thnaks to the Thais, I couldn't go to Cambodia
 

I was scheduled to fly from Phuket to Phnom Penh on Nov. 29 then to Siem Riep Dec. 2, then to BKK on Dec. 6. As the BKK airport was closed, and our PNH flight was cancelled I contacted Bangkok Airways to see what could be done. They scheduled us on a fligfht Weds. Dec. 3 to SR thinking things would be cleared up by then. Weds. came and went and no flights. So Bangkok Airways cancelled the rest of the flights I had PNH-SR, then SR-BKK on Dec. 6. We ended up stranded in Phuket for 6 days, couldn't get a flight until Dec. 5 to KL (which I had to pay $250 each for one way tickets and incurred unexpected hotel, meal, and taxi costs.
I am so disappointed and pissed at the Thais for ruining a trip I had planned for 11 months. I won't be able to get back to this part of the world until 2010. I also feel sorry for the 2 hotels I had booked and 2 guides and drivers who also lost our business.
When I try to come back, and I will, I will not be going anywhere
near Thailand ever again. I will have to find other ways to get to Cambodia. Hopefully in a few years there will be more flights there.
I used to enjoy Thailand, having been there three times before but it has become too unstable and unpredictable. I'll take my tourist dollars elsewhere to a country where they have their act together.
Next year, I'm going to Europe twice.
Sayonara Asia for now.
Susie

It's easy to get to cambodia without going through Bangkok. You'll have no trouble there. EVA flies into Phnom Penh as do many others.

Sorry you had such a bad experience, though it certainly is not the fault of the "average thai". I'm thinking that taxi drivers, tour guides, restaurant and shop owners are all as put out as you are!

I'm sorry your plans were altered by the demonstrations. Had you known how long the airport closure was going to last, you could have made alternate plans to get to Cambodia (e.g., flying though KL).

While I can understand that you are upset, blaming "the Thais" makes little sense. I agree, you should take a break from Asia.

offwego, the OP did express sympathy with the hotels, guides, and drivers who did not get her business.

susiesan was, indirectly, a target of the Thais who were protesting.

Hope you don't get caught in a Paris transit strike on your next trip, susiesan. ;)

No, you don't have to stay away from Asia. Thailand is not the only country in Asia.

Aren't those Paris transit strikes dreadful...have been caught up in a few along with an airport strike. Some years ago, the day I arrived into Orly, from Provence, the outgoing flight boards had noted that all flights had been cancelled. I had literally JUST made it back into Paris in time. Happy Travels!

I can understand the OP's anger at the Thai people in general.

They are the ones protesting and they did use the OP and thousands of other innocents directly to make their point, as do the Paris subway workers as well as the Hawaii bus drivers, etc.

I just hope that all realize that negative opinions like these are likely to fester and grow if they continue to use the innocent international tourist as their "hostages" for their personal gains

This post irritated me at first - but then I realized that susiesan just needed a chance to vent - and that's O.K. None of us make a lot of sense when we're frustrated, disappointed and angry. I'm sure she'll feel less pissed about this soon and maybe come to some more generous conclusions.

'it has become too unstable and unpredictable...'

Dear susiesan, LIFE is unstable and unpredictable. Good luck in your search for the 'safe' bit. I keep looking. I haven't found it yet.

Good luck in going to Europe. don't forget though, that place has had train bombings etc.... Much worse than anything in Thailand.

Blame the Thais in general, but who blamed all the Brits back in April after the luggage disaster at Heathrow which affected almost as many folk as in Bangkok?

It is unfair to blame the entire nation for what has happened.

Getting to Phnom Penh is easy from Bangkok. Take the bus to Aranya Prathet border. Over to Angkor Wat, see that. Then the bus down to Phnom Penh.
Or the othter scenic route. Take the bus to Trat. Boat into Cambodia. Bus to Sihanoukville, enjiy the beach there. And finally, the bus to Phnom Penh.

Pity you hadn't contemplated that instead of relying on the flight. I mean travelling for 11 months, what was the rush!?

"Getting to Phnom Penh is easy from Bangkok. Take the bus to Aranya Prathet border. Over to Angkor Wat, see that. Then the bus down to Phnom Penh."

The issue was the OP was stuck in Phuket, not BKK.

"The issue was the OP was stuck in Phuket, not BKK. " - presumably a bus and train would have gotten the OP to BKK, from where there are several overland possibilities for reaching Siem Reap. A bus and train were also an alternative for reaching KL.

