Easter holiday

Easter == playing in the snow, right? Well, normally that is true for me, but this year is a little different. Until 04/03-08 I will be in Thailand with the family bathing, eating incredible food and getting sand where sand really shouldn’t be. Awesome! The trip started by flying out of Bergen 03/20-08 with SAS at approx 10AM. No foodstuff during the flight. Oh how I miss the good old days. It is really quite funny how SAS has had commercials with the slogan “Relanserer service” (ENG: “Reintroducing Service”), and then they don’t even serve food unless you fly business-class (well, technically you can buy).. Is it just me or does that seem, uhm, odd?

We arrived in Kopenhagen at about 12AM and were to wait there until 2PM, when we would board the plane taking us to Bangkok (originally called “Bang Ma-kok” or something, and NO, that is not something dirty I just made up). The airport in Kopenhagen is quite nice when it comes to facilities. It’s got plenty of restaurants, clean enough bathrooms and the funniest thing ever: Smoking cabinets! One we passed was crammed with people huffing and puffing on their cancer-sticks, and it was actually kind of hard to make out their faces because of all the smoke. How one could enter one of those and not flat out die is beyond me.

The two hour wait was spent harvesting magazines and books, plus marveling at the insanely high prices in the “tax-free”-shops. Seriously, electronic devices (to take an example) are MUCH cheaper at home than in the tax-free. I also observed that quite a few alcoholic beverages are significantly cheaper at home in the state-run liquor-stores (yes, the state is the entity supplying booze to the people of Norway. Do they have a secret plot?). At approx 2PM we boarded our flight to Bangkok, operated by Thai Air.

We’ve heard a lot of good things about Thai Air, and did have some expectations. Usually when I have expectations I’m disappointed, but not this time. The crew was incredibly friendly, food was excellent (yes, the food they served during the flight), and for once there was enough legroom.

For the first meal we could choose between beef in green curry (“Kiew-Wan) with bamboo shoots, steamed Thai Hom Mali rice, marinated chicken, stir-fried cabbage and carrot OR fried chicken breasts with grainy mustard sauce, rissole potatoes and grilled tomato and broccoli. I had the former, and it was absolutely delicious. Both were served with rolls, crackers, cheese and almond cake.

The second serving was breakfast where we could choose between Spanish omelet with fried chicken sausage, broiled mushrooms and grilled tomato and fried potato slices OR crépe with creamed mushrooms, fried chicken sausages, broccoli and grilled tomato. Both were served with fruit salad, yogurt, soft rolls, croissant and jam. I had the latter, since the former became incredibly popular (and was subsequently consumed by hungry travelers) before the trolley came to my seat.

We arrived in Bangkok Friday morning and hopped on a domestic flight to Phuket from there. Roughly 45 minutes after exiting the airport we found ourselves being shown to our bungalows at Kamala Beach Hotel. I’ve been here before, and must say that it is a very nice place. The day was spent relaxing a little on the beach, and after a quick shower and redressing we had dinner, and went to bed pretty tired after the journey.

End of day one.