Indeed no fun at all

We are finally in Chiang Mai, but my god what an effort it was...

I detailed missing the plane, but that was only the start of the madness. We got tickets to travel via Munich to Bangkok.. I was trying to save a little money, and figured getting a bus from BKK to CM was a good idea... It wasn't.

But lets start with the flight to Munich, which was the only real unremarkable thing, except that due to them being fully booked the asked if we could check in our overhead bags...you know the small suitcase with handle ones... we said ok, since we had a bit of a wait in Munich anyway and lugging them, even with wheels was a bit of a chore...and it was free... so fine.


We get to Munich, nothing crazy about that, a bit of a wait, but we killed the time charging our phones and watching videos etc...

Get on the plane and we're sat right way back, last row, next to the galley, and a very helpful stewardess is chatting and we explain our plight, missing our flight, stress, delay.. sound like you need a drink, what would you like... oh scotch for me, and even Jirawan is happy to take advantage (she's not normally a drinker)...so out comes a massive double/tripple scotch and wine for the lady..  Just let me know when you want some more...... best...flight ....ever....well it seemed that way.

After taxiing for a while we get held on the runway for quite some time, the Captain apologises, but can't proceed till the tower says. Wait a bit longer the captain reveals that someone has been flying drones around the airport, so they have to wait till they get an ok from tower...

Then finally the plane starts moving, we thought to the take off point...but... no

It has come back to the stad. Sorry dear passengers, due to the drone activity the Airport had taken the decision to close down.....we must as you all to de-plane and await instructions.

....

...

...

..

wtf....

ok so we get off, its around 12-30am now.. the airport is deserted. Apart from a few thousand confused and lost passangers from 3 long haul flights the de-planed, wandering around looking for someone to tell them where hotels are..

Eventually we get an announcment that the flight is delayed till 2pm tomorrow, in the mean time people can wait in the lobby, or leave the airport to return tomorrow..

ermm... what.... there's no place to really sleep except the floor, and it didn't take long for the local hotels to fill up to capacity in record time, leaving us, a bit tipsy and tired,.. stuck

We decided to try and get out, but by the time we did, it was clear 100's of others did too, so the taxi rank was utterly filled trying to claim 2 or 3 taxi's arriving every 10 mins, usually by order so unable to pick up from the queue..

Internet was useless at finding a hotel as it kept coming up with the local or 5* hotels on the airport grounds which were actually still full. Calling them put us on hold forever, and still resulted in sorry we have nothing.

Around 2am the queue had cleared and I got to a taxi, and asked the very kind lady driver if she could find us a hotel....15 mins and endless calls later..... she did... and took us there, but it was quite a distance, well over 30kms and over 80 euros. The room itself was snug, but we were tired and needed to sleep, so 152 was a price worth paying...

Next day we have to pay about the same to get a taxi back.

And our flight was now scheduled for 15.00... but, it did go, it did get away and our trip started... stayed off the booze this time though. When we landed the Captain informed us the drones had come back again the next night, but we had taken off before they were sighted..

Anyway....next

We get our luggage ok, thank fuck... but the little fake samsonite case has taken a beating, lost a wheel and cracked its shell so half is hanging on....dammit.. but we have not lost anything.

We get a taxi to the bus station as its across town...turns out the driver took advantage of us since grab took the money themselves, and then he took the money+ tolls via a scan...(they use scans in Thailand) cheeting bastared, but we only found out about 2 hours later when I got a ping from Grab accepting payment.

The bus......we couldn't get a nice cosy VIP bus, only a standard coach....but by now who cares lets get going.

It was quite an old bus...quite old indeed.. But ok, 10 hours isn't the end of the world 
We set off at 10-15am....local time, 10-40 or so, as I am dozing in the chair, the bus breaks down........ yup its an old bus.

We have to wait for a new one, it comes, its newer...but still old.. and still not very cosy, but we get on, we've lost nearly 2 hours by this time... But off we go.

