Can the same thing happen to the package holidays as it happened to the fanny packs? Can they come back in fashion even you never saw that coming? I don’t know, but I did a package holiday after 10 years! Last time was somewhere in the sunny coast of Spain and by the way, back then I got robbed in an extreme way (I won’t go into the details though). But this trip to the land of smile was like chilling in the safe haven.
It’s a definite relaxation when everything is organized for you and you can just put your brain in an off mode. Immediately after landing at the Krabi airport and taking the luggage there was a friendly guy waving with the familiar Aurinko – which means sun in Finnish – logo and instructing to join the right mini bus. The other travellers seemed to be mostly some peaceful people; from families to elder couples – so I found out Krabi to be quite a pleasant package holiday destination. Not one of those where the Finns drink themselves stunned and behave bad. So, no embarrassing case samples this time…
Of course, that is one reason why a package holiday can be frustrating: there are so many people from your own country! When you want to get to a holiday but there is your language everywhere, and you hear everything even you didn’t want to, that’s annoying. There was a big difference between the two Thai trips that I had last year; when I was in North-Thailand myself I didn’t run to a single person from my home country and I felt blessed. It’s funny that we people are somehow “inbred” but then again, NOT! I don’t like either the fact that everything is so much more expensive in the tourism spots. Well, of course the locals want to make some business, and that’s right. Take from those who got da money!
But I’m not complaining. I must say that I had a relaxing one-week holiday. Instead of package holiday I rather would be talking about a relaxation holiday or a service holiday. Because service it is, very good service! Especially somewhere in Thailand where the country itself is just pure hospitality. There was the sweetest cleaning lady ever in my hotel! Her smile and silliness just made my day. Silliness = once she muscled in when I was in the toilet and once she caught the neighbours fucking: “oh excuse mee” she squealed and sprinted away. Man, I was laughing! The locals are very eager and they do everything that you feel good and sometimes even awkward haha!
What I feel might be both the threat but also the opportunity with the package holiday is to get stuck and lazy. When everything is ready made for you, it is easy to become helpless. And it becomes much harder to organise and solve things yourself. So, the nature of the travels does affect the state of mind you head into! Sometimes it feels during the adventure trip though that the pace is too fast, tiring and there’s too much in the loop. Maybe a bit less would be enough. To me it feels that a package, say service, holiday every now and then is totally cool and cheery – gives the sun energy!
I went to Thailand in co-operation with Aurinkomatkat, which is well established Finnish travel agency. A hint, best time to go for such package destinations is before Christmas, the season strikes after that and goes until February.
