Bangkok, a quiet ending

Sunday 9th July
As we had to both check out of our hotel by noon and depart for the airport by 1, there were no activities planned for the morning. Sue & Peter went for a walk around the block, stopping for a (pretty average) cup of coffee before meeting Justin & Louisa for brunch. Nice food but as 1/2 of it took over 1 hour, wasn't that relaxing, Justin hadn't packed yet.
We noticed that the street food stalls were already going despite not much early morning traffice. Most ofntheir customer were people in work clothes so i guess they were on their way to jobs. The massage ladies weren't out yet, probably work late in the night.
Anyway that done we returned for our final packing, everyone wondering how heavy their bags were after a late surge in shopping. Louisa felt a bit cheated that she hadn't gone near her shopping quota and had too much air space in her bags.
Today is also a religious day and tomorrow will be a public holiday, so many of the smaller shops are closing today and still a prohibition on grog sales, good thing we are leaving.
The van to take us to the airport was early and with little traffic, we were at the airport within 1/2 hour. Just as well as that is when the chaos began.
Had to use a check-in kiosk firstly which refused to recognise Therrie's passport and only printed 5 boarding passes and 2 baggage tags before shutting down, " Out of Service ". The airport was packed with families and tour groups so we had to line up with them to get our suitcases scanned, before we went to the check-in counter. Luckily the staff sorted our boarding pass & suitcases and we were off to immigration.
This queue extended out into the main airport area and once inside wound through a series of switch-backs and alleys until we finally reached the immigration counter. Even tho it was so busy an there were no airport staff bossing people around, it was very orderly and courteous apart from the normal bump & pushing in.
Finally through there and then relatively quick pass through security, all good although the small lady in front of me couldn't understand why they took her 15cm folding knife of her. I didn't wait around to see the outcome, but I guess not in her favour.
We had time enough for a quick bite to eat, buy some water & a book to read and then we were boarding our 2nd last leg, Air Asia to Kuala Lumpur. Justin's magic is wearing off, but not totally, we are right down the back of the plane but luckily we had an empty middle seat between each pair.

Good flight to KL, had to go through immigration & collect our bags, pretty quick, then we had 4 hours to kill before boarding. We took a punt on them opening the check-in gate early and were the 1st in line , just as well because by the time we had checked-in there were hundreds of people behind us. So we had enough time to have a walk around, get some dinner and prepare for the 8 hour flight home. Justin got excited to receive confirmation of split seating but his joy was short lived when we got to the gate only to be told that the plane was fully booked and no spare seats anywhere. Security was tight, checked our passports at check-in, before immigration, at immigration, before the boarding gate and at the boarding gate. Security screening after immigration and then again before the boarding gate. Feeling very secure but well interogated, we boarded and settled in for the night flight back to OZ.

PS. Arrived in Sydney 1/2 hour early and quickly through immigration but had to wait ages for our bags.
Then it was time to split up & farewell our travel group, Justin took a cab home, as did Therrie and a coughing & sneezing Ross, Sue & Peter had coffee with Louisa before catching train back to get their car and poor Louisa had to sit at the domestic terminal till 5pm when the Wagga flights got over the fog delays.

Weather was overcast in Bangkok, very warm and humid but pleasant enough, about 32C
In Sydney it was fine and cool, max of 16CRead more