Day one of island life

So, we are staying on the island of Dhiffushi in the Maldives. The island itself is about 1 km long, by 200 meters wide. At a slow pace, it takes about 30 minutes to walk around the circumference of the island. About 1,300 people live here full time. Dhiffushi is the most eastern inhabited island in the Maldives and is the first to witness sunrise every morning.

From the Visit Dhiffushi website... Dhiffushi was one of the first non-resort islands in the Maldives to commence offering holiday accommodation and was the leader from which all other islands followed. It's two main areas of commerce are fishing & of course, tourism. Affordable luxury, sprinkled with a wide variety of activities such as jet ski's, snorkeling with turtles, kite surfing and much much more. Proving visitors don't need to pay out for an expensive all inclusive resort to experience an amazing holiday in the Maldives. 

Welcome to the Maldives... country #70 for us!

We were up early again Saturday morning in order to catch our 9:15am flight to the Maldives. We purposely had our accommodation so that it was walking distance to Bangkok's Don Muang Airport and in ten minutes or so we were in the terminal.

Through immigration quickly, as well as security and waiting at our gate with an hour and a half to spare.

Travel day!

Well, our time in Hua Hin is up, and this morning we were up at 5:15am in order to catch or 6:40am train back to Bangkok.

Everything went smoothly, except that the train was a half hour late arriving. Apparently Thai trains are notorious for this, however our experience to date with the Thai train system has been really good.

What it cost for our two weeks in Hua Hin, Thailand

Thailand has a reputation of being a cheap place to visit, and while that is still totally true, costs have gone up here just as they have everywhere else in the world. 

Anyhow, we wanted to prove to ourselves that Thailand can still be done on the cheap. Because if you want to live like a tourist and eat "western" style food in higher end restaurants, it's still going add up to more than what you think it should.

We would go nuts here

While this two weeks at Hua Hin has been some good downtime, and we've got a lot accomplished on the internet, we are just about done.

Heck, even when we're in a place that we like we're ready to move on after two weeks. 

A few details about our upcoming trip to the Maldives!

We will be in Istanbul, Turkiye early next month, and when I was looking at flight prices and doing the route planning between Bangkok and Istanbul, I figured out that we could break the trip up with a few different destinations and it would cost about the same.

One of the choices along the way was to head to the Maldives... a group of islands in the Indian Ocean that is well known for their very expensive resorts and crystal clear blue water.

Cheapest day yet!

On Sunday, we hopped on the local transportation as far south as it goes. It only costs 15 baht ($0.42 USD, $0.57 CAD) per person no matter how far you go. 

So we went right to the end of the line, and walked down to the beach. There is small "island" at the end. Not really an island, but when the tide is all the way in, it looks like it is.

Kind of glad we've had all this down time

First thing I did Saturday morning was to check our online banking to see if the credit card problem was fixed. This time, it showed that my "available credit" was back to normal, instead of being a big negative number. With that confidence, I proceeded to book the Pegasus Airlines flight from Antalya to Paris and it went through with no problems at all!

So at least that is fixed, although with no explanation from Scotiabank at all. 

Well, that was a frustrating day!

It started off with an email from Turkish Airlines saying that they had cancelled and rescheduled our Kuwait to Istanbul flight originally on April 4th, to exactly the same time on April 5th.

I looked at all the options, including keeping it at April 5th, but we decided we were actually better off  changing it to April 3rd. So I did all the changes online, and it seemed to accept everything. 

Until I looked a little closer.

Paris is expensive!

So we're going to be spending a couple of nights in Paris with our daughter Lindsey and granddaughter Sadie at the beginning of May. And we knew in advance that Paris is expensive. But I figured that I'd be able to find some accommodation that is at least reasonably priced. 

Nope!

We got sidetracked!

Spending two weeks in one place means that we will have a few days with not much going on, and yesterday was one of those days. 

When we went out for lunch, we went to a new place on the other side of the tracks. Not the wrong side of the tracks... just the other side!

We've got a ton of exciting travel coming up!

Spent the morning researching various flight options to arrange meeting up with our daughter Lindsey and granddaughter Sadie in Paris. And the plan is starting to come together!

We've got her flights booked now. She's going to arrive in London a bit earlier and spend a couple of days with Ruth's aunt. Then they are going to hop on the chunnel train and take the train to Paris on May 1st. We will fly May 1st from Antalya, and meet them in Paris.

Good thing we all like different things!

We took the local transportation up to the central area yesterday. Not much to see, really. Hua Hin is a beach resort area and the beach is why people come here. 

The central area doesn't have much worthwhile. We wandered down to the beach, and then through some of the seedier bar and massage areas, but there isn't much going on there during the day.

Down to the beach!

It's too hot during the day to get a decent walk in, so we tried getting out early. But even before 8:00am, it's not early enough. You still end up drenched in sweat. Of course that would probably happen in the middle of the night as well, since the overnight lows are still around 27C (81F).

Our condo is only a ten minute walk from the beach, so we figured we might head that way just to check it out and walk along the beach.

Foreign exchange costs

First on the agenda here in Hua Hin was to get some more Thai baht cash. We had made an agreement with our host here to pay him for our accommodation in cash, and in exchange we got a healthy discount. But that discount is partially offset by the fact that it actually cost us money to get that cash.

Almost all Thai banks charge a fee of 220 baht ($6.20 USD, $8.40 CAD) for the privilege of using their ATM.