So, back to the honeymoon. First off, I can't advocate enough how important it is to have at least one day off between your wedding and leaving for your honeymoon. At least, I suppose it's ok to leave the day after the wedding if your destination isn't very far, but if you have what pretty much amounts to nearly two days between leaving your home and arriving somewhere that has a bed, you NEED that day after your wedding. Heck, you need it anyway. Aside from opening our wedding presents (ooooh) we spent nearly the whole day in bed. Yes, sleeping. :-)
So on the Sunday morning after The Big Day we got up bright and early, and set off at around 9am for my parents' house, since they had kindly volunteered to take us to the airport (this despite having fetched my aunt and uncle who arrived from Italy on Wednesday, fetched my other aunt on the Thursday, and returned her on the Saturday. They might as well live at that
dang airport. They're heroes.). We loaded their car, left mine in their garage for the duration, and arrived at the airport around 10:15 (perfect for 3-hours-prior check-in, since our flight was to leave at 13:10.) That took all of five minutes, and we spent the next three hours being bored at a restaurant. I was already muttering about how much I hate travelling.
The view of our check-in counter when it got a bit busier later.Eventually we got on the plane, which was awesome for one reason: the TV. Now I haven't travelled out of the country since I came back from my year in England in 2003, so this might be old hat to you guys, but this was the first plane I'd ever been on where you could choose what you wanted to watch, when you wanted to watch it, and pause it when you needed to speak to the flight attendant/go to the teeny loo/sleep. It was brilliant. I watched a bunch of tv episodes, including Frasier, Two & a Half Men, Family Guy, even Hannah Montana (which I'd never seen before and thought was dire). Then I watched the movie Mr Brooks, slept a bit, and watched part of something else which escapes me right now. All of this made the 12.5 hour journey to Hong Kong quite a lot more bearable than I'd feared. Because of the time difference (Hong Kong is 6 hours ahead of South Africa) we arrived at around 8am Monday morning Hong Kong time. I think I'd had about three hours sleep, and Mr RS, who finds it impossible to sleep in planes, had had pretty much nothing. And now we had a seven hour wait before the flight to Phuket.
Me eating an apple while sleeping in the Hong Kong airport.Those seven hours were not the most enjoyable of my life, to put it mildly. We wandered around like zombies for a bit, had some Burger King fries (yuck, but better than McD's), and eventually ended up in the waiting area, surrounded by sleeping people. Mr RS insisted he was completely fine and that I should have some sleep while he read. Which I did; and you'll know how tired I was when I say that sleeping on a two-seater chair, using my rucksack as a pillow, in a freezing
airport was absolutely blissful. I was doing beautifully until Mr RS woke me up, insisting that he needed someone to talk to because the words were walking off the pages in his book. This was when I told him in no uncertain terms to go to sleep, while I attempted to stay awake with my own book. It wasn't pretty, but I did it. Eventually it was time to get our connecting flight, and I think I slept nearly the entire 3.5 hours, while Mr RS, who won't even TRY to sleep, damn him - watched WALL-e. (Btw, can I just say how much I heart that movie? It's goorgeous. And it doesn't hurt that it features Hello Dolly! Put on your Sunday clothes, there's lots of world out there....).
It was still just light when we arrived in Phuket, and we found our hotel transfer bus easily enough (a huge weight off my shoulders, since I'd been worrying the entire time about what we'd do if they weren't there), and then it was another half hour journey. The first thing that struck me on that sleepy, twilight, slightly surreal journey, was how poor the people seemed to be. Granted, we were just on one road the whole time, but judging by the tiny towns we drove through, and the squatter-camp-like houses made of corrugated iron and cardboard, I'd say these people were pretty damn poor. Oh, and the stray dogs struck me too. They were everywhere. I'm always terrified when I see an animal in the street, because I'm convinced that I'm going to see it killed right there in front of me, so this was quite scary for me. (Note: this never happened. Those are some wily canines).
We arrived at our hotel, where we were brought welcoming fruit juice while they signed us in, and then a nice lady with quite good English took us to our beach front cottage, where this awaited us:
Awww!! Yes, those are real flowers!I don't know if I was more excited about the flowers or the prospect of sleeping. Except, now that we were there, it seemed a shame not to explore the hotel and get something to eat. Which we did. Unfortunately our nighttime photos didn't turn out too well for the most part, but this is
the best one:
And me, having had sushi which fell apart as I picked it up, and which therefore had to be guzzled whole, drinking a coconut-milk drink. I mention the sushi because it was covered with orange stuff which got all over my face. Yum, so ladylike. Mr RS insists he didn't notice before he took the photos.
And then it was off to bed! Except I can't leave you without a few pictures of what the hotel actually looks like, because, Oh My Gawd, SWOON just does not cover it!
Did I mention SWOON?
Can't wait to hear more!
ReplyDelete... but for the record. McDonald's fries are WAY better than Burger King's. :P