Day 392 - 7 Aug ‘24 - Kuala Lumpur to Phuket/Ko Yao Yai. Our last sleep in Malaysia was not a peaceful one. Our bed was slightly softer than concrete, and there was an overpowering stink of mothballs everywhere.
I’d found one in the corner of our bathroom floor last night, and flushed it down the toilet at Dan’s suggestion.
“Who uses mothballs as an air freshener?” I exclaimed.
Imagine my joy when the bathroom still reeked of the toxic chemical this morning; the smell was so strong I could almost taste it.
“Oh my god! There’s two more down by the shower!”
We didn’t have any breakfast, so planned to get something to eat at the airport. On the way there, Alex stunned us into silence.
“How many weeks is it until we return to New Zealand?” he asked.
“About ten weeks,” I replied.
“How many months is that?”
“You can work that out.”
“How many weeks are in a month?”
“Oh my god…”
“There’s seven days in one week,” said Abi, “so that’s 14 days in two weeks.”
“How many days are in a month?” Alex asked.
“Jesus Christ!” I muttered, while Dan shook his head.
“Why are you shaking your head at me, dad?”
“Do you even know how many months are in a year?” Abi asked her brother.
“January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, November, October…”
“NO! OH MY GOD!” I cried.
“There’s four weeks and two days or three days in a month,” Abi helpfully supplied.
“I can see how only 22% of kids your age are passing maths,” I said to Alex, referring to a recent New Zealand news article my friend Jaime sent me.
Yep, you read that right. Twenty-two per cent of children in year eight in New Zealand schools are meeting age expectations for maths. Not even exceeding them, merely meeting them. That’s a dreadful state of affairs. (Don’t get us started on the epic failings of the New Zealand education system, or we’ll be here all day).
Moving on!
At the airport, Dan, Alex, and I, managed to get something to eat. We went to get Abi some McDonald’s fries, but there was a sign at the counter saying the main restaurant, and more seating, was downstairs.
So, downstairs through the departure terminal we went, only to discover that the McDonald’s was outside the airport. Burger King required us to go on a bus to the other terminal. Dammit!
The only eatery places past immigration were coffee shops and a couple of convenience-type stores. For her breakfast, Abi had a chocolate milk and a berry juice. Nice and substantial!
“That’s okay though,” I said, “as our flight is one-and-a-half hours, and we can get something to eat when we land in Phuket.”
Unfortunately, just as they were about to open the boarding gates, we got a message that the flight had been delayed an hour-and-a-half to 2:30pm! (Remember, no food shops).
“The problem is,” Dan told me, “that it means we get to Phuket at 3pm their time, the boats to the island we’re staying on leave on the hour, and the last boat leaves at 5pm!”
“And?”
“It’s a 25 minute drive from the airport to the jetty, and we don’t know how long getting out the airport will take!”
“Oh no!”
We made it through immigration and bag collection and X-ray, in remarkable time, (with no stopping for food), and our driver did his damndest to get us to the pier as fast as he could.
We got there at 4:03pm. Bugger. Never mind!
The pier operator, who charged us 10 Thai Baht per person to just get onto the pier, told us we could get the next public boat to the other side of the island at 5pm for 1600THB, then a taxi to our hotel for 300THB, and the whole journey would take us about an hour-and-a-half (what is it with hours-and-a-halves today?!). Or, we could take a private boat now directly to the hotel, for 2500THB, and the journey would only be 40 minutes.
A quick calculation put the price at $115NZD, and the public trip was $90NZD.
“Let’s get the private boat!”
The trip out was on a traditional Thai longtail boat, with a dubious sounding engine while in shallow water, but the view was amazing!
The boat got closer to the island, and we thought the driver was going to the single jetty that was there, but he veered away from it and headed towards the beach!
“How are we going to get ashore?!” I asked.
“Looks like we have to get in the water!” Dan answered.
“Really?! We’ll get wet!”
“Well, I’m going to take my shoes off just in case.”
“What are you doing, mummy?” asked Abi.
“Taking my shoes off and rolling up my trousers.”
“Why?”
“Because we have to get in the water! It’s a REAL beach landing!”
