Dublin to Thailand

Thursday 6th March:

So our big Asian trip finally starts!

So first things first: luggage. We decided we’d break the habit of a lifetime, and try and pack light. To put this in context, our last break was a week in Lanzarote. For that one week, we took two large suitcases, BOTH of which weighed over the 20kg limit at check-in. Seriously, for one week in the sun???

Anyway, I think we did pretty good this time. We’ve managed to confine ourselves to one carry-on size wheelie for each of the four ladies, plus a slightly larger one for the boy and me. Here’s a photo with them packed:

Each of these wheelies also converts to a backpack/rucksack, in case we need to hold hands in busy train stations in Japan. I’m doubtful as to the need for that, but we’ve got that angle covered anyway just in case.

So day one was spent travelling from Dublin to Phuket. We left our house at 10.30am on Thursday 6th March, and arrived at our hotel in Phuket 27 hours later at 8.30pm local time on Friday (Thailand is 7 hours ahead). We flew Dublin to Heathrow, then a 4-hour layover, then a 12 and a half hour flight to Singapore (yep, 12 and a half hours), then another three hour layover, then a 1.5 hour flight to Phuket.

The long flight was overnight and all of us slept which was great. Mind you, I was woken in the middle of the night by the boy: “I need a tissue!”. Turns out he had a nosebleed. I only copped on to this when he needed a tissue again about 10 seconds later (it was dark, ok??). I thought that’s him up for the night now, but he fell back asleep straight away. Happy days!

In fairness, the kids were brilliant through the whole journey. Ok, except for one pretty big meltdown the boy had in Singapore airport when we wouldn’t let him into a toy shop because we were trying to get from one terminal to another to check in for our last flight. He screamed solidly for 20 minutes when we dragged him on to the transfer train and kept shouting “not this way, I want to go back to the toy shop.” He kept it up all the way through the check-in for flight number three. I don’t know what that did for the nerves of the very nice and very PATIENT lady at check-in, but it didn’t do much for mine. Can’t say I blame him really though. It wouldn’t have killed us to stop for 10 minutes. Bad decision, but you live and learn!

Other than that (!), it went great.

Dublin to London: we’ve just had Burger King in Dublin airport, but if they give you free food then why not??