Holidays and Other Excursions

Tag: Christmas

Heading to India (or perhaps not)

Friday 4 December 2015

A long awaited holiday – a second visit to India, this time to visit the southern areas of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Goa; including a trip on the Ooty railway, a night’s cruise on a houseboat and a week on the beach (or close by) in Kerala – early morning call as we have to leave the house before 6 am.

Only we are in bed well beyond that time as a call yesterday from the travel company brought bad news.  Chennai airport is closed, there is serious flooding in the area, there have been power cuts and it is still raining.

So on Thursday evening we sat down and hammered the tablets and looked at possibilities.  Jackie got very close to booking a couple of weeks in Mexico; but we held off.

This morning we hear back from Trailfinders who have sorted flights via Abu Dhabi on Etihad to Thailand – two weeks in Phuket and Kao Lahk (one week each), leaving next Wednesday and on the final leg we come back on a Dreamliner; arriving back in the UK on December 25 (that date rings a bell).

Xmas

So if any of you wondered when notes on India would start appearing you will have to wait until 2017 as we are taking our 2017 holiday now.  Thailand updates will start appearing once we are on our way!

Luang Prabang to Siem Reap

Day 7 Monday 22 December 2014

Until now all of the holiday arrangements had run well; timetables had been observed, guides knowing well what they were doing and it all has gone very smoothly.

We get to the very nice small airport at Luang Prabang and check in.  Just as we complete this a notice is posted at the desk and we are going to be delayed by nearly two hours.  The guide offers to take us back into town – but we decline – who knows the flight might suddenly be right time again.  He does however notify his office and we hope the message reaches the other end.

So we head through the passport control – only to find that there is not much in the way of refreshment the other side.  Anyway I am a fat unfit b******, so missing a meal will not do me that much harm.  And the passenger information systems continue to tell us that the flight was leaving on time even when we were clearly nearly two hours past that time.

We see the arrival – it is the same plane as the one on which arrived from Hanoi a few days earlier.  It unloads and reloads rapidly so that departure is pretty rapid, recovering some of the lost time.

Consequently our flight arrives in Siem Reap nearly two hours down and thanks to ebola we have to fill in another form to say we have not recently been in West Africa – which means we take ages to exit the airport.  The passport control team are not particularly speedy either.  Once outside our guide is not in evidence and we carry out several checks before electing to get a taxi to our hotel.

The route to our hotel takes us along what seems to be the main drag from the aiport with numerous hotels, all of which have lots of glittering lights, snowmen, reindeers, Santa Claus and Xmas trees – here it seems there is some acknowledgment.

Our hotel is the Tara Angkor which is graded 4 star, but to our mind is perhaps a little lacking in some respects.  Dinner in the hotel and the prices are again unbelievably low.  The wife has a burger for about $4 whilst I stick with rather more local food.

Amazing how a day doing nothing is tiring.  So time for bed.