The girls are getting a bit more adventurous and tried sushi for breakfast today and then fed a visiting baby elephant his breakfast.

Another day by the pool but going to do a bit of island hopping and snorkelling tomorrow hopefully.

Day 1 and day 2 in Thailand have been spent mostly relaxing by or in the pool at the villa. John has learnt to say “thank you” in Thai and is charming all the staff who keep whisking him off for ice cream. Four ice creams after dinner last night! They are also letting him “help” drive the golf buggy.

We got a nice surprise at dinner last night. Before we left home we paid for what we thought was Bed and breakfast here, it turns out it was actually half board.

We made a brief visit to the beach yesterday for lunch but haven’t done anything more adventurous than that yet.

The first night we arrived the children were all very late going to bed. They went shortly after midnight which was just after 5pm at home. We followed about an hour later.

4.30 am I had a sleeping husband and four wide awake kids. They all settled again except the three year old. So I ended up reheating the room service pizza left over from earlier and feeding him pizza and juice and reading storied until 6.30am when he finally decided to go back to bed. I am really glad we have a house here rather than the hotel rooms we will have everywhere else. Access to a kitchen and a sitting room separate to the bedrooms was great.

Just back to sleep at 7.30 when I hear the boy awake again. Definitely Nigel’s turn to mind him.

From when we left our house in Dublin until we got to the hotel in Phuket was 27 hours. I had imagined it was going to be hugely stressful and had pictured a crying, upset 3 year old on a 12 hour overnight flight. It all went surprisingly well. The kids slept most of the way waking up in time for breakfast.

The 3 year old set off the alarm in security at Heathrow and got patted down which he thought was very funny. He also had a 20 minute screaming meltdown in Singapore Airport which was cured with a trip to McDonalds.

Singapore Airport is great. Our next flight was not booked as a connection. Our travel agent had said we needed to go through immigration, pick up our bags, check in and go through security again. Not in Singapore. The nice staff at the transfer desk issued our boarding passes, scanned our luggage tags and took care of everything. Well everything other than the screaming child.

Phuket Airport was not quite as organised but our bags were there as promised by the staff in Singapore and there was a man with a sign with our name on it. That was one of my essential requirements for the trip. Every airport we land in I want someone holding a sign with our name on it to take me to the hotel. No trying to organise buses or taxis with tired children.

We arrived at the hotel to be greeted with flower garlands and welcome drinks.

Untitled, a photo by claireclerkin on Flickr.

My daughters had a dilemma. We are leaving this morning but the school are celebrating World Book Day and the children are allowed to come in wearing a costume and they want to take part. I did advise that taking three flights in a costume could be very uncomfortable so we compromised. Their costumes were improvised this morning from onesies and they are wearing their travelling clothes underneath. They get to go to school for an hour, attend assembly, then home, take off the onesie, grab their bag and get in the taxi.

Sound reasonable?