"I thought we were leaving at 8."
"No, we are arriving at 8."
"Oh."
Not a good start.
We have a history of getting times mixed up when travelling. Actually I have history of messing up times. We were in Santiago in Spain and due to catch a bus. Somehow I had left my watch on stopwatch and managed to interpret the time we had been in the internet cafe as the actual time. We wandered up to the bus station only to discover the bus had left 30 minutes previously. Bugger. I sulked about it for days which is a bit weird as if you've ever been to Santiago you'll know it's a lovely place to spend an extra day.
Anyhoo there was to be no mistake this time. We all piled in the car with Ben strategically positioned in between 4 large pieces of luggage in the dicky seat of the station wagon. This was both a way on saving money on a taxi fare as well as making sure we remembered getting all of our luggage out of the car (I've done that before). The only way we could forget something is if we forgot Ben and he wasn't going to let us do that in a hurry.
We picked up Joel who was going to drive the car back home and headed out to the airport with Finley arms in the air very excited. We duly arrived and many thanks to Joel for taking us to the airport. We waved him off and immediately found the queue to check in the luggage. The queues have been a bit of a shock to Ben and Finley, queue for checking in luggage, queue to get our bags scanned, queue for passport control. We eventually got in and both Finley and Ben were very excited about the fact they were up way past their bedtime.
Finley: "We're still up because we're going on a big trip!"
Ben looked like a real adventurer with his backpack on confidently striding ahead. I was feeling less confident (travelling with 3 kids are we mad?) as my body seemed to be having multi systems failure. In the few hours before we left home I had got a very sore throat, a cold sore on my lip, headache, chafing and the runs. I kept this information to myself until I decided that it was much better sharing with Delia. I felt much better after that.
We then spent the next couple of hours mooching around waiting to get on the plane. The airline people were VERY helpful as they gave us an extra 2 seats to try and get more comfortable. As we got on the plane both Ben and Finley could hardly control their excitement as they knew they would be able to play computer games in their seats, in Ben's case he openly stated he would do so for the entire 9 hour flight.
Overall the kids were fantastic on the plane apart from a 10 minute screaming session from Maja which felt like3 hours. We were a little terrified beforehand. Maja zonked, then Finley stretched out on 2 seats and eventually Ben slept too. Unfortunately however, Maja kept waking and thus kept waking Delia so she got hardly any sleep for the entire flight. It was during this time that Delia invented a new language, "Pillow language". Not pillow talk, very different. When she felt she need to communicate with me without waking Maja then the only way that seemed to get across the urgency required was a pillow thrown at my head at warp speed. 4 times she did this while I was asleep.
We landed in Bangkok at 5.30am local time and when we got off the plane the heat and humidity heat us like a sledgehammer. We decided upon a taxi to our hotel and it was money well spent. So was the money spent on the hotel. Very nice indeed. Can't believe how different our accommodation is to the last time we were in Bangkok 13 years ago. Then we stayed in a decrepit concrete cube on Khao San Rd about the size of a cupboard and dined on banana pancakes and street food. Now of course we have 3 little ones and the thought of doing that made us shudder, so we are staying in a very pleasant serviced apartment with a pool. Perhaps too pleasant as Ben in particular is getting a bit used to a cushy form of travel. We are hoping they will eat a few different things and so far they're being pretty good.
A spot of very pleasant breakfast.
We wandered around town for a bit and eventually came back to the apartment where Maja fell asleep at 6pm and the boys not long after. The apartment we have has 1 bedroom so I'm sleeping on the sofabed and the rest of them in a huge king size bed. However, during the night both Ben and Finley came to sleep with me and I ended up sleeping on the floor. Not so swish after all.
