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.