FLIGHT#19: BKK Royal First Lounge & LH772 BKK-SGN in First Class with photos
 

FLIGHT#19
Lufthansa Airlines #772
Bangkok, Thailand (BKK) – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (SGN)
Date: Dec. 3, 2010
Departure: 17:15
Arrival: 18:30
Length: 0:55
Miles flown since start of trip: 37,884 mi.
Aircraft: Boeing 747-400
Seats: FIRST 82AC, BUSINESS 1K

I booked many tickets as part of our world tour that were not included in the sixteen segments of our Oneworld Round-The-World ticket. Because we travel with about 100kg of bags plus three carry-ons, I always tried to book us in business class if the price was at all reasonable.

When booking this segment, I was very pleased to see that my dear friends at Lufthansa offered a 5th freedom flight from Bangkok to Ho Chi Minh city at a price half of what Thai or Vietnam Airways wanted. The benefit of LH was they flew a 747 which meant their tilty lie-flat seat.

Then about two weeks before departure, I decided to burn 30,000 orphan LH miles and upgrade the hubby and son from biz to first class. I was on a FF ticket using UA miles so I was stuck in business class. I considered this a good political move since soon Corbin and I would be in EK FC on the A380 while hubby was in Y. The back story is that he didn’t want to do the dishes a couple of months back so I got him to agree to that one at a weak moment. Normally our rule is that I cook and he does the dishes. I had cooked this amazing Indian meal for a group of our friends. At the end, our tiny German kitchen looked like a WWII war zone. After they all left, he asked me if I would trade cleaning the kitchen for anything that I wanted. Of course, in the back of my mind, I had something. We would be flying Emirates A380 from Sydney to Auckland in Y but I had enough miles to get an award ticket in FC. But I still felt guilty about taking advantage of him. When I booked it, I realized that I had enough miles for one more person. But since our son can’t fly by himself in Y, I upgraded him instead of my husband. Relationships can be complicated.

So this portion of the trip began after a lovely flight from Krabi, Thailand to Bangkok (click here to read that trip report).

We landed in BKK and followed the signs to International Departures. Soon enough we were in the departure area looking for the Lufthansa transfer desk. Once we found it, a small sign announced that no one would man the desk until two hours before departure.

With two of our family in First Class and me in Business, I was hoping that all of us could spend our four transit hours in the Thai Airways Royal First lounge. Luckily the very kind lounge attendant took down our details and welcomed us in. He simply asked that we give him the lounge invitation once we got our LH boarding passes. Why isn’t life always this simple?

Immediately we were shown into our own private living room. The lounge has eight or ten private living rooms each of which has a couch, several chairs, a desk area and your own Bang & Olufsen TV. It was a perfect space for the three of us to enjoy our four hours.

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Terry and Corbin enjoy our own private living room

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Our B&O TV, Terry and his champagne

For those passengers not lucky enough to get a living room, the lounge offers lots of seating. We never saw the lounge at anything close to capacity. A couple of times, we noticed it would get kind of full and then a blink later, it would be empty.

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The non-living room part of the First Class lounge

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A large selection of newspapers

As we sat down in our living room, we were handed a menu and our drink orders were taken. The menu was a bit limited for a first class lounge but all delicious. Our attendant also mentioned that samples of all the food could be seen in a room at the end of the hall. Corbin and I made the pilgrimage to the food room and decided that we would have to try a few of the items.

The following pictures are just a sample of what we ate during our four hour stay. I forgot to take pictures of some of the items. We also drank a bit. It’s difficult to say no when they come by every five minutes to ask if you’d like another drink or something else to eat. Please don’t judge us. We were just trying to make them feel like they were doing their jobs.

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The main dishes on offer in the food room

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More options

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Cheese and sweets

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If you don’t have your own private living room, you might choose to eat here.

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Delicious fish cakes

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Shui Mai Dim Sum

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The national dish, Pad Thai

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A delicious green chicken curry and a vodka tonic

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Club Sandwich

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Beefy, noodle soup thing

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Melting middle chocolate cake

After a couple of hours, I decided that I would take a shower. The journey had already been arduous so freshening up sounded like a great idea. The first thing I noticed was that the shower room was air conditioned!! We, frequent flyers based in Europe, have LONGED for an air conditioned shower room. I would go as far to say that the room was COLD. At first I didn’t see any products or towel so I walked out and asked the attendant. She showed me that everything that I needed was neatly concealed in a beautiful wooden box next to the shower. I guess this separates the newbees from the regulars. A nice selection of L’Occitane products was on offer. I lingered in the shower but soon my liver was beckoning me back to our living room to get more champers.

