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Hi from Phuket!
Indeed, I am back at the place where I started my Southeast Asian adventure in October. I caught some virus along the way, so my first week of 2025 has been marked by sore throat, headaches, and exhaustion.
Before I continue with island-hopping through Southern Thailand, I decided to recover first in Phuket Town, testing a few more hostel offers while here.
Despite struggling with constant coughs, I used the downtime to finish an article on a Slovenian hotel I visited just before my Asian trip.
Hotel Jama in Postojna is a very special place. Here, besides your private guest room, you can also spend some time in the so-called Secret Rooms, a spy center of the former communist regime that was found during the hotel renovation. What an exciting tour to engage in!
I love discovering such hidden treasures. Just before arriving in Thailand, I spent an entire day at Singapore’s Changi Airport. For the first time, I stayed in a transit hotel. Having a room with a planespotting capacity was fantastic! Being able to check in immediately after landing, and also at a high-quality hotel such as Aerotel Singapore, was a true privilege.
But the hotel’s feature that fascinated me the most was the swimming pool at the airport’s rooftop, the only such place in the world! What a delight it was to be able to take a refreshing dip between the two flights.
The 24 hours passed by more quickly than one would imagine. Besides just swimming at Terminal 1, I walked, bounced, bicycled, hiked, slid, was mazed, and amazed at other terminals too, including Jewel, the central part of Changi’s airport necklace. It was a cool little project, with numerous adventures that deserve more space than we have here.
Running from one exciting thing to another also exhausted me. I felt like a kid in a candy store. At the world’s best airport, which excels in providing interactive experiences with nature, art, and entertainment, I’ve seen everything from tropical sun to kinetic rain and artificial snow.
And as soon as I stepped on Thai soil, my immune system fell apart.
But leaving Singapore didn’t go smoothly either. After 24 hours inside the airport, I spent an additional 2,5 hours parked on the runway.
Scoot is an airline infamous for not departing on time, but in Singapore, we were trapped in a Boeing 787, with a technical issue that was never clearly explained. Just three days after that South Korean plane crash, being in another problematic Boeing was a stressful affair. Googling ‘Society of the Snow survivors’ now?
Only fatigue, I guess, prevented me from worrying too much. I even overslept the disembarking call. An hour after our scheduled departure time, I woke up in my seat, seeing everyone up, supposedly preparing to deboard the plane that I thought was already flying. In the end, instead of letting us out, they decided engineers would reassess the situation “in 70 minutes”, gave us some water and snacks, and hoped for the best.
In the end, we arrived in Thailand later than planned, but safe, sound, and in one piece. Only my head wanted to split in two.
Hopefully, I’ll recover completely soon, and continue exploring more of this extraordinary world. This time, on boats.
Have a headache-less week!
Ivan Kralj
Pipeaway.com
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