When the weather is cold and wet there are only 2 things that will keep Fiona happy, gin and an imminent holiday. I don't recall how we came to decide on Thailand but we booked it in January using Trailfinders who we have not used before although we have had several people recommend them. We fly with Emirates from Manchester to Bangkok via Dubai and then onto to Chiang Mai. Having already been to Bangkok we decided we didn't need to see it again. So although it will be a bit of a slog we are getting all the travel over with in one go and Fiona has some travel sickness tablets she can take to knock herself out with to get some sleep. I remember her taking some at Hong Kong airport when we came back from New Zealand 12 months ago and she barely made it to her seat awake. These were Sealegs tablets which unfortunately you can no longer buy in the UK but I found an equivalent on eBay (i.e. the same active ingredient) which someone has imported from the USA. I hope they work otherwise the journey will seem longer, for both of us!

For the first week of the holiday we are on a private tour, just the 2 of us with a driver/guide. We have a fixed itinerary but I expect we will be able to change where we stop along the way each day. 

After that we fly down to Krabi and we have a week in a beach resort which can only be reached by boat, hopefully it will be sunny, warm and dry. The forecast for the Chiang Mai area where we are touring is for 35C and sunny, maybe a bit too warm?

Neither of us has done any packing yet and Fiona is out all day Saturday running a quilt making course near Preston so it will have to be done on Sunday, but we both should be pretty adept by now at throwing stuff into a suitcase. My packing is generally straight forward except I have to make sure we have the various leads and chargers for phones, iPads and Kindles, Fiona always has more clothes than I do and then there are all the various make up products etc. We each have a 23kg allowance, I know I won't get anywhere near that.