Thailand- Day 1 (so really... Singapore)

We climbed Fuji on Friday and then George left first thing Sunday morning on a trip to Australia. What a lucky guy! We were supposed to leave Thursday for our vacation to Thailand! We wanted to take a trip when George got home from deployment in June but it took us a few months to find time in our busy lives to make that work. So, August it was! We spent weeks starring at the computer screens learning about the areas we were traveling to, airplane tickets to get there, which hotels to stay at and recommended restaurants in the area. It was exhausting. The only solace I took from this research was that eventually we would get to go there and experience Thailand. Long story short… George didn’t make it home from his trip in time for us to make our scheduled flight and hotel reservations so we had to cancel and reschedule for when he did finally get home. It only delayed our trip by 4 days and was truly a blessing in disguise because airfare dropped because of the different days and he was able to get a few extra days of leave.

The night before we left for our vacation George and I were relatively busy. And when I say busy we had two events to attend. I had my monthly Bunco game and George joined a fantasy football draft here on the base with some of his friends. And so although we had to check in at the terminal at 4:15, I wasn’t home until about 10:30, with several loads of laundry to do, and George didn’t make it home until almost midnight. Then we packed and George ended up getting in about an hour and a half of sleep, and I slept for zero minutes. With coffee and bagels in hand, we were off to the base terminal to sign in for a flight. We made it on the flight!!! (I am behind on a blog or two but when (if) I ever get caught up, I’ll explain why making it on a Space-A flight is such a big deal.)

So we got on one of the nicest planes we could have imagined for a Space-A flight. There were only 7 passengers on a flight with 27 seats. They gave us two different meals, snacks and drinks galore and they played 3 movies during our 6.5 hour flight. My favorite snack choice was the king sized 3 Musketeer’s bar, which I put in my purse for a snack for later. My only complaint was how cold it was. Seeing as how it was August it was hot outside and I knew it would be in Singapore too so I wore some cotton gaucho’s I bought in the PJ section at Target (I’m bringing them back) thinking they would be enough warmth. I ended up with two blankets wrapped around my legs. It almost made it miserable!

We landed safely, got our bags and headed towards our taxi. At one point along the short walk there was one of those metal revolving door turnstile things. (Know what I mean?) George made it successfully through with his two bags and then it was my turn. I’ve been afraid of revolving doors since I was a kid. I couldn’t begin to tell you why, but they make me nervous they’ll scrape my heels as I go through or something if I’m not walking quickly enough. Anyways, as I went through this thing with my two bags, one in front of me, one behind me, I got stuck. It wouldn’t turn. And I was trapped. And I kind of freaked out.  And by freaked out, I mean hyperventilating and screaming. George started yelling at me to stop screaming and then there was a guard who came out of nowhere to help me move my bags and remove myself safely from that awful contraption.  Crisis averted.

We got checked into our room which was small but adequate for what we needed. It was clean enough and since it was only one night, certainly nothing to complain about! We took a walk to an area known as Little India (after a short detour because we got lost) and finally settled on an Indian Restaurant on the corner for dinner. I ordered butter chicken and rice because at our favorite Indian Restaurant in Japan that dish isn’t too spicy. Wrong assumption here. I should have specified. I was literally fighting back tears and coughing and blowing my nose. George’s dish was even spicier so there wasn’t trading either. I guess this was actually a great introduction to spicy food, seeing as how we were headed to Thailand: home of spicy food. We stopped at McDonald’s on the walk home and got me a double cheeseburger. :)