Frequent Seas: Travelling Day and Day 1 of Krabi Trip

Even before starting this journey to Krabi, I had doubts about my financial ability to support this journey and thus, the reason why I have to keep working despite my retirement. Initially I thought there could be support for my own travel and lodging but alas, I have left UPM and the grant requires UPM affiliation. Despite the shoe-string budget, I thought I should go to show Malaysia presence there (the other Malaysian beside Dr. Yap); later then, I thought, what was I thinking.

The first expense for our trip is to send our six cats to a cat lodging facility, Catzonia in Seremban 2. Another two had to be sent to the vet: Meli that sometimes go into seizure and Koko that has some immunity deficiency.

We took hired cars from our local surau acquaintance to go to the airport. At the airport, I received another surprise that we have to pay for our luggage. So sometimes I wonder how those airlines get to maintain cheap prices. In the past, I was used to the idea of purchasing air ticket automatically includes expenses for the luggage of maximum 20kg each (sometimes even 30kg). Not this time; I had to fork out more than RM600 for our luggage (and to think that I brought along two bundles of exam scripts with me, paying for that as well). From now on, I will be more careful with the cheap air ticket offers and read more on the conditions for whatever purchase. I had momentarily gloom on my face.

So we got on the plane around 5 pm and saw some cheerful faces from the family. It has been awhile since we have travelled together like this and also abroad. The last time we went abroad with the whole family was when we went to Universal Studios, Singapore in 2012. Hope the current trip meant something for the family.

The flight duration is around one and a half hour. On landing, our passage through the immigration was swift. Note that we had initially applied for e-visa but later found out that for a short visit, we could just get a tourist visa. We arrived there around 5.30pm local time. We were greeted by Sitang (a helper for the organizer) who had waited for our arrival and later we took a coach to Aonang Villa Resort.

The coach costs 100 Baht per person and the organizer paid for this. We reached Aonang Villa Resort around 8 in the evening. On the way, we saw an accident involving a lady wearing hijab and her stuff (I presume, she was on a motorbike) was scattered on the road. I hope that she is alright. At the resort, we had to pay extra since the reception insisted that we take an extra bed. We thought that we could just squeeze three in each room and later, we saw a sofa chair that is extendible. In any case, I did not want to argue as need our rest.

After checking in and rested awhile in our rooms, the family went out to nearby stores to look for food, while I stayed in the room to finish up my presentation.

With little sleep, I went to the opening ceremony of the conference.

Listened to the first two talks on neutral atoms (a keynote and member of QTRic). Then I had to excuse myself from the conference (missing Dr. Yap's talk after the coffee break and even lunch) in order to finish my presentation since my laptop cannot run on battery (despite it was the new replaced battery - see this post).

My own talk went slightly over time it seems and there weren't any questions apart from one from the session chairman. I guess, there was little interest in what I had to say and certainly was not in the mainstream theme of the conference. Kwek gave me this photo shot of my talk.

The next talk was by Jayne Thompson who had his daughter in the audience. The talk seems to be on quantum agents. an idea that I'm not aware of. I believe she is married to Mile Gu, as they were always together. The final two talks were from Thai researchers - there seems to be a lot of interest on quantum machine learning on their side.

The family has started to shop around since our first night here, mainly to look for halal food.