A journey ‘with’ Didi (9th/10th of October)

I must say, the thing I had been most worried about preparing for Thailand and the the planeflight to it, was Didi, my dog. She was going with us and I had no idear how it would be for her, how she would manage, would she be safe, and all those worries.
I had bought an IATA approved dogkennel of a size good for Didi and put one of her more lightweighted covers and dogbench in it so she would have something of home with her in her kennel. And remeber, she never had been in such close convined quarters during her life with me, so I guess she never was in something like that ever!

Well, one thing for sure: how many dogs can say they spent their bosses weddingnight with them in one room, and come to it, when we woke up the next mornng, in one bed...guess not many, haha..... and I assure you, she likes to stretch out big time when she gets the chance to lie down with me/us on such a comfi bed!!

But we were simply to tired to be bothered with it, so we granted her the receptiën. When we arrived the precieus night at the Sheraton Hotel on Schiphol Airport, we first started to read all the wellwish cards we had received and opened up the smal gifts our friends still bought us and figuring out how to bring all of that with us to Thailand. And ofcourse we papil counted the money our guests had brought with them for us. We asked unsympathetically for money, because that would be the handiest to bring with us to Thailand and we promissed to buy from it a good and long lasting memory of our weddingday in Delft! And so we will and as soon as we have we will try to let eveybody know in gratitude what has become our weddingmemorie from our dear friends in Holland!

Okay..back to the subject at hand!
We managed to get our two very heavy and large suitcases with an overload of handluggage as early as possible to the check in counter of China Airlines..together with Didi in her IATA-kennel. We had given Didi special pills provided by Kevin, the ‘animaldocter’ and son of one of my wittnesses, Albert van Gaalen. I had hide the pills in a sausage and some meat taken from breakfast...they went in in a blink of an eye, hha..the poor girl, she must have wondered what had hit her! But how happy I was I had floret the advice of drugging her a bit!!
Okay, at the check-in counter we were confronted with a rather large overweight in bagage, excluding Didi in her kennel!!
The bill to pay for that extra weight was such that on the spot I decided to use the special offer to upgrade us to First Class, which, for the both of us, would just be 2/300 euro’s more expensive then our original seats plus overweight, haha..because flying first clas we were allowed totally 80 kilo’s instead of 60, and we had in total allmost 80.
Then I was talld that our suitcases would not be allowed to weight more then 32 kg each!! Kik by that time was not feeling to well (We had, yes yes, I know, not clever but hey it was our weddingnight, drunk ¾ bottle of champagne given to us by the Hotel management the night before. And that, combined with the short night sleep, made Kik not being on his best. I, for that matter would have liked to join him but could not allow that.... poor me, haha).... so I left Kik and rushed down to the HEMA store at the Airport to purchase an extra small suitcase to put our excess weight in and as such bring al our suitcases within the 32 kg limit. The check-in guy helped us grately and gracefully I have to admit and accompanied us after check-in with Didi in her Kennel to the special "drop off" of her so she would be attended to in the appropriate manner. And so Didi dissapeared in front of us in an elevator with a special handler..... looking at me like “what our you doing now, leaving me like this all on my own” O dear, I felt so bad!!

To make a long story a tiny bit shorter... we went on the plane a couple of hours later and Kik and I experienced our first First Class experience, and I must admit, it was something I allways wanted to experience and could not think of a better moment then on our ‘honeymoonflight’ to Thailand, the country where Kik and I are going to try to build a good life together!!
The space we enjoyed, the sleep we could have on a trough flat bed annec chair was wonderkuil. As well as the food and everything else! Haha, if this is what 50+ means and married again, well, you will not hear me complain, haha!!

After arriving in Bangkok, and cathing our connecting flight with Thai Airways, we arrived in time at Phuket Airport and collected Didi, who, by the way, was pretty drugged still when we got her out of her Kennel after she was released to enter the country without any probleem!!
By the way, booking Didi on the Thai Airways fligt costed us only 1250 bath, which is roughly betwen 25 and 30 euro’s ( roughly 1 euro per kg) and a lot, a lot cheaper then her faire for the long flight from Amsterdam, which was 30 euro’s per kg, including the kennel!! Very sympatheticaly we were not charged for any overweight on this Thai Airways flight, bless their souls!