Wander More Work Less

Below are my final thoughts on the holiday.  Cambodia - absolutely loved it, we had high expectations of Angkor Wat and they were exceeded. I know we only visited Siem Reap in Cambodia but that City is a very special place because of the temples and the history. The people are welcoming and very friendly and cannot do enough for you. The temple complexes are bucket list places to visit and worthy of a follow up visit if the opportunity ever presents itself. The food, drink, accommodation, and transport is very cheap. The food was very tasty. The traffic and their roads are a bit chaotic but seem to work effectively for them. They are going to need to do something about their crop burning and the impact this has on the horizon. Thailand - they call it the land of smiles and that is true. The people generally seem so happy there even though, compared with our lives, a lot of them don't have much. Very basic housing in places, overcrowding, and smoky skies a lot of the time. The train...

Emma and Kate picked us up from the airport. Does life get any better than a homecoming welcome hug from your beautiful children. I don't think so. There is a bonus for us though which is a welcome home from our Sammy when we get to the house. 😂 Traveling and holidays are awesome but coming home is always extra special. I guess that's why we choose to live here. Every time we visit somewhere else in the world we see amazing and memorable things that those places have to offer. But it makes you appreciate even more the life we have here in Nelson, New Zealand. 

The Singapore Airlines flight leaves on time at 10.25pm. Some TV watching to settle in. The evening supper meal service is a bit of a disaster though. They seem completely unorganised. They almost miss serving our three seats until I tap someone on the shoulder, and then they run out of the chicken option for Sarah. They eventually find her an alternative as she does not like fish. I had the fish and it was pretty awful but I ate it. The cake was nice. Hopefully breakfast is a bit better run and tastier. 🤞 It was now 1am. Time to try and sleep. A quick brush of the teeth and a sleeping pill. See how this goes. We really should buy one of these more modern soft neck pillows. They look much more comfortable than our old blow up plastic things. I awoke at 5.40am and dozed until 6.15am. I slept soundly thanks to the drugs. I just realised KRIS Flyer members have free WiFi on the plane and we recently joined up. Pinged off a quick message to Kate and Emma.  The breakfast food and servi...

For our flight over four weeks ago our travel agent managed to ensure we had a very short transit stop in Singapore which was good. But this meant we didn't get to have a good look around the airport and given we had never done so thought we would take opportunity to do it today. So after lunch we grabbed our bags and headed to the MRT to go to the airport.  The trip didn't start well in fact it was almost a blimin disaster. We were getting to the first platform and I spotted the train we needed with it's doors open waiting to go. So I jumped aboard. What I didn't see was the red flashing warning lights saying not to jump on. No sooner had I done so and the doors started closing with me on one side and Sarah on the other. Shit! I initially yelled out I would wait for her at her first changeover station but that sounded complicated so then I yelled I would wait at the next station. Fortunately she heard and understood that, I hoped. So at the first stop I hopped out of t...

This morning we decided to go for a walk to the Merlion Fountain statue down by the marina. We went via a couple of lovely old churches, Chijmes and St Andrews, and some beautiful historical buildings. The architecture of the buildings here is great. It was a very hot walk though and I pushed the pace along, "Mr T family chop chop". 🥵 We want to get back and have a shower before we check out of the hotel at midday. Maybe I went too quickly as we got back just after 10am. Sorry Sarah. 😳 You can have a nice rest now though.  We have decided to skip a visit to the famous Long Bar at Raffles Hotel. It sounds like there will be a queue to get in and one Singapore Sling costs NZD $63! Even a pint of Heineken is $30! We both don't like gin and Heineken is ok if there is nothing else but not at that price. Instead we are going to try a nearby food court for lunch today which had good reviews.  The food court called BGAIN turned out to be great. It was Asian food and was filled...

Gosh I wish I had turned my Strava tracker on. We must have walked quite a few kilometres on this excursion. First we went down to check out where the Raffles Hotel is and then we headed towards the Helix bridge. We ended up on another bridge above that but got to it eventually. It takes you to the Marina Sands Mall and the Marina Sands Hotel. That's the one with the fancy viewing platform on the top shaped like a boat. It featured on an Amazing Race or Race Across the World or both.  From there we could access the Gardens by the Bay although I seem to insist on calling them Gardens of the World. They are huge and really neat to wander through and around. Lots of different themes involved such as Chinese, Forest, Mushrooms, Kingfisher, Meadows, etc. One lily pad themed pond had fish in it and we stopped a turtle that surfaced. It looked like Daisy the turtle Jacqui had as a pet. We stopped at a place called Shake Shack for dinner. Two small burgers, the only size they come in, and ...