However, the uncertainty was probably a big part of the problem - the OP didn't know it would take so long to resolve, and that she had six days in hand. But I'm with dogster - travel is a voyage into the unknown, where the only thing to be expected is the unexpected. At least the OP was in Phuket, not Mumbai.

Am I mistaken? Couldn't the OP have flown to SIN and from there to anywhere?

I do recognize that the closing of BKK caused a shift of plans and probably cash to rearrange flights, but I think a better title would have been "Thnaks[sic] to the Thais, I couldn't go to Cambodia without rearranging my plans and spending some more money".

While I can sympathize with Susiesan's frustration at the recent events in Thailand, I had to laugh at the thought that things would be better and smoother in Europe. I have encountered many more instances of travel inconvenience in Europe (tube diverted because of IRA bomb scare, airline strikes in Italy, etc) than I ever have in Asia.

I rarely take swipes or engage in sarcasm, but this one irritated me, too, at first... and at second. Perhaps "the Thais" didn't realize they were inconveniencing you?

Seriously, I'd have been ticked off, too--furious, in fact--at missing Cambodia, so I can empathize with your desire to vent. But geesh, things happen --all over the world. It seems an over-reaction to take your frustration out on "the Thais" (presumably all of them) and say you'll take your tourist dollars to a country "where they have their act together" - wherever that is. Thank goodness you weren't in Mumbai, where instead of missing part of your vacation you might have lost you life. It could have been much worse. I'm guessing your anger will likely lessen with time. Either way, I hope you make it to Cambodia one day (and will give us a trip report when you return).
Karen

Well, frankly those Thais were just so rude! I know, I know, they were protesting in hopes of making Thailand a better place for them to live, but really, couldn't hey have just rented billboards or something?

Europe is so much better...Greece, Spain, France, Italy, and England have never had their airports closed down by protesters. Train bombings, riots, rail strikes, and defective airports, maybe, but at least they keep their protesters out of the airports!

Seriously, Susie, travel always puts you at the mercy of local events and mother nature. Having a "Plan B" tucked away in the back of your brain is just good insurance. Even if you don't have a "Plan B" for inconveniences, you should work on enough survival skills (and extra cash) to get out of any country in the event of a major disaster.

I always expect issues with flying, so usually have at least thought about the alternatives such as trains, busses, taxis, private cars, bikes, boats.

I too think it is outrageous that this selfish country has the nerve to exercise their democratic right to protest. Who do they think the are to inconvenience foreign tourists on their holidays?

PS lcuy you are behind the times! We Brits don't always manage to keep our protesters out of our airports. Stansted (Essex) was taken over a few days ago by a group of idiots calling themselves "Plane Stupid" apparently they were protesting about climate change!!

Believe me susiean you would much rather be stranded in Phuket than Essex!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/m.../08/do0805.xml

A possible nomination for the L/AO award?

Indeed!

Susiesan, I see you plan to vacation in Europe twice next year, and would note that had you chosen to vacation in Athens or other parts of Greece THIS year rather than Thailand, you probably would be writing very similar things about the Greeks. If you can guarantee stress-free holidays in Europe 2009, let’s start laying odds now…but Alitalia is just about to be taken over in bankruptcy and who knows what will emerge, so do you really want to buy those Air One tickets to Rome?... and of course Lufthansa had a strike in July stranding lots of people. (It doesn’t just take an airport closure to cancel flights – Thailand like the rest of Asia is barely unionzed and a workers strike is the last thing you would worry about there, but the first thing you worry about in Europe.) And had you been in Mardrid in March 2005 you really would have been “inconvenienced”.

To paraphrase the fictional Lord John Marbury, the inconvenience you experienced is “is the price you pay for being alive, rich and free; all at the same time.” You had the money to go there, the freedom your passport and culture gives you, and the free time to spend being “inconvenienced”. Hundreds of millions of people in many parts of the world would have gladly traded places with you and been happily inconvenienced in a hotel in Phuket with running water, electricity and food. Perhaps a shift in perspectives is called for.

Yes, that's right, things like this have happened before and will happen again in other places at other times. Forget that this happened to you, now. There is no point in complaining about it because you are coming from a privileged country. It was a big mess but you don't have a right to complain.

We should all know better than to criticize the Thais. Don't blame them, they weren't responsible!

I guess that is what people are saying.

Yes, of course people blamed the Brits for the Heathrow thing. As if the Brits and the US and other first world countries don't get criticised.

I thought it was Thai citizens protesting against the Thai government. And that it was the Thai government and Thai military/ police that dragged the thing out.