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An assortment of L’Occitane products in the shower room

The free wifi in the lounge was very fast and I was able to download several TV shows from my home computer in California. We love getting our favorite shows while living abroad.

Around 2:30pm, I returned to the LH transfer desk with our three passports and got the boarding passes and lounge invitations. She even put the first class boarding passes in the special ticket holders that LH uses. She mentioned that there would only be one other passenger in first with us. That’s one too many if you asked me!

Back at the lounge I handed in our lounge invites and returned to our living room where continued to eat and drink. I was worried that someone was tracking our total consumption and at any moment sirens would go off and we would be ejected from our living room like a fighter pilot from a dying plane. Luckily no sirens sounded. A polite attendant did approach us at one point to let us know that our flight was about thirty minutes late. She would let us know when we needed to leave.

Finally a different attendant let us know when the flight was ready for us to board and we made our way down to the gate. I was surprised how far it was to our gate. This has happened to me before but TG offers an electric cart to its FC passengers.

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“Ma, is this our flight? I can’t really tell cuz it’s all written in Chinese.”

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Our LH 747-400 bird tired after a long trip from Frankfurt

At the gate boarding had just begun and we walked directly on the plane. A less than tearful goodbye happened at the base of the stairs as I walked to seat 1K in the nose and the rest of my family climbed the stairs of privilege to First Class. So here we break into two reports:

FIRST CLASS:
My hubby said it was a great flight. The flight attendants were very friendly. They wanted to hear the entire story of how we left Germany and would be spending the year traveling. Being good Germans, they did question that Corbin wouldn’t be attending school for the whole year. WAS THAT LEGAL? Germans just don’t understand that it could ever be legal to teach your own child. Understand that in Munich, the police stand outside of customs at the airport after the school holidays are over and give parents 1000 euro fines for coming back late. This makes sense to Germans. Also a couple was thrown into jail for attempting to homeschool their children. Actually the couple was allowed to split the jail time so what one parent was always at home with the kids. I’m not making any of this up.

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My non-dish doing husband


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Our first class connoisseur son

Back to the flight. Up in the air, an amuse bouche was served and then a cold platter of cheese, smoked salmon and potato salad was served followed by a lovely cake and coffee. Once again not bad for an hour flight. This was the first time that either my hubby or son was in Lufthansa First Class. While they didn’t really experience the long-haul service, it was great for this short flight. Neither complained about the outdated seat. I didn’t want to spoil it for them.

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First Class cold platter

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First Class dessert

BUSINESS CLASS:
The less fortunate (me) had the entire row 1 to myself. The entire business class cabin seemed to be close to empty. Are they making any money on this extention? It was fun to be back with my German peeps albeit for just sixty minutes. The flight attendants were professional but I’m not sure anyone spoke to me except to take my drink order. No one addressed me by my name. No one offered me a hot towel. I was okay with that. They left me alone and I left them alone.

A cold platter was also served in business class that consisted of cold fish and roast beef slices served with a brez'n roll. After filling up in the Thai First lounge, I wasn’t very hungry. I did enjoy the brez'n. It’s a flavor of Germany that I miss. Schweinhaxe on the other hand…

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The business class cold platter

I played with the inflight entertainment for a minute and found a quick sitcom to pass the time.

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A blurry look at the flight plan. I swear it’s the camera and not the operator

Overall, I’d definitely choose this flight again. Once again the value for money was excellent. It sure beats the local carriers on this route if you are willing to have less flexibility on schedule.

__________________________________________________ __________________________
This report is part of an entire year of travel. The trip report can be found here:
My son’s fifth grade year: 97,737 miles, 40 flights, 6 continents and 16 countries

Thanks for such an extensive report! ^

I was a great place to eat through the menu.

TG made us feel very well taken care of, much more than CX or EK First class lounges.

The private living room works very well and feels cozy.

it's a winner olafman! Nice TR!

You rock, olafman! Thanks for the wonderful report and photos! ^^

I fly LH BKK-SGN roughly once a month and I'm pretty sure they make good money on this extension. It seems like a lot of Thai and Vietnamese tour groups are using this flight for transportation. Often EC is more or less full with Asian tourists.

Great report - sounds like it is worth it just for the TG F ground experience at BKK - did you try the spa? We will have 4 hours there in december and will be trying to out eat and drink you!

LH F pax are not entitled to the complimentary spa services like the TG F pax.

We chose just to eat and drink instead! Enjoy!

Great TR!

Was wondering which service/program you use for the above??

Thank you for the great report

I use a program called BeyondTV. I have just added a thread to the Travel Technology forum here on Flyertalk about how to set it up:
BeyondTV: Watching TV from home anywhere in the world!

Let me know if you have any questions.