We flew back via Rome to Bangkok on Thai Airways. As regular readers know I generally hate Thai Airways, but this flight was much better in terms of seating and entertainment. This brings up a pet peeve of mine, which is the enormous variability within airlines. Since I fly all the time I pay close attention to new cabin layouts being introduced by various airlines, but it's kind of a ripoff since most of the time the airlines only put these in on selected routes. They say they're being upgraded gradually but it's not true, as the new cabins are usually put in in the first few months, then years later certain routes are stuck with the same old crap product. It's like if you buy a car and pay for a Mercedes, then when you go to pick it up they give you a Hyundai instead. It seems like airlines should have to tell you which configuration you're getting, especially whether it's a flat bed or not, and charge you accordingly. Some of the worst seats in the air are Qantas' business class from Australia to north Asia. You get tricked into thinking they'll be the usual flat bed seats, then you're stuck on an overnight fourteen hour flight in horrible economy like seats, but the fare's the same. And they don't have first class on these routes so there's no escape. Anyway, total digression, and in this case it worked in reverse, as I was expecting horrible seats and got a decent Thai flight instead. (And to be fair some of the recent flights I've had with them in 2007 have been quite good with flat beds and personal videos, although there are still lots that are among the worst in the air, so good luck!)

The photo's not related to anything except it's me working on my journal in Venice, which I'm now reading as I type this so I like the circularity of it.

South Island, New Zealand October 2000

I'm grappling with a confusing blog development now that I purchased my cute little travel journal on the Tokyo trip I just blogged about, and from now on I have all these journal entries for each trip. So New Zealand was the first trip where I have the journal entries, and my plan all along was to use these instead of my off the cuff blog writing I've been doing up to date. I realize that very few of you care either way, as my Thai readers have made it clear they want less writing and more photos anyway. I guess I'll stick to the plan for now and see how it goes, although I've been flipping through the journal pages and can tell that the blog will take on quite a different style if I stick to the journal. Anyway, here goes...

We decided to take a 2 week trip to New Zealand largely because it's somewhere neither of us had been. We thought sticking to just the South Island (New Zealand is two islands, with most people on the North Island and most sheep on the South) would allow for a leisurely drive about with too much scheduling problems, which I'm sure is true. I just hope it's not too boring (hmm, this real time discussion can be confusing at this point. I think one thing I'm going to do is put clarifications or other comments from my current writing into parenthetical inserted comments).

We arrived via a rather tortuous route on a very totuous airline, Thai. The flight stopped in Sydney before going to Auckland, where we had to transfer to an Air New Zealand flight to Christchurch. The Thai flight featured awful entertainment and terrible seats. Since this was a 16 hour flight, this was a pretty bad start. The food was pretty good though, but unfortunately I ate all of it, a dinner, 2 breakfasts and a lunch, the beginning of my ritual vacation ballooning. I brought 2 Douglas Copeland books to read, which I thought would be enought for the whole vacation. With no inflight entertainment and no chance of sleeping, I read both books before arriving, further exacerbating my concerns about being bored over the next two weeks. Somchai alternated among ten minute spurts of reading a biography of Aung San Suu Kyi, complaining about the turbulence and sleeping.

The Auckland airport is an overcrowded dump, and immigration took an hour (this is a recurring problem, every time I go to New Zealand I am amazed at the incredible ineptitude and rudeness of the immigration and customs system there). We were pretty beat up for the Auckland to Christchurch leg but the plane passed some pretty spectacular mountains, which we'll be driving through later.

I can't remember why, but we flew separately and met at the Paris airport. I had flown Lufthansa, usually a boringly efficient airline with grumpy flight attendants, but this time they were also inefficient and I missed my connecting flight in Frankfurt. Somchai flew direct from Bangkok to Paris on Thai Airways, with their "first class" configuration of four seats across and some vaguely diagonal reclining position, good food and no movies. But also flying in first was the former Prime Minister, and one of the top Thai Airways executives who flew with the PM to make sure everything was ok sat next to Somchai, so he was able to complain to them the whole time. Not sure it did any good, but it couldn't hurt. The Paris airport is one of the stranger airports around (I'm talking about Charles de Gaulle, not Orly). I think it was supposed to be very Jetsons space age when it opened, lots of tubes carrying peoplemovers darting about and coloured lights buzzing about, but it just looks funny now, definitely in need of an updating.

We stayed at the Hotel de Crillon, pictured above. (by the way, the picture in the first post was of Notre Dame, which I figured was obvious, but for the sake of completeness thought I'd add the non-sequitir here.) As you can see, it's very grand, and wonderfully located on a grand plaza between the Champs Elysees and the Louvre. The hotel used to be a palace but was converted long ago. It's dripping with ostentatious wealth, which is a good thing. The reception areas, and in particular the famed restaurant, are stunning. We arrived early and our room wasn't quite ready, but the very friendly staff escorted us to the dining room for a continental breakfast. There, after flying overnight in our jeans and t shirts, we proceeded to whisper to each other in a cavernous, sparkling room that couldn't be more intimidating. Again, the staff didn't bat an eye despite our clashing so violently with the setting. We hadn't yet acquired the habit of traveling without a budget, so we unfortunately plumped for the cheapest room, about $500 a night I think, which was too bad. It was plush and high ceilinged, but on the small side and a crappy view. But despite that it's a great hotel. I've stayed at most of the other grand dames (Bristol, George V, Ritz, Meurice) but the Crillon remains my favorite. In fact we're planning on returning this year, and will definitely upgrade the room.

We also took a day trip to Lamphun, which I would recommend. It's only an hour's drive, but is totally off the tourist track. It's a separate province, amazingly little Thailand has almost 70 provinces, so it's easy to breeze through a bunch in a day if that turns you on. Lamphun actually predates Thailand, as it was the capital of the Mon kingdom. The Mons lived in Thailand before the Thai tribes moved down from China. The defeated Mons took off to the hills after the Thais moved in, and are still around today as one of the many colourful hill tribes in northern Thailand. (wow I sound just like a tourist brochure, this has got to stop). Lamphun became part of Lanna, and then ultimately Thailand (which as you all recall from the King and I was called Siam). These are two different temples from the Mon period, and as you can see are quite different from the typical Thai temple.

The next day we took the very short flight to Chiang Rai, the northernmost province in Thailand. This is probably as good a time as any to say that Thai Airways is awful. You can't really avoid them when flying domestically, and actually they're no worse than other domestic flights and Thailand is so small you're never stuck for more than an hour. But please avoid taking them long-distance. The food isn't bad, but the business class used to seat 8 across! That's worse than economy in most countries. They rarely have personal tv's and the main movie is always a cartoon. It constantly gets rated one of the best in Conde Nast Traveler surveys, but anyone over here knows that the poll is somehow rigged. Avoid.