If it wasn't "the Thais" then who was responsible for the mess?

mrwunrfl- You are of course correct that the world blamed the British for the Heathrow terminal 5 debacle. However, being English, I blame the Spanish. A Spanish company Ferrovial bought BAA, the company that runs our airports!!
O.K. I admit that we would have been perfectly capable of screwing up our own transport system without the assistance of our European cousins, but what the hell? lets dole out the blame wherever we can!

clive---shut up, you are nearly argentinian now so your roots don't count anymore...

Bob - of course my roots count. I am Cornish and always will be!!

To answer some of you:

I wasn't traveling for 11 months, I had planned the trip for 11 months. We had only 2 weeks to spend on Asia,the first on a Star Clipper cruise in Thailand, the second in Cambodia. Getting to SE Asia is not easy for someone who lives in Kansas City. Our total travel time from MCI-HKT with flights and layovers was 34 hours. This is not a trip I can make on short notice or a whim.

I did have a plan B-to skip PNH and go to SR for 3 days instead of the 5 planned. Bangkok Airways DID change our tickets, but the day we were to go the BKK airport was still closed. So all plans for Cambodia had to be canceled and we waited it out in Phuket to catch up with our return flights home. We could not extend the trip as both of us had to get back to work.

Since it was the Thai PAD who was protesting, who else is at fault but the Thais? I know not all the Thais were involved, but the Thai people/police/military/gov't did nothing to stop these protestors. And the PAD were on local TV saying if they don't like the next PM they'll march back in and occupy BKK airport again since they got away with it once.

I know Europe can be politically unstable at times too, as seen by what's going on in Greece now (Our cruise in April ends in Athens). I know Europeans frequently go on strike. I know airlines go bankrupt. That's what travel insurance is for, and I did have it for the Cambodia trip (although Travelguard is trying to weasel out of paying on my claim).

No, I could not fly to Singapore to get to Cambodia. The earliest flight I could get to anywhere from Phuket was 6 days later, and it was to KL. I had to get in line with 350K other stranded tourists to get out of Thailand. There would have been no time to get to Cambodia.I'm lucky AA was able to rearrange our flights home as they were award tickets and those are hard to change. And AA didn't even charge us.

I am afraid by the time I get back to Cambodia in 2-3 years it will have become too touristy and overbuilt and the temples will be declining and crumbling from the increase in tourism.It's part of the reason I wanted to go now.

As to the protestors doing it to make Thailand a better place to live, they shot themselves in the foot. Because of the huge drop in tourism from their sit-in, a million Thais in the tourism industry will lose their jobs. Protests that hurt the middle, lower class people don't make life better. The rich Thais and politicians won't be impacted by this at all. The little Thai guy is the one who will suffer.

Be persistent with Travel Guard. They once denied one of my claims , but I was persistent and resubmitted it and the second time it went through. I've used them for years. Happy Travels!

susie---did you have a good time in phuket??

Not really. We're not resort people. The hotels we stayed at were lovely, we tried 2 different ones. But because we had to spend 2-3 hours each morning on the phone and internet trying to change our flights trying to get to Cambodia and out of Thailand, half of a day was used up. We took the local bus to Phuket Town one day. Got massages a few times. And we hired a driver for a 6 hour tour around another day. But I got horrible food poisoning from the place he took us for lunch and spent the whole next day either in the bathroom or sleeping it off.I have no desire to ever go back to Phuket, it's not my kind of place for a vacation. If I want a beach resort vacation, the Caribbean is much closer for us. traveling for 34 hours to go to a beach is not my idea of fun.

Forgive me for asking, but why was Phuket on your original plans then if you are not really beach people?

Sorry you had a bad time, we had our plans disrupted too due to the airport problem, so we extended our time in Penang and flew home a different way and my BF had food poisoning too! ( we flew via Singapore which has so far cost me an extra £1150 - which my insurance wont pay for) but i am going to chalk it up to one of those things. Yes its hugely inconvieneient (and expensive) but i still love the Thai people and Thailand, so i will be back.

Best wishes
S

Ok, let's blame the Spanish. Just don't tell anyone on the Europe forum.

MRW mums the words!!

We were in Phuket because that's where the Star Clipper cruise began and ended. We arrived there at noon and boarded the ship the same day at 4:00pm Nov. 22. When the ship returned to Phuket Nov. 29 we were supposed to go right to the airport and fly to Cambodia for the main reason for taking this trip. The cruise was secondary. We had mostly wanted to see the temples at Siem Riep and decided to go somewhere else in this part of the world since it takes so long for us to get to Asia. I would never choose to vacation in Phuket. Not my kind of place.

