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peteryoungWell, that didn't go too bad, all things considered. Yesterday's Plan A worked out quite well: on the Cathay relief flight I even got an economy seat, and they accepted my Dragonair Phuket-Hong Kong ticket to pay for it, which was bending the rules considerably. It took 22 hours to get here all the way from Benji's house in Bangkok: drive 2 hours to U-Tapao airfield, get on the 2-hour Cathay Pacific flight, connect to BA in Hong Kong, fly 12 hours to London, then a bus to Reading and taxi to my father's house, where I am now at nearly 9am the following day.
Meanwhile, there are hundreds of Brits still stuck in Bangkok and not going very far at all, mostly because they may have just chosen to wait it out instead of finding their own way home. As far as I can tell no European carriers have actually done anything yet, and this is a pretty good summary of the situation there at the moment.
U-Tapao, 200km south east of Bangkok, is a joint military/civil airfield and is also a local airport for Pattaya, so it usually only handles a few flights a day. It has now been completely overwhelmed by half of Asia's national carriers suddenly arriving there all at once (no European or American airlines yet), and the small terminal is totally packed and a complete crush, with plenty of soldiers, some disorganised and highly stressed staff, plenty of pushing and shoving, frayed tempers and at least a couple of fist fights. With all these desperate people jockeying for position to get out I had to do some kind of reality check: these are mostly tourists, FFS, but some of them were behaving like it was the evacuation of Saigon.
Glad to actually have made it out, for obvious reasons, but I'd still rather be over there, also for obvious reasons: and gosh, T H A N K Y O U for all your kind wishes. Expect periodical updates for the next nine months, and beyond...!
Meanwhile, there are hundreds of Brits still stuck in Bangkok and not going very far at all, mostly because they may have just chosen to wait it out instead of finding their own way home. As far as I can tell no European carriers have actually done anything yet, and this is a pretty good summary of the situation there at the moment.
U-Tapao, 200km south east of Bangkok, is a joint military/civil airfield and is also a local airport for Pattaya, so it usually only handles a few flights a day. It has now been completely overwhelmed by half of Asia's national carriers suddenly arriving there all at once (no European or American airlines yet), and the small terminal is totally packed and a complete crush, with plenty of soldiers, some disorganised and highly stressed staff, plenty of pushing and shoving, frayed tempers and at least a couple of fist fights. With all these desperate people jockeying for position to get out I had to do some kind of reality check: these are mostly tourists, FFS, but some of them were behaving like it was the evacuation of Saigon.
Glad to actually have made it out, for obvious reasons, but I'd still rather be over there, also for obvious reasons: and gosh, T H A N K Y O U for all your kind wishes. Expect periodical updates for the next nine months, and beyond...!
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Date: 2008-11-30 05:45 pm (UTC)just fyi, you will perhaps not be surprised if i report that the thailand thing is virtually invisible on the u.s. major network news, being overshadowed by the mumbai thing with spectacular video footage and terrifying terrorists. and of course we have severe rationing on how many events in asia (or the rest of the outside world) can be reported at one time.