January 17, 2022
Time has flown by since our return to Canada in June of 2020. A lot has happened during our time in Langley.
Shaun was able to return to Golder, on a one-year contract, Paige started UBC in August of 2021 and Jordan went to in person learning at Yorkson Creek Middle School in September. Jordan was able to join a hockey team, the Langley Lightning. She played until December but, sadly stopped due to Covid numbers increasing. I started a job at The Mad Italian Pizza & Pints, to keep myself busy.
Mid-November, Shaun returned to Malaysia, to get Element back to being seaworthy. Upon his arrival, there was so many more issues than anticipated. This left Jordan and I at the apartment until our flights to Phuket, Thailand via Singapore on January 14, 2022.
I have mastered the art of packing up an apartment and finding a tenant to rent the place. Lucky for me, I have found excellent movers to aid in moving our stuff into the two storage units that accompany our apartment. The Ferguson Moving guys are fantastic at Tetris and were able to successfully pack away our belongings once again, with room to spare.
The last days in Langley were hectic. The Monday before the movers came, I had to finish packing and Jordan and I moved to the first of several hotels. The following day, they came in and moved everything down to the storage units. Wednesday, the cleaning ladies arrived, Jordan and I checked out of the hotel, packed the car up and headed to Shoppers for our PCR test. Once this was completed, we headed to Staples to print off our Thai passes and then headed back to the apartment. We paid the cleaners and added some touch up paint to the walls before we handed the keys off to the new tenant. Once the hand off was complete, J and I headed out to Richmond to our final Canadian hotel before our flight. The following day, I picked Darryl up at the YVR South terminal so, that I could sell him the car. This went smoothly and D dropped me off at the hotel.
Side note: We had approached our sailing friends, on S/V Maple, about buying the car while we were wrapping up our sailing adventures. Lucky for us, they agreed!
On January 14, Jordan and I checked out of the hotel in Richmond and loaded our suitcases onto the airport transport and headed to the airport to get checked in. Triple checking for the umpteenth time that I had all of the paperwork needed. It felt like I had a book of documents weighing down my backpack. Oh how I miss the simple days of checking in, when the only item that was needed was a passport. It did take us 45 minutes to check in because the lady at the desk wanted to make sure that we were not required to have a return flight from Thailand. We finally got our boarding passes and were able to make our way through security.
Jordan and I arrived safely in Phuket on January 16, after a slightly bumpy, 16.5 hour flight to Singapore. There was an 11 hour layover so, Shaun booked us a hotel room in terminal 3 (the same one we flew into). We were able to grab a few hours of sleep before our final leg of the trip into Phuket. This final leg of the trip was smooth from take-off, landing, health check, immigration, bag pick up SIM card purchase and finally the arrival PCR test. We were through and waiting for our transport within 15-20 minutes. It was very organized! Once outside, our transportation was waiting for us and we were off to Patong region for some much needed relaxing.
To be honest, I was really nervous about being in Thailand without Shaun. It was an irrational fear that was heightened due to jetlag. It took me a couple of days to pull up my big girl pants and venture out from the hotel. I wanted to show Jordan that, even if you are fearful or scared that it is possible to overcome and move forward. Every time that we ventured further away from our home base, we had a small celebration. I have come to learn that being brave doesn’t mean never being scared, it means moving forward despite being afraid or nervous.
Follow us on Instagram: Element Instagram photos
