Sigh…the return –
It was time to leave and head back to the good ole USA. Our flight path was DPS-BKK-FRA-DFW-IAH or a shade over 12,000 miles and a little over 41 hours of total travel. I was not ready to come back and wasn’t looking forward to the return journey except for the Thai A380 from BKK-FRA. We would be in business class on TG from DPS-BKK then F all the way through to DFW and then United C or whatever passes for that on a regional jet.
The W was so gracious as to provide us with a BMW X5 to the airport which isn’t the most inconspicuous way to travel through Bali. The drive took strangely long due to traffic and the check in process was smooth enough and our bags got tagged through to DFW. What I didn’t know and you should know is that Bali collects a departure tax at customs so be prepared with some USD or IDR. It’s a great racket if you can get it, charge you both coming and going which is an excellent business model.
Eventually we found the ‘lounge’ at DPS which provided some finger foods, beverages and a decent view of the runway/gates. We quickly exited and made our way to the gate to find one of the oldest A330s in Thai’s fleet. It served its purpose but it was ratty. There were a few memories from that flight besides the condition, the first is from the moment the person in front of me sat down he felt the need to infringe on my space by not only reclining his seat the entire way back but also stretch his hands out to the point where he could have picked my nose. That continued for 3 hours. The next memory is that we needed to wait for a passenger that needed to clear customs, the wait wasn’t long but when the person boarded it was apparent that something wasn’t ‘right’ about him. I am not sure if he was intoxicated or just generally crazy but he was giving the FA’s a hard time and annoyed the people sitting around him. When we were deplaning there was a fight brewing between him and another passenger. Back to the infringer portion of this story; I made it a point to ‘hit’ the seat every time I got up hoping he would get the point and I used the ‘bathroom’ quite frequently on that flight. I eventually gave up and realized I was about to fly first on the A380 which is a first for me. I got the last laugh when we landed and ended up on the second to last apron position over by the maintenance hangar at BKK. I was unaware of Thai’s ground service but I was glad when we started walking down the stairs and saw a nice lady with our names on a board. She ushered us into a waiting and nicely air conditioned van and brought us back to the main terminal. We entered via some employee door and quickly through transit security and in a buggy on our way to the spa.
We got dropped at the lounge and enquired about our massages, they informed us that we could go over to the spa and we would be seen right away.
Post massage:
I enjoyed my massage; it was relaxing and even though I could hear the announcements it made me enjoy it more. My wife didn’t enjoy her massage as much, she informed the masseuse not to massage certain areas but in what I assume a lost in translation moment that request was ignored. Without getting into details it provided me with a good laugh. After the massages we spent the rest of our time in the lounge eating and drinking until boarding was called. I wanted to be the first to board so I could quickly grab pictures of the cabin.
My seat:
Stairs to…economy?
Seating area that should be a shower:
The meat of the TR and what you came to see…the Bathroom:
Bathroom part 2:
Your standard TR picture with Dom Pérignon and I only had a few glasses:
Live tail cam:
For those of you asking yes I got a Rimowa kit, it is silver. That covers prior to wheels up. Eventually we were on our way to FRA, we were informed of the flight time somewhere in the realm of 3 bottles of champagne or a season of breaking bad as that’s how I do math. Menus were distributed and drink orders were taken, sadly because of the flight time I don’t remember the entire menu, I know caviar was served and I got something cordon bleu’d, not sure if it was pork or chicken.
I didn’t go crazy with pictures as I stopped caring somewhere in Tokyo, caviar round 1:
After a second round of caviar it was time for the main:
It was Ok but I ate well in the lounge so I didn’t particularly care. After dinner I decided to try to sleep and I think I tossed and turned for 4 hours but I slept in there somewhere. My wife slept well for around 8 hours so take that for what it’s worth. I spent the rest of my time watching breaking bad and asking the FA’s if when we landed I could check out the cockpit.
They said yes…I didn’t expect my wife to join me:
Looking at that picture it makes the cockpit look small, it’s not, I’m just big.
"พยุหะคีรี" "Phayuhakiri" HS-TUD:
Turned out HS-TUD was just delivered to Thai a few days prior. It was in service for four days when I got a chance to break it in.
It was time to relieve the first class terminal of its scotch supply again. This was the final hurrah of this trip as we scored old F back to DFW.
For those of you missing my hairy legs:
Making my rounds:
Easter time:
Cured meats:
Settled into my ‘light’ breakfast:
Our waiter happened to remember us from a few weeks back and asked if I wanted to hit the throttle on the scotch. As it was around 8am I declined, sorry FTers. Post breakfast I needed to grab another duck and we lucked out as the room with the bath was available. My wife and I were allowed to share the room and cleaning took place and ducks were had. We got lucky and got a new Easter duck-bunny-egg thing. Sadly we only had 3 hours before our flight to DFW so we needed to ‘maximize’ our time in the FCT. My wife finally got into the swing of first class and asked our waiter if he could whip up some fresh pretzels at 9am and he agreed, he also brought me over my Macallan 18. Yes it was 9am in FRA, but I assumed it was 5pm somewhere and if you’ve been with me this long you know that…I didn’t care.
I don’t usually drink prior to 12pm, in this case I made an exception and I believe most of you would as well. Our time quickly came to an end and we were instructed that it was time to board. We were led to the elevator and got downstairs where we got our passports back and where we met Mr. Wolf (not kidding) who would be driving us to our plane.
I could get used to not walking:
As luck would have it the plane was at some far off apron position so it was a nice drive. We got to the plane just as the bus with the other passengers arrived and they were not allowed to board until we got on, just one of the perks of first class.
We’ll continue on part 2 of the FRA-DFW-IAH flights. Hope you’re enjoying the read, I didn’t think I’d get this far…