Hello I am Linda. We started this site to help people create breaks and holidays.
Each year my husband Mike and I pack a couple of bags and take off on our travels. We do all of our own planning and make up the complete trip before we leave home. We book most of our flights and accommodation and then set off on our journey. So far we have toured Scandinavia for three months in a motorhome and toured the coastline of Western Europe. We have planned and done an around the world trip, driven right across America and had many other wonderful adventures.
What would be your choice? How about a trip to see the Taj Mahal? Hire a car and driver with all flights and hotels thrown in at a very reasonable rate, or a few days sailing in the Pacific on a beautiful yacht. The picture here is of one we used for three days after visiting Fiji to get married.
You can click on the picture above to view some more images from our travels.
Our next adventure
Right now we are planning to be off again at the end the year to spend Christmas in Thailand. We will be at the Garden in ChiangMai again where we will be warmly welcomed by Tim and Tong, a Brit who has settled in Thailand with his locally born wife. We were very glad of the free use of their internet and wifi in this excellent, centrally located guesthouse
(http://www.thegardenchiangmai.com).
We spent two months there earlier this year and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.
Recently we booked Fly Emirates
 to Bangkok with a free stopover in Dubai on the way out. Emirates gave us a very good deal on the flights but it did take us a couple of weeks to track down a decent Hotel deals
 at a good price in Dubai. (£100 a night for two with pickup and breakfast). This might not sound too cheap but all Dubai hotels are expensive and £200 to £400 per night is not unusual.
When booking flights check rates from different UK airports. The further away from London the cheaper it gets. Leaving from Newcastle airport is not so expensive as it can be from say Manchester for example, and a £100 difference for our sort of trips is not exceptional. We checked flights from as many local airports (within 200 miles) as possible.
Christmas will be in ChiangMai where we will meet up with old friends from Canada and hopefully others who have yet to accept our invitation. This time we want to see more of Thailand and will keep you posted. For the nervous although the country does have a military government it is fairly benign and people living there tell us there is no problem. Check the foreign offices website for the latest on this before leaving the UK if you plan to be in Thailand or indeed any politically unstable country.
Returning to the UK journey we will stop over in Hong Kong because it is my birthday and I am putting together a fantastic family party. Over sixty people are expected including some from the UK, Canada, USA and of course Hong Kong.
Here is an insight into our last adventure in 2006/07.
Full of anticipation for the coming trip one thing we often tend to overlook is the cost of travel to the airport. We had to get from Humberside to Heathrow this time to catch our flight to Bangkok. In the past we took one way hire cars on the basis it was not that expensive and very convenient for two people. This time car hire seemed very expensive compared to that which we had paid in the past so we started to look around for alternatives.
The train fares seemed unnecessarily complicated and limited while being very expensive. The return to Humberside was also complicated, so in the end the coach got our vote and our money. In the first place it was cheap and in the second reliable and comfortable. We were dropped off at the right Heathrow terminal without the hassle of having a hire car to return to a hire company. The return was much the same, except we had to take a taxi home.
From Bangkok we took a connecting flight to Chiang Mai and booked into "The Garden" where we were warmly welcomed by Tim and Tong, a Brit who has settled in Thailand with his locally born wife. We were very glad of the free use of internet and wifi in this excellent, centrally located guesthouse (http://www.thegardenchiangmai.com). Once settled in we did the usual things. Saw the elephants and spent a weekend in Pai. At the weekends this is a party town and great fun on a Sunday when the main street in the old town is closed to traffic and becomes a market full of crafts and food and entertainment and "The Garden" is right in the middle of it.
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The Garden Chiang Mai |
Finally we had to take our tearful leave of our hosts. As always Chiangmai and its people were delightful, so courteous and helpful. So with promises to return soon we took our flight to Bangkok for our connection to Auckland.
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The new airport at Bangkok |
At the airport we got our first inkling that the airlines baggage allowance was going to be problem. Here is how it works. British Airways allowed us 23kg of luggage each. Flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai (Air Asia) allowed 17kg so we carried 23kg and were into excess baggage costs which we had to pay. This went on and on because every time we boarded a plane the baggage allowance was different. Fortunately for the longer haul flights we had booked through BA so their allowance still stood.
We stayed in Auckland for three days with friends we had met on a previous trip. We picked up a cheap hire care for around 28NZ$ a day for eight weeks. Car hire is really cheap if you are not too choosy and want the latest model.
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Lake Taupo New Zealand |
We were staying in Napier, a delightful very Art Deco city, and had a ground floor apartment virtually on the beach at Hawkes Bay. Each morning we would awake and look out over the blue, blue sea and watch the local boats and larger ships passing. It was delightful.
During our time there around eight Orca whales were seen off the New Zealand coast making their way south All along the coast people got very excited and we spent hours watching the sea for a sighting. Sadly we didn’t see them and the general opinion was they had passed through well below the surface.
At a nearby Sunday market a local vineyard, or as locally known, winery, held a free draw and a few days later we had a phone call telling us we had won two bottles of very acceptable wine.
One memorable day we took a cruise on the unusually named ship ‘The Rock’, a nicely converted car ferry. We sailed around the Bay of Islands, went snorkelling and watched the dolphins swimming and playing. An interesting occurrence, which was not on the itinerary, was a power boat that pulled up close and the one man on board climbed on deck and dropped his trousers to flash his crown jewels at the passengers. Most of us were quite bemused with one or two women regretting they did not have their camera handy.
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All aboard New Zealand |
A trip we particularly recommend was to the glow worm caves which literally sparkled in the darkness. We walked and sailed by small boat through the caves and can certainly say we have never seen anything like it.
New Zealand is a delightful country with a population of just over 4 million, made up it seems by people from nearly every country in the world although most do seem to be white Anglo Saxon with a hefty slice of Asians thrown in.
The Maoris call New Zealand the land of the long white clouds, and it is easy to see why. The skies are truly impressive and the country could easily be called God’s Own Country. It is a country the old Brits will love because it is so friendly and very like the UK was forty years ago.
All too soon it was time to leave. The Auckland flight was on time with a stopover in Hong Kong and within half a day we were back in dreary wet and very foreign UK wondering what on earth we were doing there.
Now we are already looking to plan our next journey and are concidering Canada and a return to Chiang Mai in Thailand.
So watch this space for more of our adventures. Meanwhile have a click through our website because we have put together all the information you will need to plan your exotic holiday. |