We have arrived safely in Singapore. The third new country for this trip. We don't count countries until we spend a night in them but we will do that tonight so I'm counting it now. The flight was pretty good, nice enough breakfast, and very nice hosts. A hot welcome towel before takeoff is a nice touch for economy class. We both ended up watching the same movie called Wolfs with George Clooney and Brad Pitt in it. It was good given it was included in the flight ticket price.  Singapore's MRT system had us slightly confused as we couldn't work out where to buy a ticket. That's because they don't have any! Duh. You simply scan your debit or credit card. The only catch was you can't scan the same card twice so I used the Wise card and Sarah used the Mastercard. We have no idea how much it's costing. We've had to change trains twice and it took almost an hour to get to our hotel in Queen Street.  We are staying at the Royal Hotel Queens suggested to us ...

Up at 6am for our flight to Singapore. Breakfast didn't start until 6.30am at the hotel - bugger! We used the free hotel shuttle buggy to save some of the walk to the airport line station. Just a short walk at the end. All smooth sailing getting tickets, 45 Bhat each, and easy check-in and bag drop process. The airport is as massive as you might expect for a major hub airport but easy to navigate. Currently enjoying a very expensive Starbucks coffee and muffin each. 530 Bhat! Can we thank Donald or the airport for those prices? It's 7.30am and we just need to get through security and ready for boarding at 8.30am. Even though the flight isn't until 9.30am.  Got through security after Sarah was pulled up for having sunscreen in her carry on pack. Rookie error! 😉 Then she also couldn't get through the automatic passport photo scanner. But she got an extra manual stamp in her passport that I didn't get. ☹️

Is it just me or do others take their favourite coffee cup and instant coffee on holiday with them? 😂☕ It just seemed a logical thing to do when I was packing my bag. I've done well to ration it such that the last teaspoon was consumed today. Finally I can title a step "One Night in Bangkok" as this is our last night in Thailand before we fly out tomorrow. Yes I know it's our second or fifth night depending on how you do your counting. But as of this second we have just one night left in Bangkok. I had no idea that the 1984 musical Chess, that featured that song, had such an ABBA connection. You learn new things everyday. I also didn't know that Bangkok is known as the City of Angels. I always assumed Los Angeles would claim that.  We have developed a reliable system of returning to restaurants if they are good the first time. So tonight we went back to the Burmese one from last night. We had to have the Chicken Mataba again and because it takes 20 minutes to pr...

Wow that was the biggest selection of hotel breakfast options we have ever seen. Sarah took a video of it and still missed things and had to take an additional two videos. 😂 I stuck to the basics coffee, juice, bacon, egg, pancakes, muesli, and more coffee. Don't worry I'm sure lunch will be on the light side of things. 😉 They even had Pad Thai for breakfast!  After breakfast we walked over to a shopping centre called Central World. We had to cross a river waterway and found a bridge no problem but also found a dead end. Some back tracking required but got there in the end. The mall was massive. We wandered around but soon realised it was higher end shops with higher end prices not bargains. It also wasn't very busy. It was still good to have a look around. Watching the escalators from the top actually made me feel a bit queasy. See video, of the escalators not of me feeling queasy. 😂 We found a cheaper place across the road that was a big super market and Sarah bought ...

We headed up to the top level of the hotel for a swim and an afternoon relax. We paid way too much for a couple of hotel smoothies but it was a nice place to sit and drink them. 264 Bhat for two, 14 bucks! What are we, tourists! 😃 We debated going for the Street Food option for dinner. There are plenty near the big shopping markets we visited earlier today. But it's nice to sit and enjoy your food in a restaurant. I had read a good review for a nearby Burmese place so we went and found that. It was called the Mandalay Food House. We had a Burmese Pad Thai, traditional rice snacks, and a Chicken Mataba. The Rice snacks looked a bit like Indian samosas in shape but instead of pastry they had rice paper outers and wern't deep fried. They came with a super spicy chutney, and a chilli spice mix that just about blew our heads off. 🥵 They were very tasty but we went easy on the additives. The Burmese Pad Thai was nice but we hadn't realised it was a chicken and seafood combo. Sa...

