At Changi airport, we were welcomed by an awesome old school board, flicking away with the next thirty or so flights, their gates and statuses. We waited around for our check-in desk to open, which happened an hour later than we'd expected. In the mean time, we had coffee and chatted. We checked in at 11 and were given rubbish paper boarding passes, which, i guess, was appropriate since we were flying with Air Asia, a rubbish airline. We passed through immigration for new stamps.
In the duty free bit, I was offered some free mint baileys, which was horrible, so I pulled lots of faces in front of the person who gave it to me. We then went searching for a puzzle book to keep us entertained, but everything was stupidly overpriced. Sarah bought some overpriced Milka chocolate. We did find some free internet terminals, so took full advantage of those. Our student finance could be sorted from today, so we knew that would be looming over us for a while.
Before long, it was time to go to the gate. My bag was fine going through the X-rays this time, but Hannah got stopped for having a bottle of Pepsi.
On board, we were allowed to sit wherever we liked. The plane was pretty small and the seats uncomfortable. Taking off was a bit scary because of the crappy weather in Singapore causing our tiny plane to shake. The flight was an hour and a half long. When we arrived in Thailand, it looked like we were going to land in the ocean because of how close the runway was to the coast. Getting through immigration was no probs, although we had a bit of a scare when we all thought we might need a visa and didn't have one. We were ok though, being British and all.
Outside, a man was waiting for us with a sign that read Sarah's name. He got his car and we hopped in. I was expecting a 'Welcome to Thailan
d!', but he didn't seem to speak English. The roads of Phuket (which, I was surprised to discover at the airport, is an island) were kind of reminiscent of India, but with fewer people and fewer cars. As we drove over a lot of hills and along a lot of twisty roads, I noticed a lot of 'Tsunami evacuation point's, which had, presumably, been set up since Phuket was heavily devastated in the boxing day tsunami three years before. We came into Patong beach some fifteen minutes into the drive and I began noticing a lot of tourists on mopeds, which must've been hirable nearby.We arrived and checked into our hotel at Patong Lodge. Our room was lovely, overlooking the pool and a view of the sea through the tree. We immediately ordered room service and I had a nice cheeseburger for lunch. Afterwards, we decided to go explore the surrounding area. The roads were chaotic and hard to cross. I bought a pair of sunglasses for 200 baht (about £4) and we each bough flip flops for 300THB a piece. We realised that there was little
but hotels within walking distance, so we went back to the hotel. Hannah had a bath while Sarah and I chilled out by the pool. It was very pleasant down there. We ordered some drinks; I got a tiger beer and Sarah tried a Singapore sling cocktail. I think we were the only backpackers staying at that hotel, all the other people looked like holidayers, most of them over fifty.After an hour or so by the pool, Sarah and I went back to the room and found Hannah. We all decided to go for dinner. We sat in the hotel restaurant just as a man named Mr Dingh started playing classic songs on his guitar. He loved us because we were the only people who always clapped. Hannah and I ordered really spicy ceasar salads and Sarah ordered chips. I had banana pancakes for dessert. Yum!
We retired to our room and watched two episodes of Green Wing followed by some crappy Barbara Streisand movie. We were asleep by 11.
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