bigsmile

Looking forward to visiting and chatting with Rightsaid on my visit next month.

Pete, Look at it this way... you are experiencing problems of growth. Those are good problems to have, especially these days. With your direct and open approach to dealing with the delays, I am sure you will have them ironed out quickly. It may be taking some time to get the meals out, but I don't hear anyone complaining of the end result.

I ate there once since it re-opened with several other people. The menu and the service was excellent and the food was reasonably priced, but the taste and quality of the food itself came up a little short. That's my experience based on only one meal on one night, but others in the party had the same opinion.

Stayed a couple times this year at the Marriott Resort in Hua Hin. Absolutlely lovely, if a little pricey. Highly recommended, if within budget.

Yes, there is one on Second Road. I have PO Box there, and the service has been good.

I've been out-of-touch much of this week. While stopping to catch up on the happenings of the day between airport terminals in Europe today, I read this tragic thread. What a shock! Although I don't know what I can add that hasn't already been said, and although I fear that my words may sound trite at this point, still I feel obliged to extend my sincerest condolences to Om's family and everyone in the extended FLB family. She was truly a kind and sweet girl and will be missed. Bigsmile (The smile is pointing down right now.)

Rockin' Jerry: I'm not sure, but I doubt that you can pool different FF accounts from different carriers even though they are SA partners. You need to choose one of them for your "home account" and then make sure that they all deposit to that account in future travels. Since I live in the US, I use United Mielage Plus for my "home account" as I am more likely to take United for domestic trips that can add to my FF balance as opposed to say Thai or Singapore Airlines which are good for international travel only (they don't fly domestic routes in the US). However, I can accrue FF miles from

Rockin' Jerry: Yes, you need to designate the airline where the miles are to be "banked" at time of check-in (usually by showing your FF card for that airline). But all of the SA members have a "banking network" where you can use your miles banked at one partner (your home branch) to purchase tickets from any of the members (other branches). Likewise, you earn miles to your account from any of the partner carriers. So even though I keep all of my FF miles with one carrier, I earn them from several SA carriers and can still use them to book flights on any of the SA carriers. Ironically,

It would be a welcome addition. I would be willing to pay extra for it. If Ib didn't want to go to the expense of running wires/cables to do it, broadband wireless would be nice, too, even if just in a sitting area where you could bring your laptop to connect to the internet.

BigD, Yes, it was definitely an equipment problem, and no, they didn't have any replacement flights that day. Happy to hear that you have had better experiences. Mine may have been the exception, but I don't want to be the exception again, just the same.

Wish they had this in place and publicized it a bit earlier. I used my UA Mileage Plus card to make a donation on the 28th of December, and their program wasn't announced until January 5. I wonder if they will still honor the donation? Its nice to see that they're on board with helping out. Too bad they're on the same schedule as Washington.

I've flown several airlines many times between LAX and SE Asia (not just BKK), and my personal preference is Singapore Airlines nonstop direct to Singapore, then either Singapore or Thai from Singapore to BKK. Thai Airways has also been excellent, and if they start flying nonstop direct flights LAX to BKK, I'll take that instead. I must admit that my preference is also prejudiced toward the Star Alliance partner airlines, because one can accumulate frequent flier miles into a single account from all of the Star Alliance carriers, including Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines, ANA, Lufthansa, Unit

Don't overlook the possibility of getting cheap flights to neighboring countries then taking a cheap regional carrier to your destination of choice. I've had good luck with Air Asia to BKK from Malaysia and Singapore. Be forewarned that I've also heard from others some negative reports about promptness of their flights, though. You have to sacrifice something for the cheap fares, but in my experience the service and quality of the aircraft have not been sacrificed, I've only heard that the schedule sometimes is.

Radio Bangkok reported tonight that 90% of the resorts in the Phuket area are still operational and that the world media is giving the wrong impression that they are not ready for tourists. My guess is that there will be a short-term downturn in business there, prices will drop for a while to attract people back and get the word out, but it won't be long until things are pretty much back to business as usual.

There are many good posts on the boards that have photo links to outdated pages. It looks like there must have been some kind of re-arrangement of photo storage that must have taken place around March 2004 to the present scheme, and another relocation prior to that. Some of the links just prior to March are still viewable, but you have to paste the URL into the browser. The older posts' URLs simply seem to go to pages that are no longer there. Are all the old photos gone? Or can they be accessed at a different URL?