ONWARDS TO BANGKOK

 13th -14th Dec 2021

Thailand. The 'Land of Smiles'....?

Following on from my arrival at Gate 19, T2 LHR, to board the Austrian Airlines Flight  OS456 to Vienna and, hopefully, on to Bangkok, I was confronted by a little martinet as passengers were boarding. "You cannot board with that face-mask!". What?! Donner und Blitzen! (or whatever they say on Österreich). I had dutifully put my blue rag over my mouth and nose (normally around my chin when in face-mask territory). "Why not?" I asked. "You need to have an FFP2 mask", he commanded. I was left bewildered. "WTF is an FFP2 mask?" I politely enquired, "and why wasn't I told about this petty regulation on the Austrian Airlines website (which was expansive, if useless, and which I had actually wasted much time reading), or at least been warned at check-in? He merely suggested I might be able to buy one (you might have thought they could afford to issue them) at the W H Smith's shop, wherever that was. After getting this far I was, as you can imagine, quite irate. I was about to explode when a lady standing nearby (sensing an altercation) came to the rescue and said she had a spare one and gave it to me. Thanks so much to her (she was Polish as I discovered) and with much gratitude accepted the white rag to replace my blue one. So, I was generously allowed to board the Airbus to Vienna.

It took off on time and, during the course of the 1hr40min flight to Vienna we were served (or more accurately bought) some refreshments. I bought a coffee. We had been instructed/ordered to keep our face-masks on for the duration of the flight unless eating, drinking or taking medicine. Of course the FFP2  face-masks were then removed by many passengers nursing their drink, sandwich or bottle of pills, and continued to be so for the majority of the flight. 

This face-mask diktat is a complete farce.

During the course of the flight I expressed my concern to a hostie about the short turn-round time to catch the ongoing connection to Bangkok. She said that there were 25 people on this flight who had the same connection and it should be fine. We arrived 10 minutes early. Full marks to Austrian Airlines for that. As it happened, after (eventually) getting off the the aircraft, it was a check-free and short dash to the next boarding gate where there was a long queue to board Flight OS025 to Bangkok. We boarded a Boeing 777-200 ( a fairly rudimentary wide-body jet) and it was packed! Capacity about 315 seats and I saw few, if any, vacant (all full even in 1st Class, which I always make a point of strolling through at some point to envy their comfort). We in the plebs' seats were crammed in cheek by jowl. Most of the passengers seemed to be Westerners bound for a Thailand holiday. It was to be a 9 hour flight and, again, we were regaled with the face-masks "you must vear zem or be shot" order for the duration of the flight (9 hours!) unless eating, drinking or taking medicine routine. Well I, of course, and fortunately also the person jammed up against me in seat 38G, were keen to order a drink as soon as possible and keep drinking! That, combined with some rather inedible plastic flavoured supper and breakfast meals, avoided having to wear the blasted things for the duration. 

Arrival at Bangkok, Suvarnabhumi International, was spot on time (1515hrs Local on 14th Dec). Well done again Austrian Airlines. The following series of hurdles was to get through all the checks there. I can't remember the sequence but with various check points for temperature checks, vaccination certificates, Thailand Passes (and mine never got scanned, just looked at), immigration forms, passport control (and my visa was never asked for) it was not as time consuming as I thought it might be as they had plenty of staff on hand and were rushing people through. Thanks to the many documents we were all conscienciously carrying the system really could not cope with checking them all properly. In fact they have made it far too complicated and most documentation went unexamined. I never had to show my ASQ booking, for example, and probably could have easily just hopped onto the local transport system and booked into any hotel, anywhere in Thailand, unquestioned (following the first ASQ hotel no others have asked for any proof of PCR tests or vaccinations).

I then had to go to the baggage collection carousel to collect my totally unwanted, and useless, checked-in 'insurance' suitcase! It was there, sadly, and then off to Gate 10 to be met by a plethora of 'representatives' from various ASQ hotels. Most efficiently, I was identified by the Holiday Inn Express lady rep and directed to a mini-bus. I was the only occupant and hermetically sealed off from the driver - gosh they are worried by this bug. We sallied forth (4.30pm) for the 50 minute journey to some drive-through hospital facility in the city and very quickly PCR tested, simply by a 'nurse' opening the door of the mini-bus, poking a stick up my nose and throat and taking my passport details. We then proceded to the hotel. Checked in at 6.30pm (all staff fully masked up of course) and sent to a room on the 'quarantine' 2nd floor. It was a very comfortable room with room service for refreshments. No hardships there.

I came down to breakfast the next morning having been told that my PCR result was, fortunately, 'negative'. In fact they had received this result the previous evening...which is quicker than any rip-off service would aim to do in UK. I was then given another, equally decent, room on another floor and free to go.

That summarises my journey to Bangkok in these extraordinary times and, hopefully, exposes some of the illogical nonsense that we are now expected to put up with.

Left: I saw this notice at the hotel reception. It reminds me of guest houses in 1950s Britain.

Gosh! Isn't this now considered rather unforgiveably 'racist'? You could be arrested for putting it up in a British hotel. 

I have not yet been to Duria, but am making enquiries. I wonder what the Thais have got against them?

 



That concludes the tedious story of my journey. Next on to the latest from Bangkok.