“WHAT?!”
How exciting! When the driver said he’d get us directly to our hotel on the beach, we didn’t realise he meant actually onto the beach directly in front of our hotel!
We hopped off, and one of the boat crew helped carry our bags ashore, and Alex carried Abi. And there, right in front of us, was our hotel!
“The private boat was definitely worth it!” Dan said with a grin.
Once we’d dropped our bags off at our room, which had a lovely view from our private deck, we got changed into our swimwear and went to the beach.
Alex and Abi had loads of fun finding crabs and transporting them to a small aquarium they’d built on the beach. Dan and I also went for a swim in the sea - it was SO WARM!
While in the water, I felt what I thought was a bite behind my left knee and right forearm, but couldn’t see anything - must have brushed against something.
We watched the sun go slowly down, which was beautiful. Dan and I had last been to Thailand for his 40th birthday, but for our world trip purposes, this was now country number 40!
We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, and were joined overhead by some large fruit bats that would occasionally drop scraps of fruit on the ground, or our table.
Other than Alex who had a cheeseburger and fries, we all tried different Thai food. I had a delicious green curry that had a decent amount of heat, Abi had rice paper rolls, and Dan had broccoli and prawns in oyster sauce.
“That sauce was so yummy that I almost want to lick the plate like your dad!” he said with a laugh.
It was a wonderfully relaxing evening, and when Alex asked what we would be doing tomorrow, we gestured to the beach and said:
“Nothing.”
Day 393 - 8 Aug ‘24 - Ko Yao Yai. No alarms, and no need to go anywhere, is the best kind of holiday. We went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, which was lovely, and after putting on some sunscreen and our togs, went to the beach.
Alex and Abi borrowed a kayak from the hotel, and Alex paddled Abi along the coast, occasionally coming in to shore to speak to Dan and I as we strolled down the beach.
We walked past the other hotels that had beach front positions, and found the street to the nearby shops. Once the hotels and restaurants finished, we noticed all the rubbish that was along the shore, that wasn’t getting collected. It looked dreadful, and it was horrible to think of how much other rubbish had washed ashore of different beaches.
Dan and I went for a swim in the sea while the kids played on the sand finding crabs. There was quite a strong undertow, and we would get pulled out to sea and back in to shore every few seconds. I felt a few more little stings or bites in random places, and so did Dan, so it definitely wasn’t my imagination! But again, no marks or welts. Strange…
We went for another walk in the opposite direction, and saw the hilarious view of a man in a mankini, trying to paddle board! From a distance we couldn’t work out if the person on the board was male or female, as they were very slim, very unbalanced, and wearing what looked like a black string bikini; it was only on closer inspection that we noticed the beard!
There was a massage place set up on the beach by our hotel, so we told the kids they could have an hour on their Nintendos in our room while we had a massage each. At only $16.50NZD each, they were an absolute bargain!
After our massages, we walked the couple of hundred metres to the town for lunch, where Abi was brave and had a seafood and glass noodle dish. Unfortunately, the seafood wasn’t just prawns and included octopus! She put the end of the tentacle in her mouth and squeezed her teeth onto it, declared it chewy, and didn’t eat any more of the pieces.
Once we came back to our hotel, Alex and Abi were very excited to learn they could have an hour massage each too! We took the opportunity of an hour’s peace to sort out where and when we were travelling to next. Last year we had a Thai student stay with us for a couple of weeks, so we were also trying to sort out how to visit him and his family.
Alex and Abi spent the rest of the day moving between the beach and the pool (which we joined them in briefly), having lots of fun without parental supervision! Of course, their excited yells may have been annoying the other people here on holiday…
We again had dinner at the hotel restaurant, and watched another incredible sunset lighting up the sea.
“Shall we stay here a bit longer?” I asked Dan.
Day 394 - 9 Aug ‘24 - Ko Yao Yai. Last night we switched off our air conditioner; with only a sheet for bedding, the 25°C we’d had it blowing at the night before. was actually quite chilly!
At 3am we heard some kind of argument between the other guests in the unit beneath our balcony. Dan reckoned it was the mum getting angry at the two teenage sons getting back so late from wherever they were at.
