Yesterday we went on a half-day trip to go snorkelling off the coast on the other side of Phuket island. This was mainly Thing Two’s idea. She really wanted to try snorkelling. DW, who was also keen on the plan, looked into it, and came up with this tour which we booked through the hotel.

The day did not start well. The Boy had gotten sun cream in his eyes during the morning application. He then started to cry and rub his eyes. Which got even more cream in there. And repeat. Queue screaming child all the way through breakfast. And the drive to the boat.

After a short but noisy 30-minute drive across the island (Phuket is thankfully pretty small), we arrived at the harbour to board our boat. We then had another 30 minute journey, but this was rather more interesting, especially for The Boy, as it involved a speedboat zipping across a fairly choppy sea. So as you might imagine, lots of bumps, bobbing about and spray flying everywhere. The sore eyes got forgotten about very quickly. It was pretty cool, except for poor DW who has a tendency to seasickness. In fairness, if I had that tendency, there’s no way I’d have gone on that boat so good on her for arranging and joining in.

The snorkelling itself was good fun. The Boy didn’t stick it for long, but the girls really enjoyed it. We followed that up with lunch and a swim on a small island nearby before heading back. This particular island is tiny, but almost every square inch of useable land is taken up with beach bars or deck chairs. It gets a lot of tour boats calling. Our guys managed to time our trip to arrive just as the morning boats were leaving and before the afternoon boats arrived, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves which was lovely.

The Boy certainly does not need lessons in how to chill:

The drive back was more delightful than the one out, thanks to the absence of the max-volume soundtrack (The Boy was shattered and fell asleep almost as soon as the wheels started rolling). We actually noticed a few things. Like rubber tree plantations, with black plastic cups at the bottom of each tree to collect the rubber sap. And little brightly decorated religious shrines outside almost every house, especially in rural areas. And a large mosque. And kids coming home from school (the girls particularly enjoyed that!!). It was a lovely end to a lovely trip.

Seeing the school kids reminded us of the need to remind the girls to get going on their travel journals. They don’t have to keep up with coursework while they’re away from school, but the school principal has asked them to each keep a journal of what they do and see along the way. So they spent much of the early evening getting started, using a journal app they have on their iPads. So this is doing your homework, holiday style:

Things one and two both love sushi. They have a sushi section in the breakfast buffet here, so thing one decided to go for it.

They also have a “pet” elephant onsite. He makes an appearance at breakfast. The boy decided to join in the fun and gave him a mango. Or something.

We’re dubious as to this whole practice of keeping elephants in hotel grounds, but apparently it’s common enough around here. Other than this breakfast feeding, which was kind of hard to avoid, we’re leaving our elephant experience thing until we get to a proper animal-centric place near Luang Prabang.

No, you can’t have my hat:

It’s 36 degrees here. It’s surprisingly bearable. I thought we would melt, but it’s not that bad. I had read before we came here that it was 90% humidity, but I think it’s more like 50%.

So far on this “beach” holiday we’ve been mostly staying cool in the pool. We’ve only made it to the beach once, for an hour, for lunch one day, during which time I got bitten by some fly or other.

Come evening time, when you need cooling down, the girls tell me that only a fruit punch will do:

We had decided to start this trip with a week on the beach in Thailand because, well, it’s always nice to get a week on the beach. But also, the plan was to let us get over the jet lag, and to adjust to the heat and humidity before any actual sightseeing gets going.

Well, the jet lag did kick in a bit on the first night. We all went to bed around midnight local time, except for the boy who had crashed an hour earlier. So far so good. I heard dearest wife (DW) get up at about 4.30am. The rest of the house sounded quiet, so I went back to sleep (as, in fairness, you would). Well, apparently the rest of the house was not quiet, it’s just that I apparently have selective hearing. This has been diagnosed for me by DW on multiple previous occasions, so it must be true.

Anyway, it turns out I was the ONLY one sleeping at 4.30am. Everyone else was awake. Oops! DW came back in to bed at 7am to let me know it was my turn. Thing one and thing two had just gone back to bed so I was left with eldest girl and the boy. I decided to try lying down beside the boy in his bed and he fell asleep within 5 minutes. So I went back to bed. Dunno what all the fuss is about really 🙂

We all woke around midday, except for eldest girl who never did go back to sleep. Angry Birds was too engrossing, apparently.

That was pretty much it on the jet lag front. We’ve all slept great every night since. Nice!

Thing one, eldest girl and thing two:

Before we headed to the airport on Thursday, the three girls insisted on going to school for an hour so they could be there for fancy dress day! Eldest girl went as the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland. Things one and two went as themselves.

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??

Chilling at Heathrow:

Singapore to Phuket: we’ve just had McDonald’s in Singapore airport, so there must be more free food coming soon…

Arriving at our Phuket hotel: flowers for the ladies!