Day 1 - Let the Adventure Begin

 Day 1 - Sept. 3-4

We had Barry pick us up at Sweet Water at 7am. It was about to become a long day. Phuket, Thailand, is 13 hours ahead of us and we were going to have several flight changes throughout the day. It was raining as we left the house, so lucky Barry had a minivan to get us to the airport raindrop-free. We flew to Belize city and had Abel pick us up at the municipal airport, so we could stop and have lunch at Smokez, before heading onto Miami.

The layover in Miami was 2 hours, but by the time we got through customs and immigration, our flight to Doha was already boarding and we ended up being the last ones on the plane. Miami is a pretty large airport and we had Anna in a wheelchair, as she had been soar from the pancreatitis. The flight to Dohar, Qatar was seemed way longer than 13 hours, but that my be due to lack of sleep. Anna, Olivia, and Thomas were able to get some good zzzz. Qatar Airways plane was definitely a step up from the American, Delta and Uniteds of the world. Before long, we managed to land and hung out in the airport for four hours before making our last flight to Phuket. Doha airport is definitely the nicest and swankiest airports I have ever been in. I guess a lot of oil money can help with that. There wasn't a shitty store in the place, only the highest end luxury brand stores you would find on Rodeo Drive.

The flight from Doha to Phukey was a little over seven hours. That would not have seemed bad if the previous on would not have been thirteen hours. We were all getting excited and ready to get there. We arrived in Phuket at 7:35am on Sept. 5th. The airport was realitivily small, but managed to move quite a bit of passangers. As we got down to baggage claim, we quickly realized our bags were not forwarded from Doha. Nobody seemed to care and were just happy we had finally arrived. Qatar Airways would be delivering our bags to us at our Airbnb later that evening. 

Zen, who we rented the Airbnb from had arranged a pickup for us from the airport. It was a nice little mine bus that was very spacious and macked out. The ride, which we thought would be quicker was 1.5 hours to our short term home. The driver was kind enough to stop on the drive by a - you guessed it - 7/11, so we could get some drinks and snacks. Before we knew it, we were at our place. 

Melanie met us at the Airbnb and showed us the ropes and we quickly dropped the bags and the kids and I headed to town. Anna stayed at the place for a bit to rest and get all of us set. Olivia, Thomas, and I didn't waste a moment. Where's the food? We found a place in an area called the Kata Night Market. It was several alleys containing shops and restaurants. Not sure what the name of the place where we ate, but everyone said the food was amazing. The rice, as simple as it is, tastes so much better than I have had anywhere. The asian culture really has the ramen, noodle, and rice thing down - period!

Mom asked us to get a few things from the pharmacy and we picked up some additional items before heading back up to the place. We all decided a good nap may be the best course of action. Let me just say, we all laid down around 1:30pm and didn't wake up until 9:30pm. I headed down to Kata town while everyone else was still sleeping and headed to the Black Bear and Cat Bar. Great little bar with live music and before long Anna texted to come get her. I headed back up and got Anna, hailed a Grab cab and five minutes later we were back at the bar. Olivia and Thomas came to meet us around 11pm. We all left the bar around 1am and crashed like babies again.