Thailand it is then...

A fairly early start saw me at my benevolent car minding and airport taxi service friends' home so that I was dropped at the airport at about 7.30 a.m. which was just as well, because no sooner had I put my suitcase down than the only male and female couple in the group arrived, followed shortly by another couple of women.  I sent them in the direction of check in and then checked my baggage in.  As I had asked the group to meet me at 8 a.m. in the main departure area I had 5 more to go.  one came in right on 8.
As it got to 5 past 8 two of the women came in and one who I am going to refer to as Frugal, came up to me to tell me off as she had been waiting in the Arrivals area which is supposedly where I told her to be at 8 a.m.  'No' says me to Frugal, I would never have told you to be in the Arrivals area when we all have to check in at Departures! This from the same women who earlier in the week kept trying to tell me that the length of flying time is affected by the different time zones we corss so she had worked out that we arrive back home at 3 in the morning and she didn't know how she was going to expect anyone to pick her up at that time.  I'm sure I never did convince her that flying times and time zones are not connected - and she got in quite a huff with me then! I'm going to have to whip her into shape very promptly as it transpires that she has never been overseas before hence why she took so damn long to get a passport, and she has never flown in a big plane before. Talk about being Eddie the Expert and being wrong every time!!!
Anyhow at 20 past 8 I have 1 lady to go and am about to get in the queue at departures to see if they will tell me if she has somehow already boarded when I get a text message from her to tell me that she is waiting at the international departure gate.  Apparently she had arrived at the airport at 7 am and decided that she may as well just go through.... Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in....
So we all eventually end up at the international departure gate (after a tiny bit of single malt whiskey duty free purchasing) and we are all safely boarded.  It is a fairly full flight and unfortunately we had a very small baby with huge lungs that screamed unabated for the first 20 minutes. But we left on time and about 7 hours later we arrived in Singapore.  I managed to start drinking a very nice Chardy by 11 a.m. so I was mellowing nicely.  Watched 3 movies and ate half my body weight with all the food they kept bringing. We only had a 50 minute turn around in Singapore for our connecting flight so thankfully everything went according to clock work.  Mind you one of the ladies who is a friend of on of my kittens is a bit ditsy. She managed to misplace her boarding pass for the connecting flight and kept telling me that the man had taken it from her.  When I then went through all her paperwork and found the boarding pass I realized she had no idea what a boarding pass actually is.  Then she struggled to fill out the immigration form but we muddled through that.  Having just gotten her through that panic attack her friend decided she couldnt find her next boarding pass either so once again Miss Karen patiently went through all her paperwork, found the boarding pass and desperately wanted to hit her repeatedly about the jowls with it, but refrained from doing so...
All on board our flight to Bangkok and about 2 and a bit hours later, plus 1 more movie, more food and another Chardy we arrive in Bangkok.
A few decided to do a quick dash into the Duty Free and at this stage my first "Ive lost my boarding pass" lady is really struggling with the payment even though I have a calculator to tell her what it is in Aus dollars and she is paying cash in Thai Baht but cant tell the difference between 100 and 1000. So everyone is getting antsy as she is taking soooooooo long.  I tell them to all go through Customs and she and I will catch them up. Little did I know that she woud faff about for another 5 minutes after she'd paid, sorting out her bag.  Now what was it I was reminding myself about my need to remember to breathe???
But we get ourselves to Customs, we somehow all manage to get through and we all get our suitcases, that is all except Frugal.  As we watch the few remaining cases go around and around the carousel and I get assurances from Frugal that hers isn't there, I take her to report the missing suitcase just as she decided that her black suitcase really is on the carousel and had been all along. Get that bloody suitcase off the carousel and let's get out of the terminal!
Thankfully we are met by our delightful Thai guide Joe and a short walk to the bus and off to our hotel which was about 22 km away.  It is now about 6 p.m. local Thai time. We are all delighted to hear that Joe is our guide for the fortnight and the bus we are currently on is our tour bus for the entire time.  This means that we have a lovely big 40 something seater bus for 10 of us.  Surely I can manage to keep my distance from Frugal and  the 'Oops, now I can't find something else...' lady.
Our hotel is the Majestic Grande in Sukhumvit and it certainly lives up to its name.  It is certainly at least a 4 1/2 star hotel. Joe books us all in and then we are asked to go to the small lounge area where we are given a free drink of our choice.  There were cocktails, spirits and beers as well as juices to choose from so I had a Tequila Sunrise which was very yummy.  Most had Singapore Slings but one brave lady had a Mai Tai.  How good was that?We are all very weary now so all head off to their rooms.  I am very pleased that I have my lovely big room to yself as it gives me time to unpack a few things, open my bottle of scotch and wind down from my big day by penning these lines.  But now it really is time for this little black duck to go bye byes as we have a very full day planned for tomorrow. I reckon we are in for a fabulous time - problem kittens aside!