I omitted blogging about a couple of short holidays we had late last year (a few days is never long enough to get into the routine of blogging) but as this break is just over two weeks long I thought I would bite the bullet and record our meanderings.
On Friday night we decided to stay at the hotel at the international airport to reduce the rush and stress of getting to the airport on time on Saturday morning.
The other advantage was that Will and Emma were due in on Friday evening from their nearly 4 weeks away in the US. They were about an hour late, and then had another delay whilst they tried to find Will’s bag, but eventually we met them in the arrivals hall and got to hear a lot more about their intrepid travels. Not surprisingly, Will (and Victoria for that matter) both have the travel bug in their veins. Emma seems to becoming a member of our travel obsessed family too!
Tanya, a friend and colleague, messaged me on Friday night when she saw I had posted about our imminent departure on facebook. She has ‘connections’ in Qantas and so we managed to get extra special treatment from the lovely Bruce, the cabin manager, who welcomed us on board warmly, made sure I had a good champagne the moment we sat down and generally made us feel like we were in Business Class, which we were not! The nearly 10 hour flight went by quite quickly, with 3 movies including a real tear jerker true story about the Dog that was the star of the movie ‘Red Dog’. I rarely watch movies, apart from when flying, but if you are a dog lover, like me, you should watch this one. With Darryl still not that well at home with the house-sitter, I was crying like a baby less than 10 minutes into the movie!
(Daves favourite part of international travel – the Egg and Bacon Roll in the lounge prior to departure! For me Eggs Bennie with smoked salmon. Yum!)
Our last treat of the flight was a visit to the flight deck to meet the pilots – what a great view they get from up there! I forgot to take a picture 🙁
The cockpit visit delayed us somewhat, and I was a little stressed when we saw the sign that indicated it was 1300 metres to the domestic transfer gate! Thankfully the crowds were low (thanks to Coronavirus) and there was a few moving walkways along the way, and even with immigration clearance and the long walk we still made it to the departure gate for our flight to Phuket with 15 minutes to spare.
SIGHTS
It was only a short flight, just over an hour on Bangkok Airlines. What a glorious view we had of Phuket landing just as the sun was going down!
We easily found a taxi, with a set price and air conditioning, and within the hour we had arrived at our hotel, the Blu Monkey which is in Old Phuket Town (not at the beachy tourist area). It was hot and humid (35C at 8pm) but we did manage a quick ‘recce’ of the surrounding block, including a small supermarket (nearly always our holiday destination first stop). When we got back to the hotel, I was tempted to have a bath in the outside tub on our hotel verandah, but decided on a quick shower, then fell into bed, exhausted!
SOUNDS & SMELLS
Day two began with an early breakfast (7am here – 11am @home), which considering it was included in the relatively low room rate, was surprisingly good. Between us we tried the scrambled eggs, toast, fried rice, Roti bread, chicken curry, fresh fruit, pancakes and a fairly average cup of tea.
We thought a quick walk after breakfast would be a good idea, before it got too hot. 7500 steps later we got back after wandering all over old Phuket town, including seeing some of the lovely Portuguese influenced architecture. I love to take in all the sights and sounds of an unknown destination. And I can easily share those with you with photos and videos. The thing I can’t so easily share with you is the smells! Thailand has so many good smells, especially in the morning as the locals prepare and eat their breakfast. However not all the smells are good. Dave was none-too-pleased with me stopping for 30 seconds to take a video of one of the canals that criss-cross this town. The smell was PUTRUD!
[wpvideo Rp1DBn6s ]
And a few more snaps of the sights:
We’ve just had our second shower for the day and we are heading out to explore some more – I’ll let you know how that goes tomorrow!
Sara xx