Now...it didn't break down, but it also didn't break any speed records, it was quite a slow bus, and though we had a break mid way for food and toilet, it was a shortend break of 20 mins rather than the usual 30 or so... we rushed the tasy but cheap food included in the price at the stop over..

We get to Chaing Mai around 1am, where Jirawans daughter picks us up, and we finally get to the hotel 2 days later, but lucky I'd sent messages forward we were delayed and our room was still there..


We made it, 4,500euros or so poorer and 2 days later.... but we made it.

Ahthankyew

Well this isn't fun at all....

We are heading to Chaing Mai for a couple of weeks, mainly to scout out rental places and sort out things like the car and other things..

But our trip was immediatlly derailed, literally by some trains to schipol being cancelled due to some incident at Rotterdam... by the time we got the 2nd notice of cancellation and called the cavalry for help with his little car (my mate Martin) we were too late..
We missed the flight......and I have to say what a horrible shit show that is not a single ounce of help is available at the airport, no one willing to rebook, or redirect things..just left on your own to flounder...

The only desk dealing with SIA issues had 1 number to call which turned out to only be for travel agents or corporate customemrs.... otherwise go to the internet, which of course has no options for missed flights.

we had to book new flights at a ticket desk, at considerable cost, and only to Bangkok ...which with hindsite was me being a bit dim and not asking for Chaing Mai....

utter cocking horror story .

Ahthankyew

The Secret of good comedy and house moving...........

yeah timing

but I think we've messed it up... due to the amount of work to clear up/out the house we're still not ready for photo's and official listing of this house so it won't go on line till Oct... which is when we'll be out of the country for a bit... thats a wee bit of a pain. Photos now happen next week.. and another week to go live. We're confident of a sale within 2-3 weeks which is normal here, but...there's the legals to take care of.

We have no idea at all how long it will take to finalise a sale so it might not hit our preferred mid to end December window.
Its getting a bit worrying.

But... we think we've found a perfect place in Thailand for our 1st years rental.. Jirawan's daughter has scouted it out for us and we'll make a decision ourselves when we see it. But Jirawan is happy so unless there's some major faults, we have a home...When we get there is...debatable :D but wages stop in December so hopefully we don't burn too much money living in an empty home in NL.



Ahthankyew

We are all doomed

Watching TV during a quiet rest from the house clearing, I saw 3 adverts from charities in the space of an hour: 1 for help with clefts, 1 for WaterAid, 1 for help with eye issues. If I watch a bit more there will probably be another 3 or 4 for different things - famine, FGM, child abuse, etc. The list is long.

The world is crazy, on so many levels. Why do we have a lack of clean water in any country? Why is there no hospitals for the health issues? Famine and abuse are more down to human nature and lack of education... and war.

We live in times where things CAN be fixed, but things won't be fixed because there's no political will to fix things that don't impact us. This is just what humans are... if it ain't my problem it's not my problem, but it is... and this is where it's all starting to catch up to us all, slowly.

I also on the news today read that 150,000 idiots went out to support a thug and a racist because the UK isn't what they want it to be any more... and somehow it's all caused by people desperately fleeing halfway around the world to avoid being killed... sick.

It's true, the UK isn't the same as it was 20-30-40 years ago. I remember a different UK, though as a Scot, it wasn't quite the same UK the English will remember, but even so, yes today is different and it's not great, but it's not great for a lot of reasons, and due to a lot of actions that were taken in the past. The UK is broken... and people are justifiably angered by that... but...

It could all be fixed in a decade, or less, if we just stopped allowing big corporations to fleece people, remove jobs and destroy the way of life people grew up with. Look at any high street today - how many pound/betting shops, where's the Woolworths, the BHS, the Debenhams? Do you have a corner shop near you? Grocers? Butchers? Where are the factories making British goods you want to buy? Who is your local plumber/joiner/tiler/repair man? These trades all fell to the franchise markets. Even your evenings out - who owns your pub? Which brand of pizza will you buy or sandwich or ever reducing chicken piece?

