Working for an airline comes with many
exciting benefits. From a work aspect, the industry is super thrilling with
constant change, aim for improvements and never ending challenges. Yes, pretty
much all natural disasters, unrest in countries and unexpected extreme weather
situations impact our customer's travel. And with this, each of the above
impacts our service center and work. So when we see a tornado hitting America,
a political situation in Cairo or unexpected snow chaos in Europe on the news,
we automatically think of work and wonder what the impact will be to our call
volumes. But that is another story for another day :)
Today, I want to tell you of the time
our love for travel was born. Gunther and I met in 1999 at Cape Technikon. We
quickly fell in love and knew right there and then that this would be a thing
that would last a long time. ♥ So as time progressed, we started
planning our future and with that our first international vacation together.
Little did we know of the beauty of the world outside of South Africa back then
and opted to visit Germany, my country of birth, in the September of 2003. We planned for 3
weeks away, spending our time with the different parts of my family: my
grandmother, my uncles, aunts and cousins and the majority of the time with my
stepsister and her family in Hamburg.
This very first trip was an easy one to
plan and arrange. Accommodation was sorted. We flew standby the very first time
(as airline employees, one is able to purchase a reduced fare seat, however
this does not guaranteed a place on the plane) and as nervous as we were,
we did get on with only a seat or two to spare. Yes, I hadn’t set a foot on a
plane since we moved to South Africa in 1990 and as I entered and experienced
everything again, a new love and passion was born. Soon to learn that this getting on board a plane and the feeling of you want to go explore the world, would be one that would reoccur
each year after that.
The travel bug had bitten us both.
'The world is a book, and those who do not travel read only a page' ~~Saint Augustine
Our holiday in September 2003 was
unforgettable. We spent many fun times in Hamburg, Berlin and surroundings and the
three weeks over there flew by incredibly fast. We were treated like a King and
Queen.
It was a few years later in 2006 that
my colleague Vicki mentioned that she had found these cute islands which were
really reasonably priced with the low South African Rand buying power and we decided
to go on a couple holidays together. As already mentioned earlier, the travel
industry comes with many unexpected impacts and so during this time, I remember
a major strike in Germany affecting our business and this resulted in us
needing to move the vacation. But that was no problem and we ended up leaving
for Koh Samui one month
later. April 2006.
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| Circling the island before landing |
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| Gorgeous color ocean |
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| Koh Samui - our piece of heaven on Earth |
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| Almost there |
If the first trip to Germany was not enough, then this second trip to Thailand was enough to seal the deal! That is how it all began: our love
for travel. In between, I was lucky to visit Canada for 1 month while a new
service center was opened there and also Istanbul in Turkey for a week. The
world is big, the world is beautiful. So many cultures, colors, textures,
tastes. Travel will be a further branch to our blog-tree we want to share with you as
we plan to take many more road trips and many more plane trips over the years
to come. In the meantime, I will share with you tips of our past trips,
specifically of Thailand where we by now have been 4 times since.
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