29 March 2022 - Tuesday - Day 1
The backpacking trip that should have happened 20 years ago...
....when we were young and wild and free - now we are just young, trying to be a bit wilder and free-er
When we booked our dream holiday in 2019, we never thought that it was going to take us nearly three years to take it... Covid and getting our Permanent Residency visas granted for Australia, put a spanner in the works for any holiday plans, let alone any overseas holiday plans!
The last two years (or actually five!!!) took a huge emotional toll, as life threw never-ending curve balls our way. Thankfully God carried us through our tough times, and lifted us up, as He promised He would when we decided to undertake the big journey of immigration. But that's a story, for another day...
So, this morning with about 3 hours sleep under our wings, we entered the dark, rainy, dreary Sydney streets, looking for a lonely bus to catch at 04h20am, to begin our journey to Thailand. The time had come, the time is here, and we are ready to eagerly embrace an adventure that had been looked forward to for ages.
It took us about an hour and a half and one bus and one train ride to get to Sydney International. The 8 hr flight to Singapore was uneventful, but I do have to mention how pretty the air hostesses looked in their traditional Singaporean uniforms. I'll fly with them again, just because they look so lovely :)
At Singapore airport, we had to rush from one side of the airport to the other side. It included us taking two skytrains to get to the other side. We managed to get a quick drink and snack from a vendor, and had to gulp it down to be able to get to check-in in time. I was a bit disappointed that we didn't have more time to explore the airport, as the photos I've seen of it, is magnificent. Hopefully we will have a bit more time on our flight back.
The flight from Singapore to Phuket was a short one, less than two hours, and I appreciated the view of the islands from atop. Couldn't believe that we were finally in Thailand!!
At the airport we were ushered through, temperatures taken, covid tests done, and then transferred to our SHA+ hotel, where we had to stay until we received a negative result.
As we were not allowed out of our rooms, until we had a negative result, we had to make use of room service and had quite a lot of fun using Google lens to translate some of the menu items! We ended up having crispy pork belly with peppercorns and garlic! Now just stop right there, erase any idea that you have of a dish containing garlic and peppercorns. Because that would be completely wrong. I had to search for the crispy pork belly between all the peppercorns and garlic cloves - skin and all!!! And... there was plenty of crispy pork belly. It was very unusual, but, it was seriously delicious!! The peppercorns were green, and almost fresh, not as dry as our peppercorns, like it was just picked off the bush, plant, or wherever peppercorns come from. I will have that again! We also had Korean fried chicken, which was another tick for me, even though technically it wasn't a Thai dish. And then some dish that had pork that looked like it was cooked in a very pink, red sauce, with noodles and a broth. The meals were cheap and not huge, and Tony managed to force down a brownie with ice cream, before we tucked up in bed and awaited sleep, and awaited, hopefully, a negative covid test result...
Comments