I've been to Thailand 12 times on business during the past 12 months, plus another half-dozen stops/transfers at BKK, but to date I've never stepped foot outside the capital -- a sorry fact I was determined to remedy this weekend. Thanks to Thailand's recent profusion of low-cost carriers and uncertainties over just when I could take off it took a while to sort out the options; in the end, I looked up a few potential flights and showed up at Bangkok Don Muang with fingers crossed.

My pick of the pack was Orient Thai's new low-cost carrier One-Two-GO, who operate on a rather strange business model: all seats have the same price and reserving in advance costs 100 baht *more* than just showing up. The One-Two-GO ticket counter at BKK has an endless queue, so I grabbed a number and went off to book my TG return ticket in the meantime. A bit of queueing there too, but I got it in 20 minutes and came back... and queued for another 20 minutes until I got my seat. BKK-CNX with taxes came out to B1151, or a little over $20.

OX 128 BKK-CNX B747-100 seat 29E

Orient Thai has a sorry reputation for delays and bungles, but this flight was proof that... the reputation is completely valid. We were supposed to leave at 1530, but at that time we were just starting the bus trip across the tarmac. Fine, 15 minutes later the doors were closed and the safety video started, and all seemed well until...

BZIIIIIIIIIEW. Lighting, air con, video went dark -- emergency lights came on and you could have heard a pin drop in the cabin. Power was restarted soon enough, but the sequence repeated 4-5 times; obviously a circuit breaker was tripping somewhere due to a short or just too much load. After half an hour of this, the captain announced "technical difficulties" (well spotted, Sherlock!). A guy sauntered out the cabin, opened a floor tile and dived into the bowels of the Jumbo.

This would probably be a good time to note that OX's 747s have been around the block a few times. Original signage is Japanese, but Arabic stickers have been pasted on top, and of course now the planes are now in Thailand. Even the safety cards proudly call the planes "Boeing 747 Classic". All this said, the planes are clean and in decent shape, but losing power 5 times before takeoff doesn't instill all that much confidence... I consoled myself with the fact that old-school planes like the Jumbo don't do fancy fly-by-wire and can thus glide to a landing even with no engines and no power.

Things were getting a bit toasty on the tropical tarmac with air con off, but crew went around passing out water. One final circuit trip, and then the power came on -- and stayed on. We took off an hour behind schedule. The rest of the flight was comparatively uneventful. We were served peanuts and soft drinks, and the strange guy next to me wearing a cowboy hat and a kilo of gold complained non-stop in a mix of very bad English and rude Thai about how this delay was going to cause him to miss dinner with Hollywood superstars (what the hell are you doing on a budget carrier then, bub?). Soon enough we were descending towards CNX, with green mountains looming large all around. Alas, I was sitting in the middle and was too lazy to go grab a window -- seat allocation was moderately strange, as everybody was packed near the exits with nobody up front, and I got a middle-middle seat (E) with nobody in D or F.

Chiang Mai's airport looks like a miniature version of Don Muang, right down to the yellow-on-black signage. With no luggage to claim or immigration to pass I was out in a jiffy; the hotel's rep had been patiently waiting for me and, a 15-minute drive later (the airport is less than 3 kilometers away), I had checked into the wonderfully named Porn Ping Hotel, which I can recommend if US$20 a night for what was Chiang Mai's fanciest hotel 40 years ago sounds like a deal.

TG 671 CNX-BKK B777-200 seat 50C

Partly for comparison, but mostly because I didn't trust the competition to get me to BKK on time for my connection to SIN, I flew back on TG. I'd been planning to fly C instead, but the hop's less than an hour in the air and a promotional campaign pushed the Y price down to B1400, just 200B more than OX and about half a C seat.

CNX airport is all of 2 km away from the city, I left the hotel an hour before my flight and was there in 10 minutes. Check-in was a snap and before long I was on board; and with a 5-minute delay caused by a British couple managing to immigrate out of Thailand before reaching Bangkok, we were up in the air.

I fly TG a *lot* internationally, but this was my first domestic flight on them -- and only half-dom at that, since this particular bird was coming straight from NRT, so announcements were in Japanese as well. Servicewise, pretty much the only differentiating factor to OX was that we were served a tiny Thai pastry filled with yellow bean paste and raisins instead of peanuts, and a glass of orange juice to go along with it. I wouldn't pay 200B extra for this... but I was glad to pay it for being (almost) on time and having the power stay on.

SQ 69 BKK-SIN B747-400 seat 34H

Hot on the heels of my first domestic TG flight came my first domestic-international connection at BKK; yes, the NRT-CNX-BKK flight docks at the dom terminal, which suited me fine since that's where I had stowed my extra bag (at a fairly steep 70B/day, but mai pen rai). Transfers between domestic and international can be done either by intermittent shuttle bus or a long connecting tube; I opted for the tube, which is no less than half a kilometer in length! But it's air-con and trolleys are provided, so not too bad a hike and I was through in 5 minutes. Luckily, my flight was out of Terminal 2 (where the tube ends), so I was spared from walking a full km.

Check-in and boarding went painlessly, but then I got stuck in one last Bangkok traffic jam -- planes were queued up ten-deep near the entrance to the runway, and we took off half an hour later than scheduled. SQ's crew were their usual smiley selves, although my meal choice of (dry) salmon with (raw) risotto was surprisingly unpalatable. No matter, I set KrisWorld to play Ministry of Sound's monthly Adrenalin mix (props to SQ for this!) and got to work typing this for FT.

This concludes the first installment of Alphabet Soup; stay tuned for July, when the real fun (SIN-REP-BKK-KUL-KBR-SIN) begins.