Do you ever have those moments where suddenly everything is funny, and you reflect on what you're laughing at and think to yourself, "yep, I've gone crazy".
That basically sums up our day today.
Our day started as about relaxing as could be possible. We woke around 7am, I made a few FaceTime calls back home, and finally sometime around 10:30 we managed to convince ourselves to get out of bed and pack.
Our flight out of Vietnam wasn't leaving till 3:45 so we spent an hour in what may have been the most hipster coffee shop I've been to and it's smack dab in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam.
We opted to head to the airport with plenty of time to spare which turned out to be a good thing because it took us about 2 hours to check in and pass customs. Not because we experienced any hiccups just because that's apparently how they do things in this airport. Slowly. We got to our gate with 45 minutes to spare (plus the 15 minutes late they boarded us).
Once we boarded, our plane to proceeded to sit at the terminal for another 45 minutes because the engineer had to check the faulty navigation system on our plane. We were getting a little nervous at this point as we only had a 2 hour layover in Singapore before catching our flight to Phuket and we were already an hour behind.
We took an hour forty minute flight to Singapore where we quickly went to our connecting flight to Phuket and we boarded without a hitch. This is where we started to lose our sanity. Suddenly everything was funny. From the man with a green beard to the man who's eyebrows travelled down his nose to the hacking hurling noises from the person at the back of the plane to the labour pain like noises from some lady. It was almost all too much to bare. The flight from Singapore to Phuket was only 50 minutes...
We arrived at Phuket promptly on time at 9:05pm, quickly passed customs, collected our backpacks and got a cab to our hotel.
Or so we thought.
Our cab driver was a chipper Thai man. He hastily wisked us away in what we assumed was the direction of our hotel. I truly believed he assumed as much as well. We drove into the dark Thai night until out cab driver pulled over at a tourist company and a sweet and friendly Thai women explained to us that our cab driver had no clue where our hotel was but she would set him straight. Moments later we were backing out and on the highway (6 days in the mayhem of Vietnamese traffic never compared to the fear we experienced as our cab BACKED INTO highway traffic).
Educated in where we were going, our cab driver proceeded down the highway to "our hotel". We arrived at a dark and unlit apartment building. Not a hotel. We convinced our cab driver to stay with us while we checked the building. He assured us we were at the right place. We assured him we were not assured.
We were right. A gentleman from the apartment building lent Alicia his phone so we could call our hotel and clarify its location. Finally we believed all was sorted. And thank the good Lord, it was (although at this point our cab driver was becoming increasingly wary of the situation and actually told us to just go back to Canada - we still aren't sure if he was kidding or not, but he didn't take us back to the airport like he said he was going to, so perhaps he was just kidding about us going back to Canada). We turned around and drove back in the direction we had come from and finally reached our hotel.
Our hotel was approximately 10 minutes from the airport. We were in our cab for over an hour...
Once we checked into our room and made the acquaintance of the lizard inhabiting our shower we walked across the street to the 7-11 to grab water and ice cream for dinner.
Did I mention we ran out of Vietnamese Dong (their currency) so all we had to eat for the entire day was a few dried mango slices and a handful each of cashews? So naturally, ice cream seemed like the best dinner option upon our arrival in Thailand. Also it is 11:30 at night and we're tired and grumpy and hungry and wanted ice cream so we bought ourselves ice cream.
I am so very excited to go to sleep tonight and more excited to wake up in the morning and head to the beach for a day of swimming and tanning and sipping coconuts on the beach. Also getting a massage is at the top of the list.
Although in the moment it feels like our sanity was left somewhere in Vietnam, we're confident a little fun in the sun will bring it back.
As always, thanks for following along, prayers for safety and health are always appreciated (Alicia has a pestering head cold right now we would love to see go away).
-mo
PS. I'm sorry this post lacks photographs and all the other stuff I usually blog about. Today was a boring travel day. Also we are just really tired and the effort wasn't there. Tomorrow will be all beaches and ocean!