Getting here

Travelling from the UK to Bangkok for a holiday is one thing. Doing it with all your possessions in tow is quite another. For a start, the packing is a little more complicated. My first attempt resulted in a suitcase I had to sit on to close, weighing in at a whopping 12 kilos over the luggage allowance. At $55 a kilo, something was going to have to give. So, a few more 'essentials' go into storage. By the time the taxi arrives to take us to the airport, we've got everything down to the bare minimum. Two large suitcases crammed with stuff, and only a few kilos each over the limit. Two carry-on sized bags equally packed, and rather over the cabin baggage weight limit - but we're prepared for the nonchalant 'lift and swing' over the shoulder that says "Oh, this little bag? Light as a feather. No need to weigh this, nice check-in operative!". A smaller piece of hand luggage each as permitted by the airline - handbag for her, laptop bag for him. A cello - that most beautiful and unwieldy of instruments -  in its hard case. And our intrepid expat cat, inserted under some duress into her carrier and occasionally bleating in a quizzical manner.

As we struggle through the airport, its the latter that attracts the most attention. Not many people fly with a cat, or are even aware that it's possible, and she's become quite a celebrity by the time we reach the check-in desk. Where, comically, we're greeted by a trainee, visibly bemused by this stressed-looking couple with a huge amount of luggage plus a cat and a fiddle. This, it seems, has not yet been covered in her training. Gradually, with the help of the nice lady at the adjacent counter, we figure out what to do. The cello has it's own seat, and thus is checked in as if it was a third passenger - our misshapen, musical offspring. Strangely, whilst this inanimate object is treated as a person, the by-now resigned to her fate travelcat is processed as a piece of excess luggage, for which a fee must be paid at some distant counter. My wife is despatched to pay this fee whilst I continue the check-in process. What's next? You need the card that the flights were booked with? That'll be the one my wife has just taken with her to the mysterious excess baggage counter. So the trainee and I fill the time with a nice little chat as the growing queue looks on. "No", she says "I haven't had anyone check in with a cat before. I knew it was possible - but who does a thing like that?". Weirdos like us, apparently.

As luck would have it, all this complication and confusion plays in our favour. By the time my wife returns from her far-flung financial errand, the poor trainee has had enough of us, and despite a raised eyebrow at the weight readout when we heave our suitcases onto the belt, elects to waive the excess baggage fees in the name of an easy life - saving us several hundred pounds in the process. Quite a result.

After this, our final barrier is the security check. Arriving at the metal detectors, we're advised to remove any laptops and electrical devices from our hand luggage to go through the little tunnel separately. This rather complicates my passage through, as I'm carrying a laptop, a miniature PC and an Xbox in my hand luggage. As I load them into their separate trays I feel the shameful gaze of our fellow passengers upon me. What sort of person, they're wondering, takes an Xbox on holiday?

Our furry friend is not to be fed through the x ray machine, but I am obliged to remove her from the safe haven of her carrier. I'd been concerned about this in advance - she's not an easy cat to hold on to, and I have visions of her fleeing into the airport, never to be seen again. Luckily, the security people seem unfazed by the scenario, and after I pass through the beeping hoop alone, we're whisked off to a private side room where I can remove her so her empty carrier can be scanned. The door is left ajar, though, and I'm still nervous about her fleeing, but she hugs close to me, clearly fearful of this strange environment. I've never managed to hold her still for anywhere near this length of time, and she only struggles when her carrier is returned - such is her eagerness to return to the cosy safe haven that she practically leaps out of my arms into it, a sharp contrast to the struggle involved in getting her in there in the first place.

Our furry co-passenger, rather unimpressed with her temporary accommodation.

After this, things are fairly straightforward. Boarding the plane is a little awkward with our extra burdens, but the cabin crew are delighted to meet our furry companion. During the flight she snoozes at my feet, with none of the non-stop howling I was concerned about - just an occasional, questioning miaow, the cat equivalent of 'are we there yet?'.

On arrival at Bangkok's rather grand (and hard to pronounce) Suvarnabhumi airport, we locate the animal quarantine officer, who turns out to be a rather fun, chatty type. He cheerfully processes her documents whilst asking curious questions about the odd farang couple before him. 'You play?', he asks, gesturing at the cello. No, I tell him, my wife does. 'Aha, and you drink!'. Well, maybe. But don't tell her that.

Once the paperwork is complete, and a few hundred baht handed over, he cheerfully sends us on our way. Having read up on the next stage of the process - presenting the documents to the customs officials and negotiating what duty is to be paid on our cuddly cargo - I ask if we should progress through the red channel. 'No no', he says. She is hard to see in her carrier anyway, so he advises us to simply pass through the 'nothing to declare' channel and hope for the best! So this we do, trying to look nonchalant and hoping she doesn't miaow at the wrong moment. My hand luggage falls off my trolley as we pass the watchful eyes of the customs people, and I swoop it up in one smooth movement, not daring to stop for a second in case they notice the eyes peering out of the odd-shaped bag on top of my suitcase. Thankfully, they're entirely disinterested, and we're soon over this final hurdle and find ourselves entering freely into the 'Land of Smiles', our new home!