D-Day – 28th December 2005

What a day of peace, calm and general relaxation...whoops, I think we’ve confused our life with someone else’s!

The day we have been anticipating since May finally arrived. With it came a major lack of sleep and general exhaustion. Neither of us got much sleep yesterday, but we were up at the crack of dawn. By 9am we had finished packing (which required Mum to do an emergency dash to the laundromat to dry some clothes) and were on our way into the city. We had to take care of a few administrative things before meeting our families for a farewell brunch at Ascot. We arrived there just after 10.30am and found everyone else sitting waiting, which was quite a shock. We’re usually the first to arrive, not the last!

After eating a good breakfast and saying our goodbyes, we got dropped off at the airport around 1pm, anticipating a leisurely check-in, a few drinks to toast our journey and then departure. This all changed when we realised that Fletch had left his credit cards at my parent’s house. After a few panicked phone calls, they found the errant cards and proceeded to break the land-speed record from Caboolture to the airport. The cards arrived, we ran through immigration and arrived at the gate just as we were called to board. We downed a few whiskies to help ease the stress and sat back to enjoy the flight.

After a fairly uneventful eight hours, we arrived in Bangkok about 8.45pm. It took us til 10pm to get through immigration and out through customs. We hailed a taxi and headed to the youth hostel, where we had secured accommodation for a whopping $2 each, per night. This got us an air-conditioned room with beds that are best described as good for the soul. However, sleep is calling and hard beds or not, we are going to sleep…

Fletch’s tips for new travellers

If you are spending eight hours in a sealed tin can 40 000 ft above the earth, do not, under any circumstances, spend the preceding three days eating bean salad that is washed down with lager.