The adventure begins

Today the adventure begins for Don and Anna.  Uncle John kindly deposited them at the airport at about 6 am.  We asked him to capture a picture of the intrepid travellers.

 

Today’s activity was scripted like a ballet.  It was the day of some in and some out.  First up, the 5 of us were to fly to Suvarnabhumi airport in Bangkok at 4 pm.  The reason it needed to be so choreographed was because Mum and Dad needed to catch another flight up to Khon Kaen, and we needed to be at Bangkok to meet Grandma and Grandpa Tossell.

We needed to check out of the hotel by 12 so we decided we may as well go straight to the airport to wait for our flight.  Lucky we did, because when we tried to book in to our Thai airways flight they informed us that our flight didn’t actually exist, and that somehow we had managed to book on to it, on their website, and they had no idea how it happened.  Of course then a minor panic set in.  The counter chickie told us that they have two alternative flights, one at 2 pm and one at 5pm.  Either would have worked in ok for us, but not for Mum and Dad as their next flight was scheduled for 5 50 pm.  Oh yeh, both of them were fully booked!

The solution came fairly easily in the end, they re-booked us onto Bangkok Airways that had a flight at 2:10 pm.  They told us that we would miss out on plane food so issued us a voucher to eat in their restaurant before take-off.  They also asked us if we minded sitting in the back row – we were just happy to fly so probably would have traveled in the lavvy if it meant getting us to Bangkok in time for phase 2.  So, in the end it all worked out ok, and the rest of the family that were expecting us all, in 2 different locations, will be none the wiser as to how close we came to missing our rendezvous.

As nice and modern as Suvarnabhum is, its not that great to just hang out in while you're waiting.  We missed saying goodbye to Mum and Dad as we had to go collect our luggage and then we couldn’t get back into where they were in the domestic terminal.  Anyhoo only 90 minutes now till the Grand Tossells arrive so phase one is nearly complete.

Time actually passed pretty quickly, we had a feast of Subway and they were nearly there.  Right on 7 we moved over to the arrival gate so that they could see us straight away.  After standing there for a few minutes I realised that there actually 2 international arrival gates.  Arrgghhh   which one would they appear out of?  Well the only option was to split up and go to each gate.  After what seemed like an eternity they appeared out of the first gate we were standing at.  They were tired, but thrilled to be in Bangkok.  We quickly grabbed a taxi and we were hotel bound.

Then, the wheels fell off.  We arrived at I- Residence at about 9 pm to begin the booking in process.  Don and Annas booking was hunkydory no problems.  Ours on the other hand was quite the other.  We had booked 2 adjoining rooms so that Nate could have his own room joined to ours (we were quite looking forward to the added space).  However, they don't have rooms that interconnect - they booked us two separate rooms at either end of the corridor!  Clearly that wasn't going to work, so the only alternative (as they were fully booked) was to put the 3 of us into the one room.  Not a biggie you might think, but these rooms are tiny.  They jammed our bed up against the window and Nate on a fold up next to Tony.  While not thrilled about it we were ok to just go to bed knowing that tomorrow they would move us to a bigger room.

Not to sound like a complete whinger, but the rooms we had were terrible.  There was pretty much no insulation between walls as we could hear every thing that Don and Anna were saying next door, and at 4 am when I was awake I could hear someone talking in the street - and we were 8 floors up.  Add to that, our room faced onto the sky train track which is lit up light sunshine, and they have wooden shutters on the windows that don't close properly so you couldn't actually tell that the light was off in the room as it was so bright.  The clincher however was the aircondtioning unit.  It obviously had a mechanical issue as it sounded like a helicopter trying to land.  It was too hot to turn it off so we had no choice but to suffer.  I am blessed with the ability to sleep through pretty much everything, but this was even too much for me.  As we drifted off to the first of many brief periods of sleep, all I could do was prey that things would get better tomorrow, if not, I dare say a change in hotel will be in order.