escaping winter - july edition

OK, my trip this time isn't much of a holiday.

I'm attending my cousin's wedding in Ko Samui and got to spend a few days in Singapore on the way back to Melbourne.

The kicker? I get to make people at work jealous and as a bonus, escaping the gloomy winter weather of Melbourne and bathing myself with some warm (maybe a bit hot) tropical weather. Sun!

There were no major dramas this time. Finally!

The only thing was this time, my taxi on the way to the airport had a data jammer. Isn’t that cool? Actually I don’t know if that’s true or not but the moment I got into the taxi, my 3G went off and even until five minutes later when I restarted my phone it still had a hard time finding 3G. I got the last laugh though.

I was so tired that night of my flight. I caught a cold and on the way to the airport I must have slept almost all the way. That was also the case on the plane. After I got on, doors were closed (seat next to me was empty, yeah!), plane took off and when PEDs (portable electronic devices) were allowed back on I zoned out blaring out music from my iPhone through the Sennheiser earbuds and I was out cold. I even skipped the first meal, or rather didn’t know they were serving it and didn’t wake up until the second serving of the meal which was around two hours before touching down in Singapore.

Met mom in Changi airport and boarded the flight to Ko Samui.

Samui International Airport was pretty laid back. In my mind it was like huts connected together to form a structure. Customs was almost non-existent. You’d think Australia is a pretty laid back country and the custom officers would reflect that. Wrong! But the custom officers in Ko Samui were more than laid back. They just…didn’t care? One of them took my passport, didn’t even check if I looked like the guy in the passport photo, didn’t even ask me to look at the camera, just kept on doing his business until he stamped my passport and without even looking back to me, gave me my passport and I was in.

Five steps later I was already in the baggage area then off to the hotel.

The hotel was amazing. Must be the best resort I’ve ever been into even though I’ve only been into a couple (I’m not the type of person who likes doing nothing the whole day during holidays). Price-wise I think it’s about $450 per night (private villa with outdoor bed and swimming pool) which was OK compared to the villa I visited in Bali ($3600 per night). For me the room looks something like it came out of an IKEA showroom with all the light coloured wood décor but still very nice.

Cons: I had to call a buggy whenever I want to go to the lobby and actually do stuff since the lobby was a long hike from the villa.

Most of my time here was spent in the private outdoor pool with Wi-Fi on my phone and just update whatever on the phone. Yes the Wi-Fi coverage actually reaches the pool area which was a good thing.

And on the fourth day it was byebye fake paradise and hello Singapore.

Checked in at Marina Bay Sands at 2PM, they said my room wasn’t ready yet since the allocated check-in time was 3PM. Not a problem, I had to be somewhere anyway. By the time I returned to the hotel at 6PM, they said my room wasn’t ready as of yet. OK, how long does it take to prepare a room for a new guest? Especially when I finally got in, at 9.30PM mind you, and saw that the room was pretty standard.

Mom was furious at the customer service. They said they’d allow us late checkout which was at 1PM on the day of our flight. Whatever, but for a hotel of that caliber that was uncool and it made it to my unsatisfactory service list. No hard feelings.

It was mostly catching up with friends, and food. I did visit the Gardens by the Bay and even though in my mind this looked like the place where aliens would nest if they were to start invading the earth, it was still really amazing. I want to go back again since it was raining half-way I was there so I didn’t get to see the whole thing. Curse you weather.

Oh actually on the way to the Gardens by the Bay I was supposed to catch an elevator but I couldn’t find it and so I took the stairs. It was over a hundred steps so it was a bit like London all over again. Bummer.

And last but not least, the excess baggage.

Mine was 15kg, mom’s makeup artist had 30kg of baggage and the winner was mom with almost 50kg of luggage just for herself. So the three of us had almost, literally, a ton of baggage with us. Mom had to pay 23kg of excess baggage because she was flying home by herself.

Now I’m back in Melbourne but I’ll be flying out again in three week time. Jakarta and South Korea, wait for me.

Pics as usual are up on Flickr.

melbourne - singapore - jakarta - bangkok - siem reap - bangkok - jakarta - singapore - melbourne

Everytime I go travelling there's always some kind of drama going on. This time is no exception. Here's how it went.

The flight schedule:
07 Nov, 01.00AM, Singapore Airlines - Melbourne to Singapore
07 Nov, 07.40AM, Singapore Airlines - Singapore to Jakarta
08 Nov, 01.30PM (roughly), Thai Airways - Jakarta to Bangkok
15 Nov, 08.30AM, Thai Airways - Bangkok to Jakarta
16 Nov, 06.00AM, Singapore Airlines - Jakarta to Singapore
16 Nov, 10.10AM, Singapore Airlines - Singapore to Melbourne

The drama
On the night of my flight from Melbourne to Jakarta, I ordered a taxi. Remembering it was a Saturday evening, I did order the taxi about a half hour before I had to leave the house. After half an hour, no taxi showed up. I gave them a call back asking where my taxi is and I was told that they are resending one straight away.

