THE BEGINNING........

Well we arrived not after a very interesting time getting here.

Flight from Canberra - delayed 45 mins, but still got to Sydney with no problem.

Got on flight to Bangkok, sat there and sat there, announcement 'we have no water, engineers are looking at it - will be 20 mins'...... same message happened 3 times (but beauty of business class lots of champagne while we wait ;-) - finally after 2 hours, we are told to disembark... given 2 x $30 vouchers for food, but we went to the club instead. I went to get magazines and was able to pay with voucher, so I also get a book with the other one :-).. Anyways finally get the call to go back and we finally take off - 4 hours late..!

Get to Bangkok at 7am our time - slept for about 2 hours on the plane, very tired..! Get luggage and find transfer really easy, check in at hotel very smooth - they upgrade us to suite - yeah!!! very nice room, bathroom bigger than our lounge room. Bell boy brings up bags and low and behold our unbreakable samonsite hard shell suitcase has huge gaping hole in side....

Time for quick shower before bed, but ooopppsss!! no toiletries, sh*t we forgot to pick up the toiletries off the carousel... buggar. Stace spends next 30 mins on the phone with night manager at 5am trying to find out how to get bags back - was able to sort it out, but cant get them until next night when we fly home... so now only have hotel toiletries for shower - thank goodnees they have toothbrush as well... but no comb or hairbrush - so I improvise and use a fork, just like Ariel on little mermaid :-)

So we go to bed around 6am (9am at home) and sleep til about 10am.... wwwaaannnt cooooffffeeee....! head down to lobby, they have good coffee. We have to go buy new suitcase so we can put our stuff in so we can check out... go buy another hard shell - only THB 1800 ($51) take it back to the room, get everything transferred over - then find, it wont close properly, spend next 20 mins sitting on it, taking stuff in and out etc, etc.... but agree cannot take the chance this bloody suitcase gonna be a pain the entire trip, so take it back to the store and exchange for normal everyday suitcase... race back to the room with only 5 mins before check out time and transfer everything back in and check out.

We leave the bags with the hotel and go do some shopping.. Surprisingly Stace really enjoys it and is happy to walk around...!

But after a couple of hours - had enough, too many people.... but Stace decides to check out jewelery store - he's heard its good, well imagine my surprise, when the Manager is expecting us and brings out a selection of rings for me to choose from - Stace had preplanned it - my man the romantic :-) But also to my surprise I don't like the big single diamonds, I am drawn to the row of diamonds and try it only - it is a really nice ring.. But manager suggest another similar one 'more sparkly' he says, so I try it on and yes, its gorgeous - it looks lovely and yep - its the one.... so I now have a lovely 7 diamond ring - YEAH!!!

Now less a little money and a little more weight, we head to the airport - very worried about weight - bloody brochure for the conference weigh about 25-30kgs alone and the new bag is bigger.. Qantas didn't flinch, but maybe Swiss will....

Anyways, at airport Stace goes off and gets missing bags and we check in... uh oh... bags weigh 80kgs - buggar... need to take one of the small ones on board - she suggests toiletries bag otherwise will charge excess baggage - okay, we only too happily accept her suggestion. However, when we get to security, we look at each other and 'oh sh*t' toiletries.... they throw out shampoo, conditioner, body wash, toothpaste, deodrant and my very expensive, newly purchased for the trip - Clinique toner... yes Emma, my toner, summarily thrown in the bin....

Neither one of us can believe how stupid we've been, we travel a lot and never make these silly mistakes - my excuse: I have a very nasty cold - courtesy of my darling Paige and am struggling to be upright and my man is very tired; that is our excuse and we are sticking to it.....

Anyways - that is all our bad luck out of the ways...