Day 11: Khao Lak – Singapore

Last day in Khao Lak.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, so that’s where we started.

MBW isn’t a big believer in a hot breakfast, but I don’t mind the occasional omelette with some bacon for breakfast – particularly when there is someone happy to make one for me each day, and I’m not expected to help with the cleaning up.

The bacon at the breakfast buffet is served both English style (soft) and American style (cooked to within an inch of its life), but it’s not good quality bacon, and despite sitting in a hot box, it’s not … hot.

But today, possibly as a farewell gift to me, there was also deep fried chicken pieces.

Will I never learn?

I only visited the buffet about 3 times today – once for the hot breakfast, once for the pastries, and once for the fruit.

I was trying to show some restraint, and I figured that’s a fairly balanced diet that covers most of the food groups.

Plus coffee. Of course.

After breakfast we went back to our room and gave our suitcases a pack. We then jumped into our swimmers and hit the pool for the very last time.

It seemed a bit cooler today. The heat wasn’t as oppressive and the pool felt delightfully cool for a change. Normally it feels like bathwater.

We finished at the pool around 11.30am. Officially checkout is 12.00 noon, but I think that keeping the good looking people around the resort is good for business. Fortunately they were happy to extend our departure time to 2.00pm, which gave us just a little bit more time and worked out better for us, under the circumstances.

Our flight from Phuket (HKT) to Singapore (SIN) doesn’t leave until about 6.30pm, so we don’t need to leave the Ramada until about 3.00pm for a 90 minute ride to the airport.

This is a lot of complicated planning when your brain has been on holidays for almost 2 weeks.

But the important point is that we could stay in the room until 2.00pm.

We were back in our room before 12.00, rinsed off all of the chlorine from the pool, got dressed into regular clothes, and went for a final wander around the streets of Khao Lak and back briefly to the local markets.

After we’d given our suitcases a final reshuffle and pack.

MBW was keen to buy a few last minute gifts for the grandies and we headed back to Mali restaurant for a snack.

We figured that we wouldn’t be getting anything to eat on the Jetstar flight, and leaving everything to chance of finding something edible and affordable at Phuket airport was a risky move.

As my mate Jack Reacher says, “eat when you can”.

Deep fried vegetable spring rolls, and satay chicken skewers.

I hope that nobody is keeping track of the number of times I use the words “deep fried” when I am discussing our diet, but it is concerning me.

Back to the hotel around 1.30pm and we had a final shower … the weather in Khao Lak was very hot after lunch, so you don’t have to do much walking around to find that you need to change out of your sweaty clothes and into something clean and dry.

And not stinky.

We gave the bags a final final pack, and checked the room to confirm we hadn’t left anything incriminating lying around – like the Oreos we’d stolen from the breakfast buffet in case we got hungry around smoko time.

Bags packed, and incriminating evidence destroyed (we put it through our digestive systems to ensure it would NEVER be found), and we headed out to reception to pay any outstanding balance for our account, and then wait for our ride who was due around 2.45.

The reception area is completely open (= not airconditioned = hot and humid), so the reception staff told us to wait downstairs in the airconditioned coffee shop. They said that they would call us when our ride arrived.

There was a weird-looking couple who just sat there and stared at us the whole time, which was pretty creepy …

Our driver (Sartik) arrived and we were notified, so we headed back up to reception.

Sartik (“call me ‘A'”) was … interesting. He found it hilarious to tell us that the 90 minute trip south to Phuket would take 3 hours today (meaning that we would likely miss our flight). When I asked him why so long, he said “only kidding” and then he laughed hysterically at his own joke.

Not funny ‘A’ .. we have a plane to catch!

Road rules in Thailand are unusual. And when I say unusual, I mean somewhere between non-existent and ignored.

‘A’ used a similar code with his blinkers as did our driver who took us to the Ramada initially – flick them on, flick them off … right blinker, left blinker – and speed limits were mostly ignored.

And one interesting concept I learned from ‘A’ was that rather than stop at a red traffic light, he simply sped up and turned on his hazard lights to warn everyone as he went sailing through.

Whatever works, I guess. I mean, it’s mostly only motorcycles and Tuk Tuks on the road, so it’s not like we were in any particular danger.

We were deposited safely at the Phuket International airport departure terminal, and relieved of the 1300 baht (about $56) we had agreed on for the trip.

We did our check-in to our Jetstar Asia flight, left our bags, and went in search of coffee.

We watched a Japanese woman arguing with the airline staff about something, which included lots of exaggerated eye rolling, arm crossing, and mouthing “that’s not my fault”.

Experience tells me that it’s never a good idea to upset the airline staff at the check-in counter for two reasons … firstly because they know people who work on the other side of the immigration counter, and you place yourself at risk of being “randomly chosen” for a full body cavity search.

And secondly, because I imagine it’s a relatively simple task for them to “divert” your bags to Iceland, and you’d be blissfully unaware.

We made it through customs and immigration, and we bought 2 cups of alleged coffee. I say “alleged” because while it looked like coffee, it didn’t smell of taste like coffee …

It seems that arrogance is the universal language of travellers in airport departure lounges, with the usual assortment of selfish, unacceptable behaviour experienced at the departure lounge.

I’m sure that it is not so combative in the Qantas Club, but alas … 🙁

I have to say that after Changi airport, Phuket International airport is a bit of a cesspool. It’s loud, dirty and with relatively few facilities … which is fine when you arrive into Thailand and you are looking forward to your holiday, but not so good at the end of your holiday when you are sadly waiting to depart.

Because we flew Jetstar, we were bussed out to our aeroplane that was waiting in the cheap section of the airport tarmac. No airbridge for us!

A full flight with insufficient legroom in cattle class, but we took off on time, and had a mostly uneventful flight.

Only a 2 hour flight, but we crossed a timeline, so it magically turned into a 3 hour flight and we landed at 9.30pm.

We arrived safely at Singapore’s Changi airport – as did our bags coincidentally – and we made it through customs and immigration without making eye contact with anyone. Experience tells me that eye contact can be easily misinterpreted to mean “I stocked up on cannabis while I was in Khao Lak, so pick me for interrogation” – so no eye contact meant that we escaped without being randomly selected for … whatever.

There was a great deal of immigration officers looking at their iPads, and then scanning the tsunami of people entering Singapore and sending the chosen ones over to have their bags searched … so they were obviously looking for someone but we didn’t fit the profile.

And we didn’t make eye contact anyway.

Bags collected, a quick scoot through the “Nothing to declare” line, and hey presto, we were lined up waiting for a taxi.

Our driver didn’t have a good grasp of English so we didn’t bother trying to engage him in conversation … other than “do you take credit card payments?” and “take us to the Hotel Classic please”.

We arrived at the hotel just after 10.00pm and feeling a little brain dead. And more than a little sad.

Room 202 was assigned and – similar to our last stay in Singapore – the room was tiny. Very clean and nicely presented, but if you brought a cat you wouldn’t have room to swing it.

The room was maybe 3m x 3m, although that might give you a sense of spaciousness. Most of the floor space was taken up by the bed with barely room to walk around the sides of the bed. Plus a tiny bathroom off to the side.

And that’s about it. Shower and a quick coffee. If I don’t have a coffee around dinner time I can pretty much guarantee that I’ll wake up the next morning with a bad headache. Yes, that sounds like an addiction to me too.

Into bed by 11.00pm, and off to the Land of Nod.

One more day until we are boarding the last flight home, but there are still things to do in Singapore before we go, so that will be tomorrow’s news.

Ciao

#Thailand2024