Getting ready to depart from Bangkok – Friday 10 June

I read in today's Bangkok Post that there has been an unseasonably early onset of heavy rain this year, hence last night's rain. It also influenced our movements today. We couldn't arrange for a late checkout today, so we had to check out by noon. When we told the baggage guy at the hotel that we would be back to collect them at 6 pm, as we were leaving our bags with him, he mentioned that journey times to the airport at that time on a wet Friday night could be horrendous - there had been cases of it being as long as 3 hours, assuming that you could even get a taxi. So we occupied ourselves for a while on Sukhumvit Road (including some attention to Sue's nails!), but at about 4 pm, the sky wasn't looking good and there were drops of rain. Hence, we decided that rather than spend more time and money sipping coffee in town, we'd cut and run for the airport (even though we had plenty of time). A taxi was readily obtained, an acceptable fare was negotiated (not strictly necessary, but probably meant the driver didn't have to split the metered fare with the cab owner?), then after nearly 45 minutes while the taxi negotiated less than 3 km to get on to the expressway (mostly sitting in stationary traffic) and a further 30 minutes or so on a congested (but moving) expressly, we were at the airport. We can well believe the horror stories about much longer travel times at worse times. Out of interest, I noticed that the cab driver immediately picked up a fare at the drop off zone at the airport (thus avoiding, I suppose, the 50 baht fee charged by the airport and, I assume, a long wait). So hopefully it was a good day for him, and made up for the many hours that cabs seem to sit outside the hotel. Check in at Thai business class took about 2 minutes, and from checkin, you go straight to a dedicated “fast track” immigration and security chanel, and then straight down the escalator to the lounge. Thus within a few minutes of arriving at the airport we were in the lounge, asking about the absence of wine. Everything else is available (except, strangely, peanuts), but the wine only appears at 6 pm (it now being after that time, I can report that the red is an acceptable Lindemans). This is an improvement on the satellite lounge that we ended up in on the way over, where wine didn't turn up at all. The upshot is that we have several hours to wait for our flight, but it beats spending the time stuck in traffic and we are being fed and watered. And, of course, Sue has some important duty free shopping to do, and isn't being rushed!