Originally scheduled to depart from Kingsford Smith International Airport, Sydney at 9 PM on April 10 2008, our actual departure would turn out to be as late as a Thai street workers period. Our plans had us arriving in Bangkok in the early morning of April 11, to meet up with Paul on April 12 (as he had booked on the flight departing 24 hrs after us). Flying Thai Airways with a stopover in Brisbane to pick up more passengers, we were keen as mustard to begin our Thai holiday and promptly made our way to the check-in counter. Seeing the line, I enquired with the Thai check-in desk as to if we could be given priority, as Ev Mo was suffering from recent ligament damage to his ankle (courtesy of a dodgy soccer tackle) and was under doctors orders to keep his leg raised. The good-for-nothing bimbo behind the counter suggested Ev Mo remain seated while we queued in the line and then one of us could fetch him when we were at the front of the queue. This complete and utter lack of customer service would be an omen for the bad things which followed.
Eventually we checked in and made our way through to the bar at the gate, where the first beers of the trip were ordered. It was at about this stage that Sim started complaining of stomach pains. After brushing off the first hour of Sims complaints we began to ask if he was ok when we could see him clutching his stomach and looking pale. Sim explained that it could be from the large meal he ate after doing sit-ups a few days previous, so we suggested he rub some deep-heat into his stomach, and so, for the next 5 hours Sim would rub deep-heat into his stomach every 30 mins or so. We all thought this was fairly humourous.
Ev Mo managed to construct a tower out of our discarded Eagles Boys pizza boxes onto which he could rest his damaged ankle.
By 9:15 PM passenger tension at the boarding gate was rising, however we are informed that boarding will be commencing in 10 mins. We should have noticed the lack of a plane outside our boarding gate, before making a judgement on the accuracy of the information. At 9:35 PM we are told that we will be boarding in 10 mins, after they have completed cleaning our mystery invisible plane.
At 10:05 PM we are told "Boarding will commence shortly, after a final safety sweep." Again, no plane to speak of... Told at 10:30 PM that an "engine fault" has been found and engineers are trying to fix it. And then, at 11:10 PM, a Thai man with a Brazilian accent tells us "I am able to inform you that due to the curfew only being extended for 30 mins we will not be taking off tonight as the engine fault has not been fixed. The technicians have read every manual and still could not fix the problem." This was truly confidence inspiring, and I am able to say with some certainty that the Thai Airways ground staff keeping us (un)informed of the situation were a pack of fucking imbeciles.
If you think things couldn't possibly have gotten any worse, you'd be wrong. As we were then herded downstairs to collect our luggage, before being told we needed to go back upstairs to obtain cabcharges so we could get home. Mind you, at this stage it was about 1 AM in the morning and the airport was empty save for a few Thai Airways gimps and all the passengers on our flight. Due to this experience with Thai Airways I have nothing but bad things to say about them and I do not recommend them for any form of international air travel.
If you look closely at Ev Mo's eyes, you can see the burning rage.
