FLIGHT#22
Thai Airways #551
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (SGN) – Bangkok, Thailand (BKK)
Date: Jan 2, 2010
Departure: 10:20
Arrival: 11:45
Length: 1:25
Miles flown since start of trip: 38,725 mi.
Aircraft: Airbus 330-300 (HS-TEC)
Seats: BUSINESS 11ABE
We are half way through our year of travel. We spent a wonderful month in Vietnam. This is definitely a place for us to return to. I look forward to exploring the north next time. The big Flyertalk trip report on the entire year can be found here:
My son’s fifth grade year: 97,737 miles, 40 flights, 6 continents and 16 countries
CHECK-IN:
After a cheap $10 taxi ride to the airport, we arrived about two and a half hours early and the TG check-in desks were not open yet. Finally about twenty minutes later the crew arrived and began their jobs. We walked right up and our agent handled everything
smoothly. We would be connecting in BKK to a CX flight so he tagged our bags all the way through and showed me that he had done it correctly! I like when they do this!
The Saigon international terminal looks fairly new. It is bright and has nice high ceilings. Before getting to passport control, there is a preliminary baggage x-ray but no metal detectors. Passport control was
extremely slow for our line because the agent had to restart his computer. We could all see his screen and it took a very long time. So fifteen minutes later, we were at the normal bag screening and metal detector. At several of our airports here in Asian you can leave your shoes on and don’t have to remove computers.
LOUNGE:
Thai Airways does not have a dedicated lounge. Instead it uses the
SASCO Rose CIP Lounge located at the far left of the terminal. Thank goodness that a map was provided on the back of the invitation because there was absolutely no signage. It was kind of like finding
Club 33 at Disneyland. You’ve got to know it’s there.
SASCO Rose CIP Lounge
A large, spacious lounge
After the front door, you descend steps into a lovely, spacious shared lounge. The food offerings were very impressive. Considering it was morning, they had a full selection of
Pho and all the trimming, noodles, spring rolls, fresh fruit and sandwiches. The normal beverages and some wine was also available. No spirits for the morning flights. I have never seen so much fresh fruits and vegetables in a lounge. No wonder the Vietnamese are so skinny. Their food is
very healthy.
Sandwiches and Halal food
More lovely, fresh options
Pre-made plates of food to be heated up
You have to love a lounge that serves Pho
Beverage offerings
A few of my choices
My favorite part of the lounge was a two meter
aquarium on one wall. It brought a nice feeling to the place.
The aquarium
The wifi wasn’t the fastest in the world but at least was
free! They also had a nice room of computers.
The Business Center
We saw our plane land around 9:15 coming in from Bangkok. I sure like the TG
livery. Very classy.
Our arriving aircraft
Now that my family and I have been traveling for
six months together, lounge time tends to be quiet time. I make phone calls and do email. Terry usually reads or writes and Corbin plays games on his iPad or computer. We are all self sufficient and enjoy the peace and quiet of the lounge.
BOARDING:
No boarding announcements were made in the lounge so we headed to the other side of the airport just after boarding was supposed to begin. Once at the gate, everyone was seated and the podium was
unmanned. Hmm.
Our Airbus 330-300 freshly in from BKK
Finally a group of employees showed up and boarding soon began. They invited Business Class and Star Golds first but it looked like the entire crowd stormed both sides of the podium. It was a race and
last one in is a rotten egg. Luckily we were near the podium when the chaos began so we made it to our seats quickly. We were seated in the first row which Thai Airways calls row 11. I know that CX also always starts Business Class with row 11 on all aircraft. Soon enough, we were offered water, OJ or champagne and a chilled moist towelette. I was a bit surprised that they used the moist towelette packets instead of a real wash cloth. (FYI, Word didn’t like my spelling of “towelette” so I googled it. The first hit was
http://www.moisttowelettemuseum.com/. Enjoy. God love the Internet.)
While still on the ground, a lovely flight attendant handed out two menus: one for drinks and one for the meal service. I had the
Piper Heidsiech Brut Champagne. It’s a nice way to start a day of lounges and premium class travel. I was impressed at the wide variety of alcohol they had for this short flight.
MEAL:
While we were still on the ground, I began to smell the
garlic bread warming up. Even though it was just after 10am, it smelled delicious. Once in the air, the meal service began about sixty seconds after the fasten seat belt sign was turned off. I couldn’t believe it. There was a flight attendant passing out tablecloths.
The Thai Airways signature linens
About three minutes later a hot meal was place in front of me! While there was no choice of entrees, I still couldn’t believe what they served on an one hour
mid-morning flight!
Menu:
First Course:
Combination Salad with Smoked Chicken Cubes
Royal Project Honey and Herbs Dressing
Main Course:
Fried rice with Chicken Curry “Kiew-wan” Rolled with Fried Egg
Salted Egg Wedge
Bread, butter
Dessert:
Orange Tangerine Mousse Cake
Tea, Coffee
TG can really serve a nice meal on a 60 min flight!
Having just had breakfast in the lounge, I wasn’t very hungry. Nonetheless, everything was
very tasty. The fried rice was unique and I ate far to much of it.
The attendants made several passes of coffee and tea. I was truly amazed on what they could serve in under an hour.
At the end of the service, a flight attendant gave each of us an
orchid corsage. While I’m not a fan of wearing a corsage, it decorated my backpack nicely.
Corbin wearing his orchids
Today’s decoration for my backpack
SEAT:
The Airbus 330 was nicer than I had expected. The seats had a
nice recline similar to the old CX business class seats. They were much better than the TG Airbus 300 domestic business seats we had on the BKK-Krabi route. The leg room was fantastic in the first row; my feet couldn’t even touch the wall in front of me.
At 6’3”, this is a happy hubby
The shorter members of the family are also happy
Each seat had an in-seat pop out video screen that came out of the armrest. I’m not sure they even turned it on for the flight. The main screen always showed the AirShow.
Our route on AirShow
OVERALL:
Thai Airways offers a
great product on this route. We flew Lufthansa BKK-SGN and Thai’s hot meal easily beat the cold plate that LH offered. Of course the long-haul tilty flat seat on LH is superior as much as I hate tilty flat. The interesting thing about this route was the price. Thai Airways and Vietnam Airlines both had one way fares of around $450. Lufthansa and Qatar flew the same route and were around $250. The issue was they both had evening departures without daily service. So that’s how we ended up on TG.
I was surprised that there was a noticeable difference between domestic business class and international business class. We took TG on both with flights of one hour. The international service/seat was much better.
Now we have five hours of
lounge hopping before finishing our day with a CX flight to Delhi.