: October 2011

2011-10-16

This weekend we pretty much finished with the reservations we plan to do before leaving.  The rest of going to be done on the fly.  This weekend we booked:

• Kayaking with PaddleAsia:  Dave Williams was good to work with.  He now has our deposit via PayPal.  We are ready. On Ko Yao Noi, we will be staying in the Santisook Bungalows.
• Visas for Cambodia:  Online was easy, nice to take your own “passport” photos.
• Hotel for Phuket:  Just for the one night before taking off into the ocean, nice place, not to close to the party in town.  Staying at the Baan Orchid Guesthouse.
• Hotel for Rome:  We gambled and went with an Expedia “book it, then we will tell you what your just paid for” type deal.  Seems to have worked out well, in spite of the Emona Aquaeductus being on the opposite side of the Coliseum from where we were expecting to be.
• Car rental for Pompei and Amalfi coast:  We are going to wing it here.  Pick the car up at the airport and return 5 days later.  Probably stay a night in Positano.
• Hotel for Bangkok:  Not fun, even with Expedia.  All the hotels, even when we booked with 3 people, initially indicated a normal price, but then added an exorbitant fee for the 3rd person, e.g. $95 per night when we started to enter our Visa #.  Excessive when the original booking was around $110 per night.  But, we think we have found a nice place to stay, the Royal Orchid Sheraton, on the river.  Should be able to step right onto a water taxi.

During the week before, we also managed to book:

• Flights to Phuket.  We just don’t have time to take a slow train.  So, we fly in to Bangkok airport, and get right on to a small plane heading to the south of Thailand.  Hipmunk and Orbitz were pleasant to use.
• Hotel and tour guide in Siem Reap.  We are booked into the Pavillion Indochine (recommended by Chris).  We fly in around noon, and then try to squeeze in 3 days of temples into 2 1/2 days.
• Hotel in Barcelona.  Just 2 nights.  Fly in, sleep, one day of rushing around, sleep, fly out.  Staying in the Hotel Cuatro Naciones (recommended by Bill and Joan)

If you are still paying attention, you may notice that we have yet to plan stuff for New Zealand.  We will see, this may be done on the fly with the Closson’s, or we may try to prepare somethings ahead of time.

2011-10-07

We spent the morning in the travel clinic, watching videos and hearing about the importance of washing hands, along with all kinds of strange diseases.

We lucked out, none of the areas that we are visiting are considered malaria risks.  That’s good, and makes life easier.  I don’t like being on drugs.

The final score was 2 shots for Warren, 3 for Sandy and 4 for Keiran.  Two days later, everyone agreed that Typhoid shots were the most annoying.

2011-10-05

6 Weeks of traveling should feel like more…

I started looking more closely at when we arrive and leave at various destinations.  And things are looking tight.  At the beginning, the flight schedule seemed to say things like: 3 days in Barcelona, a week in Thailand and 4 days in Siem Reap.  But, traveling takes time.  We are gone from Canada for 41 days.  Looks like we are going to spend 31 days (1+6+5+2+17) being a tourist and 10 days on planes and airports.  I wonder if that is a typical ratio.

3 Days in Barcelona falls to about one day.  We arrive at noon, have one whole day to explore, and then leave the next day at noon.  So, we have one day.

8 Days in Rome falls to 6.  As always, we arrive and leave around noon.  Haven’t planned this one yet, but we are going to have to push a bit to do Rome, Pompei and the Amalfi Coast.

7 Days in Thailand falls to something more like 5.  Although we arrive at noon, and leave at noon, we lost a whole day traveling from Rome.  And we want to spend time in the south, in the islands (at least a 3 day kayaking trip).   Time-wise, we can’t afford to spend the 14 hours on a bus going south.  I suspect (and hope) that we fly.  So, I predict that we fly in to Bangkok, and immediately hop another flight down to Phuket, arriving Nov. 24.  Then we have an evening to see Phuket, and the next day, we are picked up and begin 3 days of kayaking and 2 nights in bungalows on Yao Noi, then back to Phuket at 5 pm on Nov 26th.  Maybe fly, maybe overnight train to Bangkok.  I want to do the train, but have heard portions are flooded right now.  Then we have 2 days, the 28th and 29th to do stuff before we fly to Siem Reap at noon on the 29th.

4 Days in Siem Reap falls to 2 days.  Again, we arrive at noon, then have 2 full days, and then leave at noon to start the plane hopping to New Zealand.

19 Days in New Zealand drops to 17.  Not significant, we arrive and leave mid-afternoon.  And we join up with Kim and Karin.  Maybe this is where we finally have a chance to slow down?  No plans yet.

All this scheduling and planning is kind of foreign to us.  We consider ourselves good and comfortable with stumbling around from sight to sight, with no real plans, and changing our mind whenever we see something interesting.  But in this case, I think we might miss out on a lot if we don’t push hard, especially for the first half of the trip.

 

2011-10-02

As I started researching things that I wanted to do in Southern Thailand, one thing sprang to the top of the list:  Kayaking in “Hongs”.  Hong is Thai for “room”, as in a room of a house.  Hongs are essentially limestone sea caves where the roof has fallen in.  Eventually, the sea wears away the tunnel entrance, and the hong turns into a lagoon.

I figure we can squeeze in a 3 day trip, so fired off emails to three of the bigger companies.  So far, only Dave Williams of Paddle Asia has gotten back to me.  And as I go through his email and links, it sounds better and better.  Take a peak at a typical itinerary:

http://paddleasia.com/destinations/Itineraries/phang_nga_itinerary.htm

I am still waiting for official confirmation from the boss…

 

2011-10-01

Cambodia:

Sandy was getting ready to pay $150 per visa from a place in Calgary.  Then we discovered that we could pay $20 at the airport per person instead.  But then we would have to live with not being quite sure….

Then we found the online e-visa web site.  Same price, but an extra $5 for the convenience.  So, that is the plan, should have our visas soon.

Visas for Transit in airports?

This was a new one for me.  Apparently, even through you are only in transit (and never enter the country) some countries still require you to have a Visa.  E.g. Kuwait, if you are in the airport for 8 hrs or more.  Maybe just 4 hours for Singapore…  Say what?  Anyways, Sandy seems to be on the ball, so I am not worrying my pretty little head!  🙂