Thailand Report, Day 3.

We made it to Thailand!  3 plane flights and about 12 hours of flying and we're here.  We have an amazing villa with a view looking out over Koh Phi Phi Island.  The weather has been great so far, often a bit of cloud cover but it's still been 25-30c most days.

So we left Napier on Thursday morning, thank you to Grandma for taking us to the airport.  I'd dropped Biscuit off at his doggy holiday village Pet2Us.The drive to the airport was crazy, so much rain coming down it was hard to believe.  Pouring and pouring, it was a very terrible bad.

We checked in our 3 bags (one which was super heavy) and waited for our flight.  Once we were on, Theo was very excited and couldn't wait to take off.  Eventually when we did he was loving it, then not loving it (because of the terrible weather, the ride was quite turbulent) over and over.  Of course both children HAD to visit the toilet in the sky, which was very exciting except no one likes the loud noise when the toilet flushes.  Once we got to Auckland we had to run off the plane too because it was uncovered and pissing with rain.  We got to the domestic terminal and waited around and caught the transfer bus, no was were we going to walk terminals in the pouring rain with 2 kids and 4 bags.  And a Big Bae, of course.

We got over to the International Terminal and we didn't really have a lot of time, we went through security (Sarah lost her Toothpaste) and pretty much had to walk to our gate.  On the way there's the moving Travelators which both kids thought was the greatest thing ever.  Then we got on our big plane and off we went.  It was a 3, 3, 3 seating arrangement so Sarah sat next to the kids and I sat in the middle aisle.

And it was 9 long hours of plane ride, which to be fair to the kids they both handled really, really well.  They got bored, of course, and hungry and wanted to go to the toilet man times, but overall they did a great job.  Sarah had prepared lots of stuff for them to do, game and books and all that, plus they had their new headphones Sarah had bought for them the day before, Theo has Panda headphones and Beth Unicorn ones.  So they could watch the seatback TV most of the flight over and that kept them entertained.  Did they sleep

Of course they did not sleep.  All the adults slept.  Everyone had a snooze. But not our children.  The closest Theo got was his eyelids fluttering a few times and being totally and utterly knackered, but you better believe he fought off going to sleep just as best as he could.

Once we arrived in Singapore we thankfully were just transiting so we didn't have to piss about with Immigration queues or any of that.  We just checked into our Travel Hotel and everyone got to bed.  It was about  9pm Singapore time, 1am NZ Time when we all got into bed and everyone checked out to sleep in seconds.  At 5:30am we got up and were checked out by 6:30am.  We went and found the Skytrain and took it from T3 to T2 which was where our plane was going to be departing from. Once we got to T2 who did we "bump into" but Auntie Holly, Age and Jojo and Isla.  Poor them, JoJo was really badly unwell for the whole flight over, burning up with a fever etc.  But he had handled it really well. 

We all went through security again together (Sarah lost a small pair of scissors this time) and our plane took off bound for Koh Samui.  It wasn't quite as exciting for the kids anymore, but they were still super excited that this was the last flight and that once it landed we would finally be in Thailand on holiday.  One we landed in Thailand we had a last second panic as Theo was getting off the plane, he suddenly urgently needed to do a poo and there was no toilet, just buggies on the tarmac waiting for us.  Thankfully the airline staff let us use the plane toilet.

The buggies drove us over to the terminal (nearly left Beth's blanket behind!) and we had to line up for the best part of an hour before we finally cleared their immigration.  There was a machine that we had to use, and it required two staff to look after the machine. Gawd it was slow, and hot and humid.  Anyway eventually we made it and we went to look for our driver who was going to be waiting.  After a little bit of confusion we found them waiting for us and off we set in the car bound for our holiday home.  A little 30 minute drive and we arrived at Villa Syama. 

It is everything we'd hoped it would be, Sarah had done an amazing job of course of organising everything.  We got settled, got unpacked and waited for the remaining poeple to arrive, which everyone did over the afternoon.  Adrian and I headed out for supplies (beer) and got the fridge stocked.  Though catching up with everyone that night we soon got through all the supplies.

Day 2 Adrian and I went for a walk while everyone else woke up and booted up. Went and got some coffee, checked out the island a little bit.  I mean a tiny bit of it, not that much.  And then what'd we do?  We came back and the kids had a great time playing in the pool, the pool is certainly the huge hit of the holiday.  It's warm and easy to get into and right in the middle so if you're in the pool you're almost the focus of attention.  Then we all went for a walk down to the beach, you have go down this dodgy as half build set of steps, with sheer drops off either side to get there.  And then down lots of slippy gravel etc.  But eventually you make it to the beach, where we sat up and had some pre-lunch snacks, the kids had icecreams which I think every child dropped theirs in the sand at least once and then complained about sandy icecream.  We all had beers/cocktails and enjoyed a relax while the kids played in the water, chasing the crabs and generally having fun. Then we walked back up the hill, much harder now in the middle of the day in the hot sun, then we all slept/swam/snoozed/watched TV etc until the evening.

We put the kids down for a sleep for a couple of hours before going out to dinner.

Anyway, that's probably enough typing.  My laptop didn't really survive the trip, it refuses to turn on 90% of the time now.  The fact it's on at the moment is somewhat amazing, I don't turn it off now I just hope it stays working!  The kids are watching Netflix on the iPad while I write this up, they have their own room and woke up at 6am this morning.  At least that's when Theo came in telling us loudly that he was awake.  Now they're eating jam sandwiches

The End.

Tim