Bangkok To Sydney On Thai Airways

This is it. My (extended) trip through south east Asia is officially over and after doing a quick run to Manila to pick up my round-the-world itinerary, I spent the last night in Bangkok checking out a few remaining rooftop bars. After the bars, Rangie took me to a nearby club so by the time we got back, there was just a couple hours left before I would need to wake up anyways for my early trip to the airport so I decided to tough it out and get the sleep on the flight.

Trip To And Suvarnabhumi Airport

I already covered the logistics of getting to the airport in my Bangkok - Manila trip report. In the morning, I was pressed for time as my flight was leaving at 7:45am and BTS, MRT, and the train to the airport all would not start running until 6am. So, I left Rangie's place at 5:45, walked to the BTS, got on the first train at 6am and after catching a ride on MRT, was at the train station at 6:20am. Earlier, I was told by the rail employee that the second train to the airport departs at 6:30am. Instead, it turned out to be 6:45am so I could of saved myself some hassle getting there so early. The train dropped me off at the airport at 7am and I hurried upstairs to check-in for my flight with just 45 minutes to go.

Thai Airways Check-in And Royal Silk Lounge

Thai check-in for international business is located all the way at the end of the departure section A so it was a bit of a hike to get there and once there, I was told that I had to pay 700 baht/$22 because I was supposed to stay in the transit area and not go into the city after I arrived the previous day. This made no sense, nor was I alerted to that fact before hand, so I will have to sort that one out later. At that point, I just paid so I can get on my way. On the bright side, being on the end of the departure area, Thai had setup a separate immigration and security screening checkpoint for its business and first class travelers, so getting through it was a breeze. As I have already ranted about the hideous layout of the airport in previous posts (here and here), I will save that and just say that I had to hike out for a good 10-15 minutes to get to my gate where the boarding was almost finished already. Once again, I did not have any time to check out either of the Royal Silk lounges at BKK.

The Flight

After giving up my seat on a Singapore Airlines' A380 double decker in order to extend my stay in south east Asia, I got the next best thing - Thai Airways Boeing 747-400 with the seat on the upper deck. Understand that the aircraft itself is one of the older ones they have in the fleet and it had the paint scheme to match - instead of the usual Orchard scheme, it was an older one - maybe the original for this airplane?

My seat was in the emergency exit row upstairs so there was plenty of legroom. Otherwise, the seats were not that great - there were not the lie-flat kind, but rather had a noticeable angle to it when fully extended. Being in the exit row, there were no seats in front so there was no storage space. The monitors were also smaller, pull-out-from-armrest kind. I watched a movie while chowing down on breakfast and soon after drifted to sleep. We did encounter some turbulence throughout the flight, but nothing too bad.

The Food

Two meals were served on the flight - a breakfast set soon after departure and a dinner set a couple of hours prior to our arrival to Sydney. The earlier started with a fruit and yogurt plate paired with a croissant and followed by Chicken, Zucchini Coconut Milk Quiche with Pan-fried Bacon, Pan-fried Chicken Sausage, Baked Cherry Tomato with Olive Oil and Fresh Herbs. That took almost just as long to write out as it took me to finish it - the portion was really small with just a piece of bacon, a piece of sausage, etc.

Dinner started with Sweet Corn Cake and Minced Prawns on Toast with Cucumber Salad with Relish Sauce (once again, cucumber salad was just a few pieces of cucumber while I did not find the toast that the prawns were supposed to be on). First course was Grilled Vegetables and Salad with Pesto Dressing and Fresh Cheese and it was really good. Chicken Breast filled with Chanterelle, Tarragon Sauce with Saffron and Parmesan Risotto, Roasted Vegetables was plane and the veggies tasted a bit weird. I washed it down with couple glasses of red wine before finishing up with a fruit and cheese platter paired with a bit of port. Once again, I was able to say no to desserts that came with tea/coffee service at the end and was pretty proud of that (after all, Chocolate Equator Cake sounded like a must have on a flight that crossed the equator).