Bangkok
Our joyful and excited bounding towards immigration at BKK was only temporarily halted when we saw the massive queue for immigration control and the looks of despair in people's faces as they slowly inched forward, the end of the line (presumably) somewhere over the horizon. We then remembered that the lovely folks at Malaysia airlines had given us priority immigration passes, which in this occasion turned out to be a real godsend. After realising this and waiting in the the demonstrably shorter priority queue for a couple of minutes our passports had been stamped and we were ready to see Thailand. Thankfully our bags, which we'd check in at Schiphol, had also been on the long journey with us and emerged intact from the bowels of the airport.
We then headed to the taxi rank and got into a cab, the excitement and anticipation building. We agreed that neither of us had ever seen traffic like it; within 5 minutes of leaving the airport and joining the highway we were stuck with many other taxis and assorted cars and trucks in a slow-moving mass of vehicles. It was so slow that after 45 minutes of "driving" we'd only travelled 8km! The wait was worth it, however, as we eventually reached the Sukhumvit district, where our hotel was located, and watched in amazement as one massive and unusually-shaped skyscraper after another whizzed by the taxi window. An hour and a half after leaving the airport we finally arrived at our hotel, paid the very reasonable 380 bhat (around £10) fare and checked in.
As this forum's all about flying, I'll not bore you all with details of our holiday and post too many photos. Suffice it to say that we had a great couple of days exploring Bangkok, which was every bit as insane as people had told us it would be. Luckily we had a very comfortable hotel with a pool and breakfast buffet to retire to after exhausting ourselves with wats, markets and tuk tuks. Compared to what one gets in Europe or the States for the same amount of money, hotel rooms in Thailand really are like palaces.
Flight 5: FD3223 (AirAsia) DMK-KBV
Aircraft: HS-ABN (FD 3223)
Seats: 22F/22E (very much economy)
Avios/tier points: Sadly, AirAsia are not part of the OneWorld "family" so no avios or BAEC tier points.
Although we'd arrived in Bangkok through its main international airport, Suvarnabhumi (BKK), this is primarily used by full-service/legacy carriers and our el-cheapo AirAsia flight was due to depart from Bangkok's somewhat less prestegious and considerably older Don Muang (DMK) airport. The friendly hotel staff arranged a Taxi for us, which arrived almost instantly and we were on our way back across Bangkok. Luckily, being a Sunday afternoon, the traffic was considerably lighter than it had been when we arrived and we got to DMK with plenty of time to spare. After check in and baggage check, during which you have to wait for your bag to be scanned before being allowed to proceed, we went through security and prepared ourselves for a couple of hours of "enjoying" DMK's festive atmosphere. Let's say that I can understand why the likes of BA and CX have chosen to go with BKK - DMK feels old and really busy. Anyway, we grabbed a coffee and some kind of Japanese cheesecake and waited for our first ever AirAsia flight. DMK is pretty much exclusively used by low-cost carriers, so there's not a whole lot of variety in aircraft to look out for - just the usual shorthaul A3XXs and B737s. That said, the absolutely insanity of Nok air's livery, which seems to be different for each aircraft, did lessen the monotomy somewhat.
As our expected departure time drew near, we walked to the gate to discover that our aircraft was nowhere to be seen, the inbound aircraft still being enroute. More loungeless time at DMK. Hurrah! The inbound AC arrived around 5 minutes before we had been due to depart but, impressively (worryingly?!), AirAsia managed to turn it around in less than 15 minutes and so we managed to depart with only around half an hour of delay.
I'll not say too much about our AirAsia flights, other than that for a LC carrier, the level of service was quite impressive and, as we'd booked a "value deal" we got a checked bag, seat selection and a free meal each. This turned out to be a rather tasty Penang chicken curry with Thai omelette. However, as we were to discover, AirAsia don't alternate this, so we ended up having 4 of these over the course of the trip!