Such a pity you didn't get a chance to log onto a forum whilst you were there as you might have gotten some good suggestions as to somewhere to stay that you would have preferred, but which was still within a reasonably short drive of phuket, e.g. khao lak or krabi. I'm not a big fan of phuket either but there are lovely places on that coastline.

Oh Dear, if the cruise was secondary, why didn't you make it so.
You didn't miss Cambodia because of the Thais...... you missed it because of your own actions. You chose to do the cruise first.
Travelling is not like buying a big mac....thank god !!
Sometimes.....you have to work at it. Often the very best experiences appear from adversity.....if you apply yourself.
And YES, I have experienced some very difficult times in this part of the world, but then, also some unique times.
Suspect we will see a similar post on the Europe board or Africa or Middle East Or America. Stuff happens.

Sorry, travelling wimp....IMO !

Hello Susiesan,

As someone who was in almost your exact same position, I want to let you know I understand and empathise with your feelings.

We arrived in Bangkok 48 hours before the airports closed on 11/26. We were supposed to fly to Siem Reap 11/27 and to Phuket on 11/30. The Siem Reap>Phuket flight, of course, went thru Bangkok :( All our flights were cancelled and we could not get to SR without an overland trip of 6-7 hours EACH WAY, and we would still have had to get down to Phuket from Bangkok - that was another 10 hours drive!

I know some suggested to you that it would have somehow been easy to hop on a flight from Phuket to somewhere else to SR, but that was not easy at all!! Flights were fully booked out of HKT every day after day due to so many people trying to get out of Thailand any way they could.

Not knowing what was going to happen, we also were wary of leaving Thailand in the event we had trouble getting back in. We were honestly expecting violence based on what was happening at the time.

Like you, we got our tickets to BKK in December of 2007 and were REALLY looking forward to seeing the temples. Ponheary was to be our guide, so we left her in the lurch too. There is no way we can get back soon either, and the 30ish hours travel time to SE Asia is a bear.

We were terribly disappointed in the turn of events but mostly I feel very very sorry for the Thai people. So many are going to have hard times based on these events. Tourism is crashing based on what I read.

We ended up staying at the JW Marriott Resort on Phuket for 9 days instead of our scheduled 5, and spending an hour or two each day at the business center or on line making and changing getaway plans. We ended up spending $700.0 for the two of us to get to Hong Kong where we could pick up a NWA flight.

Luckily, I loved the resort and while I would not have planned a trip to Thailand just to go there, I did enjoy the time I did have.

So anyway, based on some of the replies here, I just wanted to let you know I was sorry for what happened to you. It is too bad that civil disagreements could not have been resolved without affecting so many others. For us travelers, a little expense, dissappointment and inconvenience. For others, their jobs and livelihoods are gone, hard times indeed.

I read an IHT article about the protests. There were anti-gov protests at the airport and also pro-gov protests.

The anti's were, according to the article, "urban elites and middle class" who were alarmed at the gov policies that were "empowering the rural poor". So it wasn't a group seeking justice for all Thais. It was just one group of Thais trying to protect their slice of the pie. The military sided with them.

MrW, The situation is really quite complicated.

Clearly, the writer of the IHT story was sympathetic to the pro-government group. But if you read articles from the other side, the concern was that the government then was just a puppet of Taksin (after all, the PM was then the brother-in-law of Taksin), the previous PM who was convicted on corruption and abuse of power charges and fled the country. Those articles say that the middle class and the educated (I guess that means the "urban elite") were concerned about Taksin's vote-buying in the poor rural provinces. If you believe this side, you wouldn't call buying the votes of poor rural people "empowering." Taksin bled the country of millions and millions of dollars, also not empowering.

The approach of the PAD to trying to prevent the purchase of votes is concerning, as it appears to disenfranchise poor rural voters. Also not empowering.

So certainly neither side is "right" or virtuous or not motivated by self-interest.

to Leigh:
Yes, it's my fault for doing the cruise first and not having the foresight to anticipate the largest airport in Asia being shut down for 8 days. If we had gone to Cambodia first, then we'd have been stuck there for the whole time and would have completely missed the cruise. From a financial point of view, the cruise was already paid for, nothing in Cambodia was except the Discovery Airpasses.So I'm out less money if the insurance doesn't pay on the claim because Bangkok Airways has already given me a refund.

to happycheesehead:
I like you was afraid that if we went to Cambodia overland we'd never make it out on time to hook up with our return tickets home that had already been changed.The option to stay on vacation longer until it all blew over was not one we could take; we both had to get back for work.I figured Thailand would be easier to leave from than Cambodia.

I am not a travel wimp!!