Staying last night at Rydges new hotel, just across the road from the international terminal, makes it one of the most relaxed starts we have had to a flight. We wander over to the airport at around 7am. Check in is quick and easy, straight through customs and immigration and head to the Qantas club for breakfast. Oh no! The gelato doesn’t come out till 8:30 as it is freshly made every day so I start with scrambled eggs. Yum! The gelato today is vanilla and it is delicious!! We’re meant to leave at 9:55am but while all the passengers are on board, some cargo was overlooked and now has to be loaded so it is 10:40 by the time we takeoff. Colin is two rows behind me on this flight, 27A. I have 25A. It’s a really relaxing flight because there is almost no noise and no movement. It’s just like being in the quiet carriage of the train! I don’t even have to queue up for a toilet! Yet there are only two spare seats on the flight. Lunch is chicken and veggies which is nice and we enjoy a raspberry Weiss bar about two thirds of the way through the flight. Dinner is horrible though. A cardboard box containing two dinner sized rolls with some sort of shredded beef and spicy sauce filling. One advantage of having Frequent Flyer Gold status is being offered a priority card through immigration and customs at Bangkok airport. This saves us an enormous amount of time as the normal queues are really long. We don’t have to wait too long for our luggage and then head off to the hotel. Colin doesn’t want to wait for the hotel bus. He likes to walk the two or three hundred metres to the hotel. But today it takes ages just to walk to the lift which we need to catch to the hotel level because Bangkok airport is so crowded. Even when we get to the lift we miss it twice because there are so many people waiting for it….. “Next time”, Colin says with a grin. I have a pair of trousers with a broken zip. Just around from the hotel reception is a really good tailor. I ask if they can be done by tomorrow morning but our flight leaves too early. “You pick up when you come back” he says. I agree making a mental note to put a reminder in my phone. We finish the day with a delicious Thai meal at the hotel restaurant washed down with a complementary beer!