Thailand Khao Lak 2018 Arrival

Our long-awaited journey began on May 6th at 11:20 am. The photo was taken at Stuttgart Airport, which is our home airport. Personally, I love airports, the people, the smell, the airplanes, the many lights at night - Schatzi couldn't be as excited, but at least it was for the vacation. This year, we both flew with Turkish Airlines for the first time, and I must say, I'm impressed! We flew from Stuttgart to Istanbul and here we had food (the best airplane food I've ever had) and drinks (my favorite tomato juice as always) and even a screen in the seat, which was new to me and made me really happy. On the flight from Istanbul (departed at 6:20 pm) to Phuket, which was the night flight, there was another delicious meal. Great movies, a care package (included: socks, toothbrush, sleep mask, earplugs, slippers, and lip balm), pillow and blanket, which I had never experienced before. Our flights were relatively empty this time because it's rainy season in Thailand, which made it very comfortable to sleep since we each had a row of seats to lie down. Usually, I sleep through the flights, but with the movie selection and the food, I felt too good and could only sleep for 3 hours. When we arrived at the airport, we had considered buying a SIM card, but we thought there would probably be a store in Khao Lak. We were then already expected by our transfer in front of the airport, and I immediately felt hot. It was unusual to feel such heat at 8 am in the morning and especially when there is a five-hour time difference, and it would only be 3 am. It took 1 1/2 hours from the airport to Khao Lak to our hotel Moracea by Khao Lak, our driver was speeding.

At first glance, the hotel looked okay. Unfortunately, our room 314 was not ready yet, not until 2 pm, which meant we had to wait for another four hours, but they built cabins at the reception so that you can change into swimwear and they gave us the Wi-Fi password. So we went down with our swimwear (the hotel is on a hill) to the beach. Beautiful light blue water, beautiful white sandy beach - I thought I was in paradise. It was then that we also realized how big the hotel was and that it looked like in the middle of the jungle among all the palm trees. It has three great pools, including a pool that has direct access to the rooms. There are four bars here, which have HAPPY HOUR at different times, and a larger restaurant where you have breakfast, which is really great and sufficient (and they even have BACON <3).

At 2 pm, we could finally check into our room. Since we had only booked a standard room, we didn't expect much. Our building block 310 to 317 was relatively high up, and our room 314 was located on the lower right. From the outside, well, there was a wall next to it and a lot of greenery, but from the inside, WOW. The hotel room was bigger than some apartments in Germany. We had a large terrace with two chairs, a table, a clothes rack, and a view of the sea (even though we didn't book that, it was perfect). In the room, there was a TV (few TV channels, none in German) that was running when we arrived, a sofa, a double bed, a large bathroom with a big shower, and small accessories like flip-flops, bathrobes, and umbrellas (which I will come back to later). So a really great room.

After we finally freshened up, we went back to the beach. I wasn't used to such warm water from other seas, it was great. Then we had a cocktail at the bar there, of course, a Pina Colada. While sipping the cocktail, we then met the first monitor lizard, which in retrospect was really small. Beautiful animal and really interesting. After the cocktail, we went to the 'town'. Since Khao Lak is divided in two parts, we were in the lower part where you can find various shops, bars, and restaurants. There are also taxis, which always ask if you need one, but since the first shops are not far away, we always walked in (about 10 minutes). That evening, we went to Mojo for cocktails, had dinner at a restaurant, and got full of stories at the Andaman Tailor (where we also had Michi's wedding suit made). It was a good start to the vacation.