Thanks so much SK AAR, Tchiowa and dsquared. This is extremely helpful. We are flying with my future mother-in-law (who is older and not fluent in english or thai) HKT-BKK but we are staying in BKK while she is flying onward. Given that she can interline bags and that the int'l connection seems pretty straight forward at BKK i feel much more comfortable about things.
DrG