This year, 2023, we decided to celebrate the Chinese New Year (or Lunar New Year) in Phuket.
A couple of things brought on this change of venue.
For last year’s CNY, holding it at home just reminded all of us of the absence of my mother in law, Linda Wong. CNY was always a big thing for her. From the preparation of decorations, the dishes she would prepare and the many relatives and friends she would invite to the house to celebrate together.
Last year was pretty low key and she was thoroughly missed. So a change of scenery was thought to be best for this year.
Another thing was cost. Since Warren and family live in Singapore, flying the whole family back can be a costly affair. In comparison, flying to Phuket was a much cheaper option.
And Phuket was an opportunity for us to get my father in law, Harry Wong, to feel comfortable to travel and get out and explore the world again or at least experience new things. Since the pandemic, he has only been to Penang for his birthday.
Planning was done by sis in law Cheryl and that was a load off our chest as none of us from the Johan family had ever been to Phuket. Since Cheryl and Warren had been before, we relied on their experience to pick places to go and things to do.
For the family group from Kota Kinabalu, it meant an early morning flight of 5:20 to get to Kuala Lumpur and then transfer to the 9:10 am KUL – HKT (Phuket) flight.
With a 2:30 min flight time between Kota Kinabalu and Kuala Lumpur, we only had an hour from landing in KLIA to get to our next flight to Phuket.
I hardly slept the night before as I was worried I would not be able to wake up and miss the flight and the whole trip. When I did fall asleep it was more of cat naps. Woke up again at 230 am and decided to stay up.
Got everyone organised by 3:15 am and arrived at the airport just before 4 am. We and our baggage were checked through to Phuket.
At KLIA the e Gates were jammed up but we still managed to rush between gates, go through immigration and make it to our 2nd flight.
We arrived safely on Phuket at around the same time my brother in law and family arrived from Singapore.
Unfortunately our baggage did not make it. Made a report at the airport baggage counter and they promised to call when they had news. They did assure us by saying normally the nags would arrive on the afternoon flight from KL.
Since there was nothing more we could do, we exited the airport and started our CNY Phuket adventure.
