May 22nd - Phuket, Thailand to Jakarta, Indonesia
5Hr 13min

VTCC-VTSP

During our stay in Chiang Mai, Paul's cousin, Colm Galvin met up with us. Colm is based there teaching English to local people. It is very cheap to live here but there are two price levels, one for Thai and one for tourists. It was good to have Colm tell us what we should be paying for meals, taxis etc. Thanks Colm and see you when we get home in July.

Pilot services at Chiang Mai are excellent. Handling by a third party is not required as the airport authority organise all the necessary paperwork and sometimes even provide transport to the aircraft. We arrived early in the morning. ATC had a weather briefing prepared and after paying landing and navigation fees we were off. The reason for the early departure is to fly for 5-6 hours and hopefully land before the afternoon showers. Our initial track brought over Bangkok which was a beautiful sight from 7000 feet. Unfortunately both our digital camera and video camera were not working due to both batteries not charging overnight.

After Bangkok we were cleared to Phuket. It was only 11am and already there was significant cloud build up on our track. Some small turns were necessary to remain clear of the nasty stuff. The approach into Phuket's runway 27 is very interesting. Radar vectors from ATC brought us over Ko Saumi and we cloud see Krabi Island out to our left (in between rain showers). The approach is also offset and you actually line up with a hill to the left of the runway, and then visually maneuver with the centerline. The runway is also on a steep hill giving the illusion of a very short runway. We touched down at around 2 pm local after some five hours in the air. One night here before heading for Jakarta in the morning. We are keeping a close eye on a couple of deepening tropical depressions that are building north of Australia. They don't look like they will affect our arrival in Oz but still keeping an eye on them.

On the way to Phuket