Thailand Contrasts (2022): Days 3-5: Last few hours in Amsterdam … or so I thought!

The reason why I’m treating this as a block of three days will become clear soon enough. Today started out well enough and initially ran as planned. After checking out of the Hampton and placing my luggage in storage, I travelled once again into Amsterdam and spent my time there in the area lying southeast of Central Station, on and nearby Oosterdokseiland (“Eastern Docks Island”) and Kattenburg. For me, the main attraction here was the National Maritime Museum, and in a similar way to the previous day’s star attraction, I had booked my ticket online prior to leaving the UK.

Later, I walked northwards to the other side of the railway tracks, in order to revisit part of the shoreline of the IJ waterway (pronounced like the English pronoun “I”). Lunch was at a burger joint in the station mall, something that will soon be highly relevant.

Back at the hotel, I picked up my luggage and made my way to the airport. After waiting for check-in to open, I completed the process and continued airside to the Aspire lounge. In due course, I was about to gather together my belongings and make my way to the departure gate, when disaster struck. I suddenly became very ill, so bad that staff arranged for me to be taken to the Airport Medical Centre, where I would spend the next three hours, missing my flight. To be frank, that wasn’t even uppermost in my mind; my main thought at the time was just desperately wanting to get better again. The diagnosis was food poisoning, almost certainly from lunchtime.

I was well enough to be discharged around 9pm and the first, urgent task was to arrange a hotel for the night. I eventually managed to find a room at CitizenM. Not surprisingly for what was essentially a walk-up rate on a Saturday night at Schiphol, this cost €300.

From a tourism perspective, Sunday and Monday were wasted days, the first spent hanging around the airport and the second at the Hampton at Hoofddorp, where I had returned for a second two-night stay, this time unplanned. Use of my mobile phone figured prominently, as I tried to salvage something from the ruins of my carefully planned and much anticipated trip. To cut a long story short, the solution was in place by early evening on Monday, with considerable remote help from Bruce in Thailand. I would now be departing the following day, Tuesday 31st. I had lost my initial day in Bangkok and the first night (of six) on Phuket, but everything thereafter would be back on schedule, using long held original bookings. All this came at substantial additional cost, but I hoped to recover at least some of it from my travel insurance in due course.