Originally Posted by jaitiruak

Hi everyone,

My boyfriend and I are traveling to Thailand in April. We are going to arrive in BKK and then take a domestic flight (out of the international airport) out to Chiang Mai. I am worried about that transfer. We booked the domestic flight separately with the domestic airline Thai SMILES, so they have no idea that we are arriving 2 hours before they are due to depart. Does anyone know what we can do to help this go smoothly? So I'm concerned with:

1) Do we have to go through customs first and get our passports stamped, then come back in to check in again for the domestic flight? Or can we just go straight to domestic and stamp our passports in Chiang Mai?

2) The luggage! We were planning on checking bags so we'd have to wait for our bags to come out and then check them again? Is there a better way? Like maybe calling the airport or airlines and see if we can coordinate it? Or would I risk losing my luggage more, if I try to get them to transfer it?

With such a tiny time window, I'm scared we won't have time for customs AND waiting for the luggage AND checking in AND going thru security and everything again!