While I thought about where I'd spend the night (hotel or airport), I decided to walk and explore, for I was still not unkinked properly from the flight over. Despite Suvarnabhumi airport having been open for less than a year, I have transitted many times. However, until now, each transit has been very short with insufficient time to explore much beyond transfer desk, lounge and gate.
Now was my chance to check out the terminal (or at least the airside bits) at a leisurely pace, and compare it with the old Don Muang terminal as well as other hub airports.
I spent the next couple of hours wandering the three levels around the 5 and a bit international concourses, to the accompaniment of an amazing light and sound show outside (ie almost continuous thunderstorms) and the drum of the rain.
Unlike Don Muang, all the shops, restaurants, etc remained open all night. The ratio of staff to passengers was more than one staff to one passenger, even not counting various cleaners and security types.
There is a surprising amount of art, but much of it is on the lowest levels with larger pieces on the middle and upper levels.
Once the "midnight" bank of flights has arrived and departed the terminal is fairly quiet.
There are not a lot of seats in public areas. Some by each transfer desk area, but these are noisy places thanks to the atrium connections to upper levels. A better place is the "Thai economy passenger lounge" on the upper level of concourse B. These have a lot of comfy chairs tucked around a corner to keep the noise level down (except the patter of rain overhead and booms of thunder). Naturally they are in demand, with almost all taken when I wandered here about 3 or 4am.
There are lots of lounges, several Thai, a couple of Cathay Pacific (I guess their many flights are spread out over more than one concourse which seems odd, or maybe they wanted to annoy QF/BA by taking the space next to the Qantas first class lounge?), a few Louis Tavern CIP lounges which seem to be the only ones open 24 hours, and many lounges for a myriad of airlines both well known and obscure.
The various Thai lounges have different opening (and closing) hours, so I made note of the first one to open. By now I realised there was no point in going to a hotel and so kept walking some more.
BTW the first transit desks open at 5am, by which time there is a long queue of waiting passengers. The first TG lounge also opens at 5am and is empty, thus I went there instead. Unfortunately they were unable to issue my boarding pass - need to check in with transfer desk
They were, however, happy enough to let me in once they confirmed my onward flight. In fact, this is an ideal situation for me, in that I have some further time to decide whether or not to take the side trip.
Meanwhile, I grab a few coffees and check my email. It was unanimous - I was advised by all I'd asked to not try the side trip. Hmmmm.
On the plus side I noted from the departure screens the flight appeared to be on time (for now), and confirmed this with the lounge agent. On the minus side, the gate used was indeed in concourse C.
I noticed from the arrival and departure information on the Qantas website that last night's Qantas flight to London had returned to gate after pushback (or even possibly takeoff?) for a while before departing very late. Does anyone know the reason?