By the time we decided to get out of bed, it was 9:30am. I’d opened the windows to listen to the waves, and discovered it had been raining overnight.
“I suppose we should get the kids up,” I said to Dan.
“Why?” was his response.
Fair comment. We’d decided to stay two extra nights, so there was no reason to ‘get up and get going’ like we would normally do. After 13 months of travelling, we had finally got to the original plan of staying longer somewhere if we liked it.
Dan hadn’t booked us anywhere else to stay as we’d decided to play it all by ear. It really was ‘time to relax in Thailand’!
None of us were hungry, so we skipped breakfast, and started our day. I took my puzzle book to the loungers by the beach, by myself for a while, and the rest of our day was spent on the beach, out on the kayak, in the sea, or in the pool.
When Abi joined me in the sea briefly, we were again being stung by something invisible, so didn’t stay in too long. I did a quick bit of research and determined they were jellyfish larvae - harmless, but annoying.
We went to town for lunch again, and in the afternoon Alex and I got Thai massages, and Abi and Dan got head and foot massages.
Distant thunder had been rolling for most of the afternoon, the sea became quite choppy, and it rained a little in the evening. Hopefully it would all have blown over by tomorrow!
At night, while watching a movie on TV, I strangely got an incredibly intense pain around my entire ribcage. I could only put it down to my massage, as the lady was pressing on my chest so hard that I had no air in my lungs, but it was rather bizarre that it only started to hurt when I was sitting on the couch hours later.
Day 395 - 10 Aug ‘24 - Ko Yao Yai. Today was more of the same - relaxation mixed with some food. We didn’t even get out of bed until after 10am!
The pain in my chest was gone, but the sunburn I’d gained yesterday was slightly annoying and quite painful on my shoulders. Because it had been overcast and rather windy, I never became hot, (never mind sore), so hadn’t put on any sunscreen and hadn’t realised I’d burnt a little. Rookie mistake!
I also had a decent head cold that had come from nowhere. A nose that was running like a tap, a mild headache, and a slightly tickly throat, meant I sat on the shaded lounger with a packet of tissues and an empty bag to put the used ones in - lovely!
Our day was again spent in relaxation. Alex took Dan for a kayak ride, and Abi took me on the stand-up paddle board. That was hilarious, as there was a decent chop that kept forcing us back to shore, and she kept hitting me on the head with the paddle!
We went to a different restaurant for lunch, and I had two mouthfuls of a delicious tasting pad see ew, before I decided it was actually EW.
“I can’t eat this, Dan,” I said quietly.
“Why not?”
“It tastes delicious, but the rice noodle sheets feel like huge lumps of snot going down my throat. I almost gagged at that last mouthful! Do you want to swap?”
Dan had ordered a prawn pad Thai, which he kindly passed over.
“You know I’m doing you a solid right now?”
“You can eat the prawns!” I magnanimously told him.
We returned to our loungers by the beach for more of the same, went for a walk to the shops for crisps and icecream, then went back to the loungers again!
While sitting on the lounger looking at the sea…
“Oh!” I yelped.
“What?” Dan asked.
“A frigging HUGE thing just jumped out of the water!”
“What was it?”
“I don’t know, but it wasn’t a dolphin or a whale! I reckon it was a shark of some form!”
“Sharks don’t often breach the water though.”
“Yes I know, but it was fully clear of the water and twisted back on itself. Dolphins don’t do that. And from that far away, it sure wasn’t small!”
Problem was, we had just planned on going for a swim in the sea. Now, anyone who knows me knows that I am not, repeat NOT, an ocean swimmer when I can’t see the bottom. I know what lives in the sea. Conversely, I love snorkelling, and have even been scuba diving.
I had spent the last few days having fun in the lovely warm shallows (the water was 30°C), despite the stings, and had even told the kids that no sharks would come in here because there were no fish at all.
But, having just seen what I’d just seen, I made sure that Dan was further out than me when we went in for a swim! Ha ha ha! And on a positive note, the stinging things were gone.
We all had a swim in the pool, and after showering, we decided to go back to the place we had lunch at, as they were cheaper than the restaurant here. In order not to appear rude to the hotel staff, especially as we hadn’t had breakfast or lunch here, we planned on going out past the pool instead of the main entrance by the restaurant.