The train pulls into Krung Thep Aphiwat station right on time at 8.10am. We had not been up and awake for very long. The carriage attendant turned our beds back into seats and we barely had time for any book reading before we had to get off the train.  We found the MRT blue line and paid 20 Bhat each to get to the green line station. There we had to do a bit of walking to change lines and stations. Sarah spotted an awesome looking bakery and we fueled up there with enough to keep us moving. The metro trains are super full with work commuting people today. Sarah doesn't even need to hold on to anything. We are so packed in she can't possibly fall over. It did make getting off at our stop slightly challenging. A combination of English and French "excuse moi" and the crowd opens up for us. The green line train is a bit longer and costs 40 Bhat each.  It was pouring with rain outside the arrival train station. The first time we have seen any rain on the holiday. Maybe we ...

There was no GPS coverage while onboard the train so I manually plotted a couple of blank map steps so they kind of follow the train line and didn't look like we jumped in a plane. We boarded the train right on time at 10.24pm. The last two hours of waiting at the train station had been not so pleasant. It was so bloody hot and there weren't any seats under fans. The evening temperature was around 32 degrees. Eventually a train loaf of people left and we grabbed a new seat that had a fan and then grabbed another seat that had a better fan. That and the cooling towels made things more bearable and we could at last do some reading without making the pages/screen wet. 😂 At one stage Sarah went across the road from the station and came back with the same passionfruit flavoured ice block that we had had when leaving the Grand Palace in Bangkok. Yummy and refreshing.  This train is super flash in keeping with the flash packing theme. It's a Chinese built Special Express CNR serv...

We are at the Surat Thani Train Station enjoying coffee (A), sprite(A), and a pineapple shake (S) at the cafe next to Wut Travel place that we visited previously. WiFi still works and they are open until 8pm so we may be able to have dinner here as well. We are under a fan but feck it's hot sitting here at 5pm. Pfffff. 🥵🥵🥵 Haha the woman at the next table saw Sarah's pineapple shake and immediately asked what it was and ordered a watermelon version. Double funny the chicken is still here too, maybe it lives here? We are welcome to hang out at the cafe until dinner time and then closing it seems. Tonight Sarah opts for a chicken burger, plus shared fries, and I have a chicken Pad Thai. I might as well add another to the comparison table. It was pretty good but not the best we've had. 😳 Plus we had yet another large Chang, why not? Total cost of everything including the earlier coffee, etc, was 425 Bhat, or about $22. It's good to be back to paying Mainland prices whi...

A shorter walk this morning of only 2km because it's moving day. But we don't need to depart until 11am so it's a relaxed pack up and then a walk towards town and back along the beach. We haven't yet swum at this beach so thought we better before we leave and we were hot so it made sense. The water is just a bit cooler than the pool which is nice. A short walk through Karma Resort and another swim and smoothie awaits. It's 9.30am so we have some time to chill before catching the shuttle bus out front that "O" has arranged for us.  The shuttle was 20 minutes late which could have been a bit stressful but "O" had come out to the road to wait with us. She was able to call them and find out a passenger had been late so now they were behind schedule. We have plenty of time to get there so all is good once the van arrived. While waiting it was hot and the lady who runs the restaurant that we were standing outside gave us both a strawberry fruit drink w...

Not much happening here this afternoon. Some swimming, reading, Netflix watching, and a couple of games of five crowns. Trip score is now 6 to 1. That's going to be very a difficult score for Sarah to come back from. I've probably jinxed myself by saying that now. 🤣 The temperature is too hot to go wandering far and with our next travel day coming up tomorrow it's nice to just sit around and do not a lot. We had dinner at our go to Osmin restaurant. There are still things on the menu to try plus others worth repeating. Tonight we had chicken Penang curry, sweet and sour pork, and a Papaya salad. The salad was like a spicy coleslaw. We also shared a large Chang. Total cost 380 Bhat, just under $20. After eating we walked along the road to the 7 Eleven to use an ATM. Our cash reserves were getting a bit low and we didn't want to be hunting for an ATM tomorrow.

This mornings walk was in the opposite direction to Mae Nam Beach. Not quite 4km return with a nice loop section away from the main road and along the beach. We picked up a small friend as soon as we left the main road and he stayed with us for the whole loop. We arrived back for our morning mango smoothie dripping wet. It's time for a swim.