Farewell to Thai's Airbus 345: Introduction

• Introduction
• Penang to Bangkok with layover at Novotel Bangkok Airport
• Bangkok to Los Angeles
• Radisson LAX
• Los Angeles to Austin 
• Embassy Suites Townlake Austin
• Homewood Suites Round Rock 
• Extended Stay Austin Southwest
• Austin to Los Angeles
• Los Angeles Layover
• Flight back home - Los Angeles to Bangkok
• Bangkok Layover - Indra Regent Hotel

__________________________________________________________________________________

I had a business trip to the US and instead of my normal choice of Singapore or United Airlines, I decided to fly on Thai after finding out that they would be replacing the direct Airbus 345 flight to LAX with a one stop flight through Seoul on a Boeing 772 making this probably the last time I would fly on this plane. Nothing beats popping a couple of sleeping pills and falling asleep on a ~15-18 hour flight and waking up a couple of hours close to landing. I find the stops on flights to the US annoying and tiresome.

I've actually taken this flight once a couple of years ago (before we started this blog) and loved the non-stop flight and great seat pitch in economy but never flew on this route again because of the long layover times in Bangkok on both the inbound and outbound flights.

With the 8 and almost 12 hour layover in Bangkok on both the inbound and outbound, Thai provides a day room with a choice of the transit hotel airside, the Novotel Bangkok Airport hotel or a downtown hotel. I decided on staying at the Novotel on the way to the US and a downtown hotel on the way back to Penang.

I would also be flying on United Airlines from Los Angeles to get to Austin.

SXSW was also going on in Austin forcing me to hop hotels due to lack of availability in my preferred Embassy Suites Townlake. I did manage to find a hotel for a long stretch of time but it was a 30-45 minute commute to work.