Bangkok Thailand named best city in the world ... again!

At this time every year, people rush to their mailboxes to check if the new issue of Travel + Leisure magazine has arrived. Because they want to check the magazine's annual 'World’s Best Awards'.


Well, at the risk of being a spoilsport, I'm going spoil the surprise for you by announcing the results now. Here. Today.

For the second time, Bangkok has clinched the No. 1 spot as World's Best City, jing jing.


Now, just in case you're not familiar with these awards, no, they're not run and sponsored by the Tourism Authority of Thailand or the Bangkok Metropolitan whatever ... these are genuinely independent worldwide awards which take in ratings from readers of Travel + Leisure’s international editions including the USA, Southeast Asia, Turkey, China, South Asia and Mexico.


So as a result, they are highly coveted.


Hotels in Thailand scored highly on the list of Top 100 Hotels Overall (best hotel in the world), with the magic-kingdom-in-a-rice-paddy Mandarin Oriental Dhara Devi in Chiang Mai coming in at no. 7. The Peninsula Bangkok on the fabled Chao Phraya river also made the list. The Mandarin Oriental Dhara Dhevi was also voted Asia's second favourite resort, while in the city hotels category for Asia, The Peninsula Bangkok came home at no. 4. 

The best city hotel in Asia was judged to be the legendary Mandarin Oriental Bangkok nestling on the banks of the river as it has done for over 135 years. We should assume then that it is also the best city hotel in Thailand?


Not to be outdone in the Best International Airline category, Thailand also scored highly with Thai Airways International flying smooth as silk at No. 9.


For full results, check your mailbox on August 1 for your subscription copy of T+L again. Better still, as I'm first with the news here anyway, just cancel your subscription and send me the money instead.

Thai Airways - travel to Thailand with flight to Bangkok from $855

From our friends at Thai Airways, this great offer for anyone looking to travel to Thailand from Australia in the next little while ...

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Thai Airways' 51st Anniversary Sale: 


- book/ticket/travel by 30 Jun 2011 with economy class fares from AUD $855 return to Bangkok (from the east coast) and from $859 return to Phuket; ex Perth from $780 return - fares include all taxes.  Fares are also available to Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Vientiane and Myanmar).

There are 2 bonus offers also available with these fares - child discounts up the 15 years (usually 2-11 years) and a bonus domestic side-trip in Thailand for tickets to Europe, Johannesburg or Los Angeles.

Fares to Europe (with a choice of 13 major cities) start from $2,032 return including taxes.


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So let me get this straight ... You can be sitting in, say, Sydney today, thinking Geez it's cold and raining, bugger this I'm gonna get a flight to Bangkok, and by tomorrow you could be swanning around the Grand Palace, getting measured up for a suit (not in the Grand Palace, at a tailor shop in Sukhumvit I mean), and enjoy a nice spicy pad thai for just $855 ( I mean the Bangkok flights, not the noodles, which are only around 35 baht). 


That's ridiculously good value, jing jing. Probably the cheapest flight to Bangkok I've ever heard of -- other than being deported that is.


So get on the blower now (I mean the phone). You've only got a month to get that leave application in and fly Phuket or fly BKK soon. There's a cold Singha waiting for you.

Thai Airways celebrates 40 years to Oz

Thai Airways started flying to Australia with its first intercontinental flight to the Land Down Under on April 1, 1971. That flight went from Bangkok to Singapore to Sydney, with half the plane painted in Thai colours, the other, its partner airline, SAS.

Picture me in khaki school shorts, and a cruel bowl-cut hair do. I don't think I'd even heard of Thailand back then.

To celebrate this, they are now having a 40-Day Anniversary sale with special airfares starting from just AUD $955 to Thailand, Asia, India, and Europe, jing jing.  Yes, that would be return.

Best to check out their website www.thaiairways.com.au for the fine print.

Thai Airways has aged gracefully since then. As for me, well, I can only dream of cruel bowl-cuts these days.

November Fare Sale on THAI Airways

Ok here's the deal from our friends at Thai Airways ...

Book/ticket/travel by 30 Nov ’10 to Asia (including Thailand)

Book/ticket by 30 Nov ’10 and travel by 17 Dec ’10 to Europe (choose from 13 destinations)

Fares to Bangkok and Phuket from only $721* return (including taxes), jing jing!

Contact your travel agent -- or if you're a travel agent, contact yourself? -- for full details and bookings or visit Thai Airways website (click on title above) or call THAI on 130 651 960.

Fly Thai and Join the Smile High Club

On Saturday May 1, Thai Airways reenacted its historical first ever flight between Bangkok and Hong Kong, with the crew decked out in nostalgic mod/pop 60s style fashions, and the plane also bearing the original Thai Airways livery (featuring highly unoriginal blue and red stripes).

The original menu was also replicated with those in the pointy end of the plane enjoying Lobster Medallion Bellevue served with Russian Salad, Smoked Snapper Marinated with Mustard Sauce served with Thai herbs such as lime wedges, shallot, peanut, ginger, chili slices and spring onion, all together wrapped with betel leaves. And that was just for starters, literally. For the main course, first class passengers feasted on Lobster in Chu-Chee Sauce and Braised Cubed Beef Hong Kong Style.

It’s 50 years since that first flight in 1960, done in a plane borrowed from the Wright Brothers (actually a DC-6B). Boy, TG -- as it’s known in the trade -- has come a looooooooooooooong way since then, with 10,000 planes flying to 550 countries worldwide now, making Thailand the perfect travel hub for anyone travelling in just about any direction across the globe. Even if you're flying from Sydney to Melbourne, for instance, you should consider flying via Bangkok.

I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Thai’s pilot simulator training centre in Bangkok, where half a dozen sims of Airbuses, and all the other models in their modern fleet, stand like a miniature NASA laboratory. What a fun session and a great chance to try out the Airbus technology first hand. (The less said about my first landing attempt the better. Suffice to say we all walked away from it.)

Coincidentally my first ever flight on TG was Hong Kong to Bangkok.

I was travelling with a work colleague, an ‘Old Bangkok Hand’ who was going to show us youngsters the sights, sounds, smells, etc of Bangkok. We flew First Class (well, it was the Eighties, the age of excess) and us six passengers in the 1st class bubble upstairs on the 747 were – as I remember – outnumbered by the crew.

Boarding that plane was my first taste of Thailand. The graceful silk garments. The wai. The smiles. Being younger and better looking then, I was sure they were only smiling that special smile for me. None of the other passengers were surely enjoying the same smile I was receiving! I had unwittingly joined Thai Airways’ World Famous Smile High Club.

We floated on a cloud to and fro Bangkok. Smooth as silk indeed. And that experience planted a seed in my mind then that was only to come to fruition some years later when I finally did move to live in Thailand.

Out of thousands of airplane journeys I’ve done, covering over half a billion kilometers, that journey sticks in my mind as one of the most memorable and enjoyable ever. Nothing at all to do with the sixteen double vodka tonics. Jing jing!

Well here’s to you, TG. You’re an elegant lady still, and looking pretty good for 50. Especially those little laugh lines around your eyes.