6 Week Gap Year

Pool at Prince Palace Hotel Bangkok




Pool at Royal Lighthouse Marina





24th November (Friday)
Up early and pack to leave Prince palace hotel and then indulge myself in their fantastic buffet breakfast. Get taxi limousine to Suvarnabhumi airport for Bangkok Airways flight to Phuket.
Bangkok Airways have just opened a new passenger waiting lounge here at Suvarnabhumi and it offers breakfast including non-alchoholic drinks for free. It is a relaxing area and very welcome. Move into departure gate lounge and sit down to wait for the gate call at 11.45. After a short time a young couple walk in laughing and joking, sit next to me and laugh about leaving a passport somewhere. We strike up a conversation and appears Harry has left his passport at the hotel. Good job he’s on an internal flight! We laugh and joke and swop stories of our travels and are suddenly frozen mid sentence as our names come over the speaker system. “Would passengers Mr XXXXX, Miss YYYYYYY and Mr Derek Scanlon please make their way to Gate 3 as their plane is waiting to depart”. Wow, what happened there? Did someone remove 45 minutes from the clock? It transpires that Suvarnabhumi airport does not make flight announcements and it is passenger’s responsibility to make the connections and board on time. As we hurtle down the sky bridge we turn the corner and there is ……………………. A queue of passengers still waiting to board. Not that late after all. Great 1 hour flight and some of the best food I’ve ever had on a plane (barring Club class BA) consisting of perfect noodles in an oyster, pepper and garlic sauce with shrimps. However I manage to push the dish accidentally off the tray and the contents settle warmly into my lap. I retrieve it all almost instantaneously remembering the 5 second rule regarding food and floors (substitute lap). Put it back in the dish and find I am now minus 2 prawns. Had 6 to begin. There they lurking on the floor, forget it can’t bend down there with tray, water, food and sticky lap. Feel distinctly cheated by this and slightly embarrassed by the interesting oily stain on the front of my shorts.
Disembark and eventually get met by Jim from Royal Lighthouse Villas who urges me to take a seat in the airport lounge as he has more guests to collect from the next flights. Wait nearly an hour for this and then we all board the shuttle bus. 4 of the six of my companions are from Perth and are very good company on the way to the resort. So Hi Peter and Kerry, and Alan and Joy. We arrive at the Phuket Boat Marina and get our room allocations and I am next door to the Perth couples. Kerry warns me regarding Alan’s laugh but to be truthful guys I never heard a thing. As for the couple at #14 their favourite trick was to turn the tv on at 7.00am exactly every morning at a very high volume and then proceed to shout at each from opposite ends of the apartment. English naturally. The villa rooms are of a good quality with kitchen and dining room and lounge area downstairs with a downstairs toilet and washroom. Upstairs, a good sized double bedroom at the front with a/c, a largish bathroom and huge wet room shower and finally a large master bedroom at rear overlooking a canal between us and other apartments.
I unpack and explore for a while and collect a few essentials from the marina Supermercado, including beer (no, sorry, that is an essential) then wander round the Marina and then head for one of the 2 pools. Sitting in this sun is very difficult for too long and eventually give up and go and get showered and changed for dinner. Visit the Watermark restaurant by the marina which is apparently the hot, hip and trendy place to be on a Friday night if you are of the yachting and boating persuasion, which I didn’t discover until later in the week. Chefs pasta quite good but am being stared at by every one as eating on my own. I am told later that the Watermark is used as a networking rendezvous for ex-pats from Europe and Australia mainly. There are also many Thai girls there who I suspect are looking for thair rich man to take them away tyo a better life. As the evening progressed (and I wasn't there that long the Thai girls had managed to attach themselves to some of the men and bottles of champagne were being opened. (Not sure who was celebrating the more , the girls or the men!) Go back to apartment have beer and watch James Bond on the Star movie channel! I know how to have a good time.