We had a 0930 pick up from the hotel to the airport. It was about an hours trip. Previously it would have been a 10 minute trip, but the Chinese built a new airport for the city, as there were so many Chinese tourists arriving, the old one could not cope. The airport was deserted, it turns out that after completion, a couple of years ago, tourism fell in the wake of Covid, coupled with China placing a travel ban on many of its citizens.
A number of the airports have driverless cleaning machines. They are very polite, if a passenger is in the way it says “Excuse me the robot would like to clean”, if the passenger does not move, it will drive around them!
We had two flights today, Siem Reap to Bangkok, then on to Phuket. As both were with a regional carrier I was a little concerned about seat size and service, given some of the regionals in N. America. Our first flight was on a propellor aircraft similar to s Dash 8. The flight was fine, and surprisingly quiet for a prop. plane. Amazingly were were served a snack bag with a tasty roll and muffin.
Shortly after we arrived at Bangkok, the heavens opened and the thunder and lightning started. It wasn’t long until the airport stopped operating. To compound the delay, the aircraft operating our flight was delayed 2 hours on it’s previous leg, and was experiencing further weather delays operating out from Phuket. Not looking good. Although the airline made no announcements there are other ways using the internet to see what was going on!! We were meant to depart at 1705, at that time an aircraft pulled up to the gate, and we were boarding about 20 minutes later. Bangkok air had brought another plane over to operate the service! It was an hour and 20 minutes flight, the first half of the flight was turbulent and the seat belt sign remained on. Once it was turned off, the crew sprang into action and served us all a hot meal. Try getting that on Air Canada.
When we originally checked in, we were on an international flight from Cambodia to Thailand, the second flight being domestic. We cleared immigration at Bangkok, but it turned out in Phuket we would have to be escorted to the International Terminal to collect our bags and go through customs!
With bags in hand, we went outside to find our guide, there were a multitude of signs, but none with our name on it. We looked around hopefully for about 10 minutes, but no luck. We decided to head to the domestic terminal, as technically we were on a domestic flight. No sign of our guide. Other guides in the area saw us wandering around, and offered to help. In the mean time I went back to the International terminal, but still no sign of the guide. Back to domestic, Lyn was now on the phone (leant to her by one of the helpful guides). They had tracked down our guide, and he was coming over. I am still not totally sure what happened, but I get the impression that our guide was wandering around trying to find us, which is why we couldn’t find him at the usual reception point. This was our first mis connect of the trip.
About forty minutes later we were at the hotel, 12 hours after we left in the morning.
