First Stop... Phuket

An extremely long day…. 21 hours after leaving home in the UK, we finally made it to our first hotel in Southern Phuket, Saturday’s Residence. The 12 hour flight felt very long although we were able to get a little bit of sleep on the plane overnight, but as you can imagine it was not very comfortable at all. Finally we arrived, got through customs and were out of the airport relatively quickly. What struck us first wasn’t the heat but the humidity and within minutes we got a sweat on. The first job was to find a SIM card so we could get online to sort out transfers to our hotel. After reading up prior to leaving, the best place to buy a SIM card was at the airport itself on arrival which was exactly what we did. We were also aware that airport taxis rip off tourists as you can imagine. To somewhat avoid this we'd agreed to keep our heads down and walk a little way out of the airport to find a local taxi. Unfortunately the airport ground didn’t lend itself very well to that so we decided to book a transfer on Grab, Asia’s Uber equivalent. We were really surprised at the cost so proceeded to book the taxi. What turned up was some interesting looking mini bus with a gold interior and an equally interesting but very friendly driver.

Some time later we arrived at our first hotel. Being the first, we'd booked this sometime in advance and what a hotel it was. More like an apartment with an open plan living space, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and ground floor balcony leading to the outdoor pool. We were very pleasantly surprised although we wanted to ease ourselves gently into the travelling experience but knew this wouldn't be the norm.

After settling in we left for dinner at a local restaurant and enjoyed a starter, mini shrimp pad Thai and fresh pineapple juice all for £3. Later on we walked back and decided to take a late dip in the pool before calling it a night. The grounds were so quiet but absolutely beautiful as the pool shone in the dark. Just before going to bed, we had our first mosquito encounter. Not spotting it for a little while, it was eventually splattered by Dan’s hand leaving a little red splodge on his leg. A well needed sleep is in order ready for our first full day in Southeast Asia!Read more