Hotels, Weather and Other Planning

I’m in Love Again

Having discovered that with a modicum of HTML tagging and a little bit of patience on my part (not a trait that comes easy to me) I can in fact do bold,

• lists

and proper hyperlinks on this blogging tool now. I am therefore officially back in love with the iPad as a blogging device. I know I am fickle as well as being an impatient bastard, blame my father he’s just the same ( love you dad, he also passed on the bald gene, not quite loving him as much about that)

STEP 3 – The Hunt

In this second of my ‘informative’ (or boring, long and smug, as some are thinking)blogs I give you a few more insights into my obsessive research and bargain hunting fixations. Now some may say I am cheap, others tight fisted, I like to class myself as careful. So whenever I am about to part company with my expiry date and CSV number I like to make sure my purchase cannot be had for any less than I am about to pay.

I like Tripadvisor (TA) even if it is spelt wrong. It’s a brilliant, clever use of people power, but only if you know how to sort out the chaff from the wheat. Getting advice and feedback from people who have actually stayed in the gaff you are thinking of spending your hard earned credit on. But, you need to be wary of the glowing reports that are all too obviously posted by the owners, their friends and some unscrupulous gits who prostitute themselves by getting free stays in order that they give wonderful reports on TA, and of course the managers responses to the more acerbic of reviews. TA kindly blogs these for your delectation

What therefore are my must haves for a hotel

• A shower that does more than dribble on you (search the hotel name you like, add in the word shower and you will normally find someone who likes to give reviews of shower pressure – see it’s not only me
• Wifi Internet, preferably free, and that customers have actually commented that it works in practice
• A room safe that can fit all of my gadgets in when I am off to the beach
• Finally it must be reasonably clean, I say reasonably as one thing that gets right on my wick on TA Is the saddos who waste time photographing and posting pictures of bathroom tiles, with microscopic traces of mould or pictures of flaky bits of paint, some even make it to prime time news

Then when I have spent a number of days nailing it down to a few hotels I like, it’s then off to get the best price using the following handy sites with a variety of features I like and some that I don’t.

Hotels.com – I like this as it has some good offers, but also does a good job of letting you hone in on certain areas in a place and also has a great map for looking at where all the hotels are in your chosen location.

Agoda – not as many fancy features as hotels.com , but usually comes in with the best price and also has a lot more hotels on its books than others.

I also found a neat site called hotelscombined.com which also has a natty little iPhone app (ifindhotels) which works a treat. This one will look for your chosen hotel across all of the other pricing sites and let you know where you can get the best rate. Lovely

STEP 4 – The Pace

After reading countless blogs and wikis on the different locations in Thailand we nailed it down to four places we want to go and are doing them in this order which should provide a little variety in the kind of things we get up to…

• Phuket – we are heading to Patong first which from my reading is best described as Blackpool on acid and should therefore provide a lively start to the trip
• Koh Samui – this should be more peaceful and provide a much needed few days of rest, relaxation and recuperation after the liver damaging excesses of Phuket
• Chiang Mai – hopefully rested we will be ready to take in some culture, scenery and wildlife in this northern destination and I am hoping to become very friendly with some elephants while we are there

Lastly it will be back to Bangkok for some city madness, doing the things we never got round to last time and some serious shopping before we head back home to get the last of the great British summer.

STEP 5 – Weather worries

Thailand in August is in fact their rainy season so before deciding to go there I thought it only right that I expended a good few days researching exactly how much rain was likely to fall and in what patterns at each and every resort that could possibly make it onto our itinerary. I am now a meteorological maestro and know the average rainfall days, exact mm of rain that fell in August anywhere in Thailand . If you think I am kidding, look here ,this site fascinated me for hours. You can get historical daily weather statistics going back years anywhere in the world.

Photo in this section is courtesy of http://voyagner.com/travel-in-the-monsoon-season/ who does a nice little blog on monsoon travel.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Broadway,Salford,United Kingdom

Tags: Hotel, planning