Hamilton - The Last Frontier
Well I'm writing this from the comfort of my own lounge. The heater's on and it's wet and windy outside. I've seen as much rain since we got home as we had during the whole holiday. That's why we tried to escape our winter. However, Spring's on the way.
Our last few days in Thailand was so pleasant and relaxing. Our fears of the Phuket section of our trip being a fizzer was so off the mark as we really enjoyed our stay. We hired another motorbike for the last two days and knowing the chances of getting pulled over for a licence/helmet check, we were in full compliance. Just as well as we were stopped for a regular check. Most of the traffic police can't read English script, you could show them anything. If you told them you'd just been stopped a few minutes earlier (which is usually true) they just wave you on. I did see a local woman without a helmet getting stopped, but that's a real rarity. As we never had a map we were navigating by the sun and a scant memory of the island as seen on Google Earth. There are some reasonable road signs so we coped ok. The traffic can be a bit hairy at times but we survived without too many scary incidents. A sore bum was the worst part as the rear suspension bottomed out (excuse the pun) over some of the many potholes.
One thing you must have is a massage in Thailand and for the last 3 days we had one on each day. I never went back to the first place, as good as the first one was, I'm a bit homophobic, proffering a Thai girl instead. Believe me, some of these women may be small but they have strong hands that can exert great pressure. They are experienced enough just to stop short of making you cry out in pain. It's such a relaxing experience having an hour's massage for about NZ$12. No extras!
Our schedule saw us having a long stop in Bangkok airport for the journey home and Bangkok has to be one of the worst airports to spend time in. It's a very modern, elliptical design with 4 levels. There are no shops or facilities (apart from toilets) once you go to the departure area so you have to stay outside in the shopping area. The big catch is that there are very few seats apart from the cafes and these are on the top floor which gets very hot. The shops are few and basically the same shop repeated so what you see on one level is repeated on the next level. All of this makes for a boring, uncomfortable wait. When we got to the departure area, there were only metal seats and it was very cold. Lovely, when you have a damp shirt. The air conditioning probably pumps out the correct level of cooling but the distribution is all wrong. Our tip is to spend as little time at Bangkok as possible.
The flight home was on time and our shuttle took us home in good time. One of the satisfying aspects of the trip is how well our plans worked. We spent hours working out the details of our stop-overs and transitions and everything worked out perfectly. The internet has made all of this possible as everything can be arranged from your own home. Thank you Google. The planning using the search engine, maps and Google Earth has made a complicated schedule entirely possible for anyone to do this sort of thing. Must be a worry for travel agents.

People have asked us which was the best bit of the trip and we've though hard about our reply and we have decided not to make a league of winners and losers as there were so many different aspects. Someone once said that comparisons are odious and I'd have to agree. There were some outstanding moments, especially meeting up with old friends. It's been awesome meeting up with old friends, especially as the passage of time hasn't diminished the strength of our friendship.
We weren't too sure just how much the holiday would cost as it's really hard to judge, beforehand, just how much you'd spend per day, not knowing prices of essentials like food and diesel. We set a target we thought was realistic and put a final cost of about 50K. All the fixed items like airfares, car hire, accommodation were all known, beforehand, so the rest was for daily spending. Happily, we were well under budget being closer to 40 than 50 K. We never did without and if we'd have spent more we'd have put on even more weight.

You could consider this holiday as a project, well it was a success, being on time and under-budget as well as being the best holiday ever. Thanks to everyone who helped us on our way.