Mar 8, 2025
We’ve come to this part of the world a week earlier than necessary for our Philippines tour so that we could take a side trip to Laos. It was originally also going to be Myanmar, but that was before the junta started using tourists as hostages to gain foreign currency. Anyway, having just arrived on the flight that was included with our tour, this morning we headed back to the airport to fly to Laos. It involves two separate flights as pretty much the only way to get into Laos is from Bangkok, so it was to the Thai Airways counter we headed this morning.
The terminal was full of Filipinos heading off to work, but not like we do when getting into the car in the morning. The gate area for flights to Bahrain and Dubai was absolutely chockas with filipinos heading back to their overseas jobs. OFWs they are referred to as – overseas foreign workers.
We ended up, surprisingly, on a fairly old Airbus A350 with a very ancient entertainment system not even capable of charging our phones, and had that very Thai dish for lunch – spaghetti. It wasn’t bad service but for an airline that prides themselves on Royal Orchid service it was only average, and the staff were officious though they bowed lots while doing it.
Upon approach to Bangkok the pilot came on and told us that he had been asked to hold position and would do so ‘for our convenience’. Not sure what’s convenient about circling idly in the sky for 30 minutes, but I suppose it is better than running into the back of somebody else as you land. Can’t remember the last time we had to do that.
But then we got to Bangkok airport! I’m not sure I’ve got a list of the world’s worst 10 airports, and we certainly been to worse, but this one’s knocking on the door of the list. Mandy kind of summed it up best when she said that they’re trying to build an airport like Singapore but not having any idea how to do it. We finally got off the plane with no directions for transferring, then couldn’t find our connecting flight on the board. Eventually we realised that what we had to do (without any assistance) was to find transfer desk 2 which is the transfer desk for Thai Airways. That turned out to be a train ride away and to get to the train we had to find our way down two sets of stairs, back up two sets of stairs at the other end and follow the signs only to find that it was a 15 minute walk and 500m away. When we finally got to transfer desk 2 there were no signs, no queues and no lines and so it was a bun fight to get to the front of the mess where a guy who couldn’t read English was trying to pair boarding passes with passports before letting you through into a security area with no signs, no tables and no information. Seems we could leave shoes on but they wanted laptops out and then confiscated the airline water, and abruptly walked away.
Having got through that, we had another 900 m walk to the right gate – once we found a board with our flight details on it. All in all we were half an hour late arriving and took well over an hour to transfer from one gate to another on the same airline.
Ah well. In another hour we’ll be outa here.
Seems like i was way too optimistic with that thought. From our basement holding pen, we were duly lined up in boarding groups to streamline the boarding process, then taken downstairs and randomly directed onto waiting buses, and driven out to the plane where we remained caged up for 15 minutes, until we were directed outside and up stairs in the rain onto an aerobridge so that we could board the aircraft. Pushed back 45 minutes late.
But then the day got better – much better. In fairly typical fashion for Asia, even though we had submitted and gained an eVisa online before we arrived in Laos, when we got to the head of the queue the bored immigration guy handed us a blank form to fill out, effectively transcribing all of the eVisa information on to the form, after which we joined the queue again. Having received the duly filled out piece of paper, he threw it in the pile without glancing at it, scanned our eVisa QR code and waved us through.
Our hotel pickup was waiting with our name on it, and he ushered us to a double parked limousine. Not just any limousine mind you – two fully reclining leather armchairs in the back, each with our own climate control. Unfortunately the hotel was only 5 minutes up the road so our life of make-believe was cut short, until we got to the palatial hotel. I’ll leave the photos to do the talking.
We are in a Deluxe King River Suite with a king size bed, a king size bathroom, and full complements of power points – even Australian ones. Leaves Bangkok for dead – I’m thinking of moving to a communist country.
ST Wattay Airport Hotel
Our King River Suite
ST Wattay Airport Hotel
I want the job reading those meters