Cool. Half an hour later, no taxi showed up again. I was getting quite impatient. After all, have you ever had to wait for a taxi for an hour? So I gave them another call and guess what I was told? 'A taxi was in front of your house at 11.05PM but no one was waiting outside'.

Huh?

So according to this woman, I was supposed to wait for the taxi (that never showed up) in front of my house for the past hour? Is she nuts? Couldn't the driver just get off and knocked on my front door if honking wasn't allowed? I did turn on my lights outside. What the hell man? Anyway so she told me she's sending one right now and that I should wait for the taxi outside. 'No way in hell' I thought to myself.

So while waiting for the taxi (again), I received an SMS from Singapore Airlines telling me that my flight from Singapore to Jakarta had been cancelled due to Mt.Merapi's volcanic activities.

Great. The taxi never showed up and now my connecting flight is cancelled.

I still went to the airport anyway. I must be the last person checking in since the check-in line was empty and while I was dropping off my baggage I received a call from Tullamarine Airport's Singapore Airline's customer service asking if I was still flying tonight. I said I was at the counter already and he checked me out from the other end of the check-in counter.

I also asked about my cancelled flight from Singapore to Jakarta and was told that it might just be a system error. I was told that a passenger received that SMS previously as well but they weren't told anything about it.

Woohoo! Now nothing stood between me and the Thailand & Cambodia trip anymore. It was already 12AM by that time and I even still had the time to get my MacBook Air GST back. Sweet huh? Not long after that, I boarded the plane and quickly fell asleep. I felt really tired after all my effort to get to the airport and the supposedly system error SMS.

So I arrived at Changi airport in the morning, got off the plane and asked the customer service straight away, "which gate is SQ956?". She answered me straight away "Oh flight SQ956 to Jakarta has been cancelled sir".

SAY WHAT?

Remember that SMS I received last night? Apparently that was correct. All flights going in and out of Jakarta had been cancelled and I was told that Soekarno-Hatta airport was closed (of course this wasn't the case). I could see how it was a precautionary measure by airlines. Still I was groggy and I was pissed off.

So I was told to gather at the Transfer Station where they gave us stickers to check in to the Pan Pacific Orchard.

At this time I had a few choices.
1. Go back to Melbourne
2. Re-route my flight to Bangkok instead of Jakarta
3. Wait and hope Singapore Airlines will still fly me to Jakarta

Not long after I received the sticker to check into the hotel, the customer service made an announcement. He had news that there might be a flight flying to Jakarta at 11.30AM. Might, not will. So I decided to wait and got another sticker to fly that might-be-flying flight.

Fortunately, it did fly. And my travelling drama ended here.

The trip
The trip itself was quite fun. It's a bit like last year in Bangkok.

We visited the Grand Erawan Shrine for the birthday of the Four Faces Buddha. Same thing happened this year, lots of smoke from burnt incense, lots of tears (because of the smoke) and lots of coconut drinks. Ayutthaya was also the same with the addition of Wat Ban Rai.

And on the fourth day of the tour we went by bus and stopped at the border crossing in Poipet. From there we took another long bus ride to Siem Reap. Roughly 400km wasn't supposed to take that long but the road condition and the traffic made it quite long and felt like a never ending bus ride.

The next day, we visited Ta Prohm, the Bayon and Angkor Wat. They were unreal. I loved the details of the carvings in these temples. It was really hot though, the typical Southeast Asian heat where you'll just be sweating for no reason whatsoever and by the end of the day your top would have went through the cycle of being wet and dried again for a few times. And that night we also went to Angkor night market and visited Artisans Angkor the day after before heading back to Bangkok. Here'are the pics (also live on my Flickr).

  

After going back to Bangkok I went to Wat Arun and Wat Pho. Wat Arun because I've always wanted to go since last year's Chao Phraya river dinner cruise and since Wat Pho was just across the ferry pier, I'd just visit it briefly.

Wat Arun wasn't too big, in a sense that you'd be able to walk around it in less than half an hour. It was really high though, and tourist were only allowed to climb up to the third level I think. So I climbed to the highest I was allowed to (you'd know you're at the highest since the don't have anymore stairs afterwards) and felt vertigo kicking in straight away. The way down was even more scary. I had to climb down the stairs fairly slowly, but I made it.

I didn't spend too much time in Wat Pho. Only went in to see the huge reclining Buddha.

If you want to see what I snapped in Thailand this time around, click here.

That was essentially the trip this time. I'm still planning my Europe trip for next year (May-June) but to my dismay I still haven't got a travel buddy yet. Fingers crossed.