The weeks leading up to this holiday felt like they were moving in slow motion I couldn’t actually believe we were actually on our way. One of our mates came to pick us up and take us to the airport in Townsville for the first leg of the journey, Robbie was still doing last minute packing but managed to get it all done in plenty of time.

Pretty non eventful domestic flight and we arrived in Brissy on time and had to transfer to the international terminal with about 4 hours up our sleeve. We asked for a window seat and the snarly woman on the counter gave us look and said they are all taken. How they can be taken when there are no online check ins seems bizarre and is beyond me, people must have got to the airport at the crack of dawn for a window.

We had no issues clearing immigration at Brisbane International, so what will we do for four hours? Naturally, first, head for the duty free store ‘of course’ I hear you say, to find us pair checking out the duty free booze is not a big stretch of the imagination. No sooner had we stepped inside the store and we noticed some free alcohol being given away, so a girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.

There was vodka tasting in progress and it was infused with gold leaf, yeap real gold, 18ct in fact. It looked so pretty so I couldn’t resist having a sample.  Even though it looked so beautiful with all that gold floating in it, it tasted less than divine, and to be honest it tasted like metho! I guess you are wondering how I know what metho tastes like, well a game of truth and dare sorted that out many years ago.  I was also wondering if my next visit to the toilet would sparkle?  (in case you are wondering it didn’t). Seriously if you bought a bottle of this golden vodka you would have to be a wanker just wanting to pose. Robbie was the sensible one of the two of us and gave the mix the big swerve.

After that there was only one thing to do and that was to go and have a couple of bourbons to wash away the golden elixir, actually so much nicer than gold I must say. As usual I was able to depend on Robbie to find us a nice little bar to spend a little time in. We had a couple of drinks and a snack and just people watched at the Brissy airport I guess this will be the quietest airport we will see for awhile.

Australia it’s time for us to go, we are up and away on Thai airways, Sawadee Kah, Bangkok  here we come.

The flight over to Bangers was pretty good much better flying in daylight hours we all had our own entertainment system so watched heaps of movies and the air crew pampered, fed and kept the drinks coming. I had a giggle one lady asked for a Bundy with no ice, and got given a Brandy straight with no ice. She grimaced every time she sipped it.  We have been on Thai airlines before so we knew to ask if they had our preferred drink first, always best to ask for Bourbon or Rum. ‘Bundy – Brandy’ easy mistake to make. But the poor woman nursed that drink for about two hours.

We arrived in Bangkok a little ahead of schedule which was really good as we got to squash on a bus for the ride over to the terminal. It’s a huge airport and there are so many planes going in and out that sometimes there isn’t room anywhere near the terminal so they bus you over. Very fast and efficient service which was good as we then got to stand in a line for about 1/2 hour to have our photo taken, would have hated to be late for that! Gotta love standing in long lines.

As we are transferring to another flight which is domestic we will pick our cases up in Phuket and go through customs there, so no need for the whole immigration and customs who ha yet.  We followed along like Lemmings with our little stickers on our shirts that let us progress to the inner sanctum of the domestic terminal without a ‘cavity’ search. This is pretty cruisy we thought until we realised we were trapped in the domestic terminal with no access to all the restaurants cafes and bars, they were all upstairs we could see them but we weren’t allowed to go there. There was a chip and soft drink machine that was getting a pretty heavy workout by the other passengers but we didn’t have any Thai money on us yet, so our smugness soon disappeared and it sucked to be us right about then!

No worries I thought, I had my trusty little ipad on me and plenty of free wifi around to tap into but unfortunately the concept of ‘free’ has been misplaced in translation, seems it’s free to look at the log in page and enter every detail of your life and you will be rewarded with 25 minutes free time, after that user pays. Small print said the Thai government likes to monitor what messages are being generated at the airport so no id – no internet for you. Fair enough I guess and well that’s the Law in Thailand so I ain’t gonna mess with that. It wasn’t like we were bored with all the people from different countries hanging out with us waiting for our next flight we just people watched and the time seemed to go pretty fast. I find it’s amazing that there are no language barriers when it comes to kids they just play together, they shared their toys and picked each other up when they fell and couldn’t understand a word in each others language.

Finally the time arrived for us to board the plane for Phuket and then we were herded back on a bus and out to the next plane. One thing you can say about the airport staff everything runs like clock work we were ushered back on the plane and into our seats even had a window, great system they have, opps spoke too soon, that was all well and good until a connecting flight from China didn’t quiet arrive on time so there we were in a 3/4 full plane waiting for them.

Cabin crew were apologizing profusely and handing out drinks to keep everyone happy. So as we sat there the musical chairs began, people started moving into the empty seats and making themselves comfortable. There was already a large group of Chinese people on the plane and they started swapping seats and ignoring the staffs pleas to stay in their assigned seats. I just knew this was not going to play out well and I was right. The musical chairs continued and the staff continued to serve drinks to keep everyone else happy. Finally all the missing passengers arrived and the staff were hurrying them along to get seated, but as the other Chinese passengers already on board had moved into seats that the new passengers had been assigned many fights were erupting in Chinese and no-one was prepared to concede.

The pilot was asking everyone to hurry up and get seated so we could get going, seriously I am sure he was revving the engines. The cabin crew’s patience was stretched as people didn’t want to go back to their old seats and newly arrived passengers wanted the seats they were allocated. In the end the staff told the new people to just find a seat and sit down as the plane had to leave. Our flight was now an hour late.

We were starting to worry as we had booked an airport transfer as our planned arrival time was midnight and the deal was if you were delayed you had too ring otherwise it is classed as a no show and you would forfeit the money we had paid. As it got later and later and as we were trapped on the plane we couldn’t ring the hotel to say we would be coming late. We resigned our selves to the fact that we would have to negotiate a lift to resort as soon as we got there that’s always fun in Thailand with every one screaming at you to pick them for transport!

They served fingers sandwiches on this flight that has fillings that were quite bizarre; one tasted like custard god knows what it was but was way too sweet to eat. The Chinese people didn’t quiet know how to tackle the sandwiches and there were 3 fingers stacked on top of each other but they ate them as a single unit.  It made Robbie and I laugh, three fingers jamed into their mouth in one gob full it looked hilarious and they all did it.

We arrived at Phuket with the usual confusion that happens at foreign airports but managed to find our bags without an issue, it’s always good when they arrive with you on the same flight.

By now it was 1am Thai time or 4am Australian time so we were pretty tired and not looking forward to doing the immigration and customs inspections. Turns out there was no need to be concerned and customs people just waved us through and half of them were having a snooze only those declaring stuff were stopped.

So once out side the terminal we were greeted by a throng of people wanting to be our new friend and drive us to our hotel and amazingly our driver was still there holding up his little sign with our name on it.  I was so happy to see him and how the hell Robbie spotted it in the confusion I will never know but thank goodness he did.

We were extremely happy our driver had waited given we were over an hour late. It has been a massive day. We arrived at the hotel and our room was as expected which was another surprise as sometimes request get lost in translation but it’s a big room on the 5th floor with views of both the pool and the ocean.

Only minor issue there were 2 king sized single beds in the room but housekeeping staff came and sorted that out immediately and we ended up with the biggest bed you have ever seen. We had been really tired but sort of got a second wind on arriving but it not so true ‘Godden’ style for once in our lives we did the right thing and went to bed instead of heading straight out to explore.

It wasn’t too long before we were both snoring our heads off.