Planning for Thailand, Malaysia & Singapore – Four Days to Go

We’re on the countdown to our first big trip around Asia. Four more sleeps to go.

I am now (slightly) regretting booking the Emirates flight from Brisbane to Singapore that leaves at 2.30am.

We are technically leaving on Thursday 26 April but I need to drill into my head that we’re actually leaving on Wednesday night. We have to be at the airport around midnight on Wednesday to depart in the wee hours of Thursday morning. I can see that this would be easy to mix up – arriving at the airport for your flight on the Thursday night. I wonder how many people do this?!

Lee doesn’t think his Dad is going to want to drive us to the airport at 11pm at night so we might have to take an airport shuttle. This means we’ll have to leave at 8pm and sit around the airport for an extra couple of hours. For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure, Brisbane airport is boooring! It’ll also cost us an extra A$115 for the shuttle which would have worked out the same as taking the Etihad flight that left during the day. I can make the best plans but you can never count on other people. 🙁

Not Our Boat!

Quality Time Strolling the Canals with Grandma

Our last week in Mooloolaba has been lovely. We’ve had my Mum here to visit. Reuben has spent lots of quality time with Grandma. I’ve been getting on with my pre-trip checklist. So far this includes:

• Deciding what to take to Asia – We don’t need everything we have here in Australia. Some of it is getting sent back to Christchurch with my Mum when she leaves tomorrow – including the all important car seat and a few items like running shoes and jeans that we surely won’t need in the tropics. We’re leaving out Mountain Buggy here and hope that Lee’s Mum will be able to bring it back to New Zealand later in the year.
• Buying a small, folding umbrella stroller (and pimping it out with Elmo stickers). Reuben has been having a great time pushing it around the house with his little collection of Australian native bird plush toys.
• Buying other items I think we’ll need on the road like:
• A few travel sachets of toddler formula just in case we can’t find anywhere to make up a bottle
• Two pairs of training pants just in case we can’t find any nappies and to use at the beach when nappies aren’t really essential
• Mini bottles to decant a few toiletries into like nappy rash cream, steroid cream for extreme nappy rash and Eno for Lee’s tendency to overindulge. This has made a big difference to the size of our toilet bags.
• Sewing a label into Reuben’s blankets listing our name and email address. Reuben has a major blanket fixation and can’t sleep, relax or drink a bottle without his favourite (pink) blanket. If we lost his pink blanket we literally wouldn’t know what to do. He would be in absolute despair. Before she left NZ Grandma found the identical fabric, in orange not pink, so that’s our back-up plan.

Sunset Kayaking in Mooloolaba - Reuben is in between Lee's legs!

Nothing More Entertaining Than a Tap and a Big Pot