Phuket & Singapore 2009 – Day 1 – We’re leaving Home
At 6am we woke to a miserable day in Wollongong, rainy & overcast..but who cares we are about to leave for hot, sunny Phuket.
Up & showered we make sure all the animals are feed & the house locked up & wait for Uncle Fulv & Aunty Sue to pick us up. We get to Sydney airport in no time & say goodbye.
Gees the line up for check in is really long.no wonder you have to get there 2 hours before hand.but no worries, we’re on holidays..
1 & 1/2 hours later we are still in line ( not happy Jan !) we are now advised that our plane has been delayed 2 hours.and guess what.. yes we have now missed our connecting flight & have to stay in Singapore over night as that was the last flight out for the day.
We check our bags in and have to go line up again for customer service who will tell us a bit more about what will happen, we then find out our luggage has been sent on to the Phuket flight for the next morning, I mean if we are staying overnight you would think that we would need our change of clothes & toiletries….Hello !
We had every one phone to see if we were still going as the government had issued warnings about travelling in Thailand, but we think we will be ok
We finally get to go thru customs and guess what.you are not allowed to take any drinks thru. We had 2x bottles of cordial for Brendan & 1 sealed bottle of water, we dumped the water but what do we do with the cordial as they are in our water bottles, there are no toilets or anything so I go back and ask while Brendan & David go thru. You just tip the contents in the bin and the cleaners will fix it up. Once though customs we go to TRS to claim our duty on the new camera & laptop , but the receipt that we have for the camera ( of course it is the dearer item ) is a copy and doesn’t have our name & details on it so it is rejected. Of course it is! but the good news is we just have to get an original from the shop and send it to Canberra with a detailed letter explaining what has happened.
Feeling a little bit peeved we have a look around the duty shops while we wait for the plane. We arrive at gate 56 to find that we are still further delayed, but finally we board the plane. Row 36 seat H, J & K, The seats are a bit narrow but fairly comfortable, Brendan is happy as he has his own screen & can play interactive games, finally everyone boards, we have a family in the seats in front of ours and Brendan talks and tries to help the kids set up the interactive part while their mother just sits there watching her screen at one stage she flips her hair over the back of her chair so David couldn’t see his movie, Kylie had 1 child continually leaning over putting her hands in the way of the screen and the other child was perched on top of the chair playing Nintendo with Brendan both talking & getting excited very loudly . the flight was for about 8 hours..we had a bit of turbulence which was good as the mother in front made her kids put their seat belts on..finally a bit of quiet. We arrived in Singapore and got off the plane to find the ground staff that would give us all the details for our unintended stay, we went thru immigration & found a taxi driver to take us to the hotel. The Mecure Roxy. We booked in & tried to go up to our room no 738 on the 7th floor.we press the level number & wait..& wait ..hmm what is going on here ? the bellboy gets in with us & gives us a lesson how to use the lift for dummies how embarrassing,you have to put your key card in the slot & then you can select your level. yep got that now. Once in the room we find only 1 bed, no we are not sharing with Brendan, we need an extra bought in, once the room was fixed up we went down to level 3 for a snack..wasn’t the best of food, but we did find out that the AUS hockey team was also inconvenienced by Singapore airlines as they to were staying there. Finally around 11.50 Aus time we crawled into bed wondering what tomorrow had install for us.
