Adios, Asia!

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I'm not really sure if it is worth me writing a blog for today, because all we've been doing is travelling home. But I'm really bored, because there's still at least 30 mins before we can board our plane at we've been in this airport (Sublaskdfjldakfljsdlfkjlf airport) for almost 6 hours now. Also, all the comfy chairs seem to have gone. So it is the crazily low internet chair for me!

We got up pretty late because the first item on our agenda for the day was check out. Mike tried to check us in online for our flights, but yet again Vietnam Airlines' online service wasn't up to that job. Check out took a little while, because we had to explain to the receptionist that we wanted to pay separately for the things we'd charged to the room and for the room itself, and then it took a while to explain that no, we don't have the credit card to which we wanted to charge the room. He kept asking, and I got a bit frustrated, so when he asked for the hundredth time if we had the card I said, "No, still no", and Mike stepped in to prevent potential yelling on my part (this wasn't really necessary, but whatever). He seemed to understand finally when Mike explained again, and that was that.

We then went to lunch at a café that we had seen a few times from the various cabs we had taken. The sign on the door said that it was closed, but this was in fact lying, and we went inside. The front-of-house dude did not fill me with confidence in the meal; he had such terrible teeth and was sweating perfusely. Not exactly hygienic. Also, the place smelt of cigarette smoke. But we ate our lunch, got summarily stiffed on the change (I told Mike not to accept this, but he wouldn't say anything to them for some reason) and went back to the hotel to sit in the lobby. The hotel people clearly were not keen on us littering up the lobby, because they tried to dispatch us on our way to the airport a few times during our sit. But we had booked the taxi for 13:30, and I was loathe to leave before then for the benefit of the hotel, especially since the seats were comfy and only a fool would trade comfy hotel lobby seats for standing waiting for a check-in desk to open. When we finally got up to leave, it transpired that the hotel folk had left our luggage unattended in our room at the mercy of the of the housekeeping staff, instead of keeping it safe downstairs as we had asked. This delayed us, since they had to send a bod up to fetch the abandoned suitcases.

The taxi journey took the 45 mins we were expecting, and we checked in. Thankfully, this time the woman could check our bags all the way through our journey. We then set about trying to find a tax refund counter. But no. The Vietnamese strike again. They don't have one. The woman at the information desk foisted us off in turn to the bank and the tourist information, but no-one really understood what we were after. This was frustrating. We had to give up, and went through security to wait at our gate. We had hoped for internet access, but there was none.

Our flight left roughly on time after a very rushed boarding procedure (the safety video started playing before we even started taxiing) and went relatively quickly thanks to my nodding off at various intervals. We arrived at Bangkok Airport, and figured out where our transfer counter was, but we were told it wouldn't open until 9:30pm, in more than 3 hours time. So we waited. We got coffee, and ate dinner. My duck egg noodle soup was really good, and took a long time to eat, which was a plus, but Mike wasn't enormously impressed. Then we went on the internet, checked in, and went on the internet again in an area nearer our gate.

And that is our day so far. We should be boarding at midnight (just 20 mins time now), and our flight will take 12 hours and 15 mins, apparently. But we are in Premium Economy this time, so we are hopeful that it will be a good flight.

Adios, Asia!
xxx

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