Day 0 – Bangalore to Bangkok!!!

Last minute office work kept me busy until 6pm, I didn’t have to worry , as my wife had packed everything a week before and we were travel ready. She was super excited as it was going to be her first flight experience. We booked Uber at around 7pm and we were at the airport around 8.30pm, beating the Friday traffic.

Check-in and Immigration experience at Bangalore

Airasia doesn’t provide you check-in baggage allowance, you have to buy it either during booking or at the counter. I had purchased combo which provides 20kg allowance per passenger along with in-flight meals. We had 2 trolleys, one full of clothes and another with helmets and riding jacket, both within 20kg limit. Since airport was under partial closure citing runaway maintenance and Aero India-2017, there wasn’t much of a crowd at the security check.

The staff at the immigration happened to be from South Canara district, had a good chat with him and we cleared immigration by 9pm and the wait began! Though the scheduled boarding was at 10.30pm, we could board the flight only after 11.Boarding was quick, after brief safety demonstration; finally flight took off at 11.20pm.

 In-flight experience AirAsia FD138

Since AirAsia is one of the low cost airlines with short fly time, it didn’t have any in-flight entertainment. Wife was super excited to have her meal in flight as I had earlier shown her photos of cute organized platter of my previous trips. As the cabin crew approached us, I ordered 2 Veg meals. Here comes the BIG SURPRISE!

“Sir no veg meal, only chicken sandwich as part of combo. If you need veg meal you have to buy it from in-flight food menu!!” said the flight attendant. The combo meal pack which I got along with luggage allowance provided only Nonveg sandwich and one cup of water! We decided to chuck the plan of having meal and instead catch some early sleep.

Immigration experience in Don Mueang International Airport Bangkok.

Though flight take off was delayed, it managed to land 20 min prior to the scheduled  time, Great right! You will be given an immigration form before exiting the airplane, in which you have to fill in your arrival and departure flight details. We exited the airplane quickly and proceeded to the immigration counter. Since we had stamped visas, it saved us 1.5 hours of standing in Visa on-arrival.  Though the immigration Queue was not long it took a good 20 min or so to get our passports stamped and we proceeded to collect our baggage from the baggage carousel.

Tourist Sim

DTAC,True,AIS are the mobile  major operators in Thailand, who offer same tariff plan for tourist sims and have similar network coverage. I got myself DTAC sim for 599 Baht which gives 5GB 4G data and 100Baht credit. Sim activation was instant, you just need to give your passport and voila! You will get your sim activated within 5 min.

Airport Taxi

There is a separate taxi counter in DMK airport, you just have to tell where you have to go. The operator will write a receipt and hand it over to taxi driver. Our taxi was a CNG based Toyota corolla, it had a big CNG tank in the boot. In various travel forums I had read that if you land very early, then you don’t have to take elevate express way as traffic will be sparse and it will save 120 Baht toll charges. As we started our trip, we had a conversation with the driver.

Driver: Toll road?

Me: No toll, early morning no traffic.

Again after travelling 500 mtrs I saw he is about to enter toll road

Me: No toll

D: Yes yes, toll

M: No toll

And he entered the elevated expressway. I failed to convey him that no need to take toll road Our taxi ride lasted for about 40 min and cost us around 240+50+120 baht. You need to pay 50 baht as driver tip while coming from airport.