A mum is backpacking around Asia with her daughter and her girlfriend – and has been partying on the islands to celebrate being cancer free.
Kate Gearing, 69, was invited to join her daughter, Nessie, and her partner Becca Wolfenden, both 27, on a once in a lifetime trip to Thailand. Via SWNS.
Kate Gearing, 69, was invited to join her daughter, Nessie, and her partner Becca Wolfenden, both 27, on a once in a lifetime trip to Thailand. Via SWNS.
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TravelTranscript
00:00 [Music]
00:20 We made a mistake.
00:22 Kamatha is on the most exhausting travel day going from the UK to Thailand.
00:26 We are taking Nessie's mum on a mini backpacking trip island hopping around Thailand to celebrate her surviving cancer.
00:31 So it's a pretty big deal.
00:33 Also she wants to become TikTok famous and we kind of think this is why she agreed to this trip.
00:37 But we're not off to the best start and it's kind of all our fault.
00:40 Anyways, let's start from the beginning.
00:41 Because of where we live, we have to drive five hours from the highlands in Scotland to Edinburgh airport to catch our Qatar Airways flight to Doha.
00:48 Luckily we have a family member near Edinburgh where we can park our car which saves us so much money.
00:53 Our first flight to Doha took about seven hours. It went by pretty quickly.
00:56 Then we had to lay over there for about three hours.
00:58 We have just got to Doha and we're heading straight to our gate even though we have a three hour layover because it is huge this airport.
01:05 We have been late four flights before here and we don't want to chance it again.
01:09 But this time luckily we didn't have far to go and we actually got to see the airport.
01:13 It is so beautiful and there's so much greenery.
01:15 Time to catch our next flight to Phuket in Thailand which took another seven hours and we arrived at 7 a.m. Thai time.
01:20 And to be honest both flights were totally fine although none of us got much sleep.
01:24 Okay, this is when things start to take a turn for the worse.
01:27 We have just arrived in Phuket after about 20 hours of travelling.
01:31 We're so exhausted but the travelling doesn't end here because we are taking a ferry all the way down to Kuala Lumpur.
01:37 Getting a taxi because we can't wait for the bus because it would take too long.
01:42 Because we're in such a rush we also did get a SIM card in the airport.
01:46 It cost us 950 baht each. We got a 30-day unlimited SIM card.
01:51 You can get it cheaper. Head out of the airport and go to a 7-11 but we just don't have time for that.
01:56 Honestly we should have stayed in Phuket for a night or two to recover and get some sleep.
02:00 But we were determined to catch the 11 a.m. ferry to Kuala Lumpur Island which is way way down south near the Malaysian border.
02:06 Backpacking granny, what's the plans next? Where are we going?
02:09 We're going on a five-hour boat trip.
02:12 Yeah and how are we going to get there?
02:14 Hopefully by taxi when you arrange it.
02:17 Do you know how much that'll cost?
02:19 800 baht.
02:20 Oh well done. Okay perfect. Are we ready?
02:23 We are.
02:24 We're just heading out of Phuket airport to get our taxi.
02:27 We paid at the stall that offers taxis and minibuses 700 baht to get to Rasadah Pier which is not too bad.
02:33 They looked up on Grab and it was about 800 baht so we're pretty happy with that.
02:38 At this point we were super exhausted. We had been up for at least 20 plus hours.
02:42 But we kept telling ourselves that once we got on the ferry it would only be five hours until we arrive on Kuala Lumpur Island.
02:47 Or at least that's what we were told.
02:49 We booked the tickets in advance on tigerlineferry.com.
02:52 They cost us £61.17 each one way.
02:54 It was also super super full so we were all squashed together on the boat for seven hours.
02:58 We did arrive to a beautiful sunset but we were really really exhausted at this point and we had little to no sleep in a day and a half.
03:05 To get to our accommodation Nessie then had to drag her suitcase across the beach.
03:09 I'm not gonna lie granny and I were very happily trotting along with our backpacks.
03:13 We can't wait to show you this beautiful island. It is one of our favourites in the whole of Southeast Asia.