It's not the EU or immigrants that caused this; they actually staved it off for a long time by being self-sufficient and trying to create opportunities for themselves and maintain community views. The EU was our last real stand of self-sufficiency and we rejected it. We could actively prevent migration by supporting progressive governance in countries that source these migrations, rather than making their situations worse.

In terms of business and jobs, everything has been centralised and exported, and only big corporations benefit and control the job market and every other aspect of life as they now have governments doing their bidding. We can't see that anymore, the mob just want someone to blame, and guess who's funding the finger pointers until such times at least when the rabble generates its own finger pointers. UK and US and French, Spanish and now German society is starting to fracture under the weight of this corporate influence... and honestly there's no way to stop it, because people would rather inject botox into their fat fucking lips to increase their TikTok following than actually give a shit about what their actions do to society.

We are doomed... make no mistake, this won't change no matter how many start to recognise it... 10 years of restrictions on corporate growth, limits on franchises, encouragement of business, support for underdeveloped countries, and (sensible..not Trumpian stupidity) restrictions on online-offshore shopping and the UK could be close to what it was... But it will never happen as long as we get people motivated to blame rather than resolve. And governments left and right are very happy to allow and encourage people to blame, since it lets them avoid any resolution. So we're just doomed.

Fuuck....

Ahthankyew

Last few bits

Its been a very busy and tiring last few weeks, as we get our back garden, the attic, the kitchen, the bathroom, the stairs and so on, all tidied up. Multipe tripls to the garbage tip, and dhl offices with lots of decluttering/selling/giving stuff away as we get the house in a fit condition for photo's and viewing.

The Garden does look rather nice after laying down some turf, and we planted a small fruit (pear) tree in the corner on top of Harvey's ashes. I doubt they'd dig up a fruiting tree so Im hoping he'll never be bothered... not that he'd mind. he's dead.. but.. y'now sentiment.

The amount of crap we have got rid of though, and the amount left, wow... its insane. But we have to get the house ready for inspection, and then, fingers crossed, we get a fast sale and a completion date to set the clock for our final jump.

Had to stop working on the garden, we were pressure washing the paving... massive storm, at least it will clear away the mud for us to finish up tomorrow.

Its exciting, but tiring.

Ahthankyew

Tinges of sadness

I've had a tiny little scare but nicely resolved, after finding a little lump on my gum above the area where my original cancer was. This only came to be noticed after I had a tooth, or rather a nasty old root stump from a long dead/failed crown removed when my trainee royal torturer, or as she prefers, oral hygenist, felt that the exposed root was just a playground for infections.

The removal was simple but immediatly I noticed I could get my tongue up inside the cheek now and, on the gum was a bump.... This of course could be 100% due to the extraction so we waited a few weeks for it to heal up... which it did, and the lump didn't go away.

ok, so as a cancer "survivor" (I hate that term) I am acutely aware of the importance of checking all lumps, bumps and odd shaped moles etc as soon as possible, and arranged a trip to see my old oncologist/oral surgeon, Dr Jan, to check it out.

And... its nothing... indeed some tiny bone fragment from the extraction getting lodged in the gum.. it will settle..its not a problem.

But I updated my cancer blog, as I do whenever there's any concern...and was a little sad when I remembered that it was there, mainly to keep mum informed of my health during the cancer times.. Her little messages of support and concern are still there, and took me back a bit to happier times when she was still with us.

I doubt anyone reads that blog, but whenever I have a cancer related health scare I'll post something, and spend a few minutes looking back on mums replies. I miss her.

Ahthankyew

It's oh so quiet....

I had children in the house for just over a week... Danni and the Grandkids came to stay with us, and we spent a lot of time keeping them entertained and amused.

It was fun, though Efteling almost killed me, too much standing around..

But now they've gone...the quiet is....quiet.

oh well.. back to de-cluttering. The attic is looking nice now though as I got most of the decotrating done before my grandson came to sleep there..10yo's need a bit of space :D

Ahthankyew