“Oh no!” I said when I looked out the window. “The staff are sitting on the loungers! We can’t sneak past anymore!”
“We can go out to the restaurant and then go out the back way, then come back around again?” Alex suggested.
“Okay, we’ll do that.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay,” Alex called once he’d opened the door. “They’ve gone.”
“Phew! Right, let’s sneak past the pool again!”
The clouds were very, very dark; I’d received a weather alert on my phone saying the tail end of a typhoon was hitting further up the coast from us. As we sat at the restaurant, the wind picked up and we could see the rain on the ocean getting closer. Soon enough, the rain came in hard and heavy for a few minutes, then tapered off.
Alex was irrationally concerned about hurricanes, yet bizarrely not at all about tsunamis! I wasn’t about to disabuse him of that notion…
Day 396 - 11 Aug ‘24 - Ko Yao Yai. My cold kicked it up a gear overnight. My nose was running so frequently that I got fed up blowing my nose (which was getting rather sore), and shoved some rolled up pieces of tissue up my nostrils. This worked a treat (like it always does), except I had to change them three times during the night - gross!
I slept solidly until 4:30am, then dozed off and on afterwards, coughing and drooling and most likely snoring as well! I had some paracetamol at 8:30am, but it barely took the edge off my headache.
“How are you feeling today?” Dan asked me.
“Uuuuggghhh,” I replied.
We again skipped breakfast, and took up our usual spots on the loungers by the beach. Dan took me for a paddle board ride, which was hilarious, while the kids went for a kayak. After a swim in the really warm sea, we swam in the slightly cooler pool, then lay on the loungers once more.
When the wind picked up in the afternoon, we swapped the loungers for our lounge, except I went to sleep in bed for an hour. I was still feeling pretty crappy; my nose wasn’t running as much (thank goodness, as it was really sore to blow now), but my cough had dropped into my chest, yay.
We had dinner at the hotel restaurant, then against our better judgement, went for a nighttime stroll to the shops to get the kids an icecream. I don’t know why we do it to ourselves!
Day 397 - 12 Aug ‘24 - Ko Yao Yai to Phang Nga. Hello chest infection! Some time in the middle of the night, I woke up freezing cold - I was covered in goose bumps and curled up in a ball. I crawled out of bed and grabbed some of the beach towels, then lay them on top of the sheet.
I managed to get back to sleep until around 6am, when I was doubled over the side of the bed coughing. I slept again until shortly before 8am, when we were woken up by a chainsaw.
“A chainsaw at 8am! For crying out loud!”
The guy with the chainsaw had been busy all day yesterday, cutting large slices of tree into what looked like shelf pieces. I don’t really think he needed to start back up at 8am! He stopped again at 8:15am, thank the good lord, so I went back to sleep.
Dan let me stay in bed until almost 10am, as I was feeling decidedly shite. My head hurt, my eyes hurt, my chest hurt, and I had zero energy. Time to suck it up and get ready to leave!
After we all packed up our gear, we went to the hotel restaurant for an early lunch. I’d loved the music they constantly had playing, and had asked the manager what the CD was. He kindly had gone away and copied their entire playlist onto a flash drive for us! We had to pay for the flash drive, but that was fine.
It was then time to leave. It was not a calm day on the water, so we were fully prepared to get a little wet climbing aboard the boat.
Dan and the kids went first and had no problems, but when I got to the top step of the ladder, the captain moved the boat back out of the shallows, and I lost my momentum. I froze, stuck on the top rung of the ladder.
“Help!”
The boat-lady and Dan both came to my aid and helped pull me over. The boat picked up speed and the water kept spraying over the top. Alex and Abi sat at the front of the boat, and Dan and I took refuge in the cabin.
Once back on land, we hopped in what could only be described as a ‘party van’ (think neon lights, diamantés, and lots of mirrors) to our next hotel at the Hotspring Beach at Phang Nga, up the coast from Phuket.
This was more of a resort style hotel, and was a popular destination for day trippers. Sure enough, we had about an hour in the pool with only a few other people, when it suddenly got incredibly busy from car loads of Russian tourists.
We left the pool for some solitude, and while Alex stayed in the hotel room, Dan, Abi, and I, went for a walk to check out the beach. To get there, we had to walk along a long wooden walkway over an estuary, onto a mound of beach that dropped away to the sea.
“Well, we won’t be coming to the beach, will we?” I said to Dan, as we watched the waves pound the shore.
“Not unless the wind drops, no,” he replied.
We went back to the hotel room and watched a movie, then had dinner. I was rapidly fading, and my cough had become much worse. Hopefully I’d get a good sleep!
The room had two beds: one queen bed upstairs, and one king bed downstairs with the TV. We put the kids in the bigger bed.
“But we’re telling you now,” Dan said, in no uncertain terms, “if there is ANY mucking around, we’ll be taking the big bed back, one of you will be on the tiny couch, and the other on the floor, and you can swap each night. Do you understand?!”
A pillow was placed in the middle to form a dividing barrier, but they must have been quite tired, as they went to sleep with no issues. Fingers crossed my coughing wouldn’t wake them…
Day 398 - 13 Aug ‘24 - Phang Nga. Dan stayed up working until 12:40am, and since we were sharing a bed, I also stayed mostly awake until 12:40am. I didn’t wake us up too much with coughing during the night, and then at 6:30am, we were both woken up by the sun streaming in through our bathroom window.
“What is the point of expensive blackout curtains on the massive floor-to-ceiling, two-storey windows, if the sun comes in through the bathroom window on the other side?!”
My whole rib cage felt like it was in a vice, so I took some ibuprofen, and we went to the restaurant for our included buffet breakfast.
“Make sure you eat heaps, so we don’t need any lunch.”
It was quite an extensive spread - fruits, cereals, breads, omelettes, hot foods, and also Asian cuisine such as fried rice, vegetables, and soups.
“I reckon the best thing about buffet breakfasts is the refillable drink!” I said, after downing my fourth glass of guava juice.
On the way back to our room, we bought some fish food and threw it off one of the bridges in the resort. I’m not sure what fish they were, but they had a green body, a blue split tail, and what could only be described as yellow wings. Very pretty!
We bumped into the manager, who asked us how our room was; this was the second time he’d asked us, so we mentioned the sunrise wake-up call and he said he’d speak to housekeeping about finding a curtain. Great!
We relaxed in the cool of our room for a bit, and when housekeeping arrived, we went to check out the beach. It was definitely a lot less windy than it was yesterday, so hopefully tomorrow the typhoon that had generated the waves the last few days would be gone.
Time to go to the pool. The strategy for today: go to the pool, get loungers by the pool in the shade, stay there until the tourists all come, then go back to our room to watch a movie.
Once the third load of cars had deposited their occupants, we called it quits, and went back to our room. We were all a little hungry by then, but stuck to the ‘no eating until dinner’ plan.
“Time to trick my tummy with Ribena,” I said.
“Chew it,” Dan said.
“What??”
“Don’t just swallow, chew it then swallow. That’s what I told the kids to do!”
By the time the movie ended it was dinner time - perfect! From the restaurant we could see over the pool, which looked lovely in the evening light. All the tourists had also gone, so it was back to being nice and peaceful.
We spent about an hour in the pool after dinner, relaxing in the warm water that was lit up blue at night. My energy levels had recovered a bit, and my nose was not running much anymore, but my cough was a painfully deep and rattley one, that was unfortunately only productive after a lot of effort, which would leave me wheezing until I got my breath back.
Hopefully (I’ve been saying that a lot recently!) I would feel better in the morning. That’s what Dan’s been saying to me every night!
“Hmm, nobody has been to put a curtain or something over the bathroom window,” I said to Dan.
“No.”
“Could you maybe somehow hang one of the pool towels over it?”
“Really?!”
“Yes, please!”
…
“No, it’s fine, I’ll just wake up and then put the pillow over my head like I did this morning.”
…
“Thank you!”
Boy, do I love my husband. And he obviously loves me! Or at least, loves having a less grumpy version of me in the morning, ha ha ha!
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