Our taxi was right on time at 330am and check-in with Virgin
Australia was straight forward. Simon
even managed to get us upgraded to economy X for free, meaning that we had
extra leg room and were near the front to make our journey to our connecting
flight speedier hopefully. No
entertainment on this one, instead we managed to grab an hour or two’s kip as
it still felt like it should have been the middle of the night. Transfer number one of the day – we were back
in Brisbane again! We had to go through security for the second time before we
were in another departure lounge to grab some coffees and wait to be called for
boarding.
We were flying with Singapore
Airlines this time and Si was successful again in looking tall and
managing to get us both extra leg room for our next eight-hour stint. TVs, all drinks and food supplied this time
and very good service. I kept myself
occupied with two films and as much of Blue Planet II as I could squeeze in.
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| It's very posh at Singapore Airport... |
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| A flower display celebrating the start of the Year of the Dog |
By the time we arrived in Singapore the real time was 3pm
but for us it felt about 8pm. Our last
flight of the very long day was only an hour and a half long but once we were
on board our flight there was a half hour delay for some unknown reason. We started worrying whether we were going to
make our transfer taxi onwards to our hotel.
The other thing we were getting worried about was gaining entry into
Thailand with no onward flight booked. I
had been confident that this wouldn’t be a problem as we may well be leaving by
land into a neighbouring country, so many people must arrive without a
departure plan, surely? However, having
spoken to other travellers, the seed had been sown in our minds that we may
have to explain ourselves or book a flight at arrivals before we’d be let in!
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| Our first view of Thai Islands as we made our approach |
It was 6pm Thailand time when we arrived, for us we’d been
on the go for nearly 24 hours and it felt like midnight. The last thing we felt like dealing with was
a problem at immigration. Thankfully,
after a long wait at passport control we had no problems whatsoever and both
got a stamp in our passports giving us permission to stay in Thailand until 22nd
March at the latest. Sweet as!
Having collected our bags we went outside and found our
driver with a placard showing my name (I’ve always wanted that) and we began
the journey to our hotel on the south of Phuket island at Rawai beach. This was a three night stay we had booked as
somewhere to collapse and recover from the journey before we begin our
island-hopping adventures. Booking.com
had helped us book the taxi transfer with the hotel to make life extra easy and
the journey, which had been estimated at 45 minutes long but in fact took
nearly two hours, only cost us about £30.
Much has been made about how cheap or not it is to travel around
Thailand these days. We shall see over
the next few weeks.
For our first experience of driving in Thailand it was
probably a good thing that I was semi-conscious. Our driver was fine, I guess
you have to drive quite aggressively when everyone else is! It was the number of motorbikes and mopeds
that was amazing… and the way they were being driven and how many passengers
they were carrying! Families of four
with no crash helmets on, women carrying a small child in one arm whilst
driving with the other. All in the dark
and in crazy traffic. You get the
picture. It was incredible that we
didn’t have an accident, but by the number of ambulances trying to squeeze
through traffic, I don’t think that accidents are a rarity.
We were relieved to arrive at our hotel about 8pm and
check-in. As we had been fed four or
five times over the last 24 hours there was no need to worry about any food, so
we just found our room, whacked on the air-conditioning and collapsed. Hello